USB Magic Eye

Herwe use a green glowing valve as a CPU activity meter. Power and control are both provided by the USB port. A simpler variant on the circuit, using a moving-coil meter, is also described. For the CPU meter we chose the USB stack described in application note AVR309 by Igor Cesko.

Features
- display of CPU load as a percentage (0 to 100)
- power and control over USB
- ATtiny microcontroller with software USB interface
- two variants with the same firmware
- display using moving-coil meter or EM84 ‘magic eye’ valve
- very low component count
- low-cost, readily-available indicator valve
- current consumption (moving-coil version): less than 100 mA
- current consumption (magic eye version): less than 500 mA
- freely downloadable PC software and microcontroller firmware, with source code