Uptime and network performance are important not only within a data center, but also between data centers. For this reason, many monitoring solutions have been developed to keep tabs on a variety of relevant network metrics to keep systems administrators in the know. You might even say that network monitoring is effectively a solved problem.
But a little thing like that is not going to stop hackers from hacking. Swiss hacker Maximilien wanted to keep track of the status of a number of data centers, and the bandwidth between them, but did not want to use a boring, run-of-the-mill solution. Where is the fun in using a web-based app that looks like everything else?
A look inside the case (📷: Maximilien)
So Maximilien came up with the idea of building a physical network map that can display performance metrics in an interesting and beautiful way. At the heart of the build is a set of MD0657C2-R dot matrix displays that show throughput, or if there is a network problem, they indicate that the link is down. A set of five of these displays show metrics for the link between a particular pair of data centers.
An Analog Devices MAX6952 LED display driver was selected to control the screens, with a Raspberry Pi Pico development board providing the data to update the displays with, and also controlling rings of WS2812 RGB LEDs that provide backlighting. While the plan was to have a single Pico driving all the displays in a daisy-chained configuration, Maximilien ran into some reliability issues with longer chains. Since a Pico only costs a few dollars, the decision was made to just use five of them rather than troubleshooting the problem. Perhaps that is not the most efficient hardware design, but hey, time is more valuable when it comes to personal projects.
A display module (📷: Maximilien)
Network data was fetched from public MQTT servers, then it was relayed from the main Pico to all the rest via UART connections. So far so good, but the device needed a case to make it a nice display piece. For this, a wooden rectangular frame was constructed to house all of the hardware. The front was made from semi-transparent acrylic panels that were spray-painted black. A laser cutter was then used to etch designs into the paint in a single pass, and holes were cut for the displays to poke through.
The final result looks fantastic. It looks like it would be perfectly at home in a NASA control room from the Apollo era, and that is indisputably peak tech design. To be sure, a lot of elbow grease goes into a build like this, but the hardware design is pretty simple and inexpensive. So if you want a cool monitor like this that doubles as an even cooler display piece, be sure to read through the project write-up for some tips.
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