This Portable, Wireless Display Offers Live System Stats and a Six-Key Mechanical Macropad

Pseudonymous maker "prodigal_ghost" has put a Raspberry Pi Zero 2 W to work as the driving force behind a portable ultra-wide display — used as a hardware monitor and shortcut board for a larger PC.

The Macronitor v2, as prodigal_ghost's build is named, is based around a compact 6.86" ultra-wide display, connected via HDMI to a Raspberry Pi Zero 2 W single-board computer. A Nullbits SCRAMBLE six-key mechanical macropad is positioned off to one side with keycaps chosen to match the maker's Phase One 65 keyboard and to provide quick-load access to apps on the connected PC, linked via Bluetooth — while a 10Ah battery with USB Type-C charging makes the whole thing, enclosed in aluminum and with six indicator LEDs, fully portable.

"I use Aida64," prodigal_ghost explains of the software that provides the portable display with its detailed, animated view of the inner workings of its connected PC with temperature, voltage, and network readouts plus volume level and a frames-per-second counter for gaming.

"It has a remote sensor option that allows you to display your stats over Wi-Fi in a browser. I set the [Raspberry] Pi to auto start Chromium in kiosk mode and load the page."

"You can make totally custom interface[s in Aida64]," prodigal_ghost explains of the impressive user interface. "The one I made required some handy design work and masking to get the look I wanted."

More details are available on prodigal_ghost's Reddit thread.