Turning a Tiny RP2350 Display into a PC Monitor
I recently went on a bit of a shopping spree and ended up with a pile of new hardware to play with. Somewhere in that pile was this RP2350 board from Waveshare with a 1.47-inch display.
As soon as I saw it, the most obvious thing to do was turn it into a tiny PC monitor.
I know this has probably been done hundreds of times, but that’s never really stopped me from building something.
The Enclosure
I wanted something that could sit on my desk next to my monitor, so I started looking for an enclosure.
I found a model that was already designed for the board, but it was meant to sit flat on the desk. I wanted the display to be angled towards me instead.
So I made a quick modification in Blender, adding a simple wedge to the bottom of the enclosure. Nothing complicated, but it makes a big difference when the display is sitting on the desk.
The modified model is available here:
RP2350 USB Dongle Case – Printables
Getting the PC Stats
For the software side, I wanted to keep things simple.
Claude helped me put together a small Python script running on the PC. The script connects to the RP2350 over the serial port and sends the system statistics to the display.
I then added a small batch file that runs at startup, so I don’t have to manually launch anything. Once Windows starts, the script connects to the display and starts sending the data.
It ended up being a surprisingly simple setup.
The Display
For the UI, I used LVGL.
I’ve used LVGL on embedded projects before, and it’s a pretty good fit for something like this. It gives me plenty of flexibility to experiment with the layout and how the information is presented without having to build all the display widgets from scratch.
The result is a tiny little display sitting on my desk showing the PC’s stats in real time.
What’s Next?
The PC monitor was probably the most obvious thing I could do with this little display, but now I’m wondering what else I can use it for.
It’s small enough that there are probably quite a few interesting projects where a dedicated little screen like this would be useful.
Maybe a network monitor, a build-status display, an MQTT dashboard, or something completely different.
For now, I’m happy with this little desktop PC monitor. It was a simple project, but it was also a good excuse to play around with the RP2350, LVGL, Blender, and a bit of Python.
Now I just need to figure out what to build with the display next.