Hello,
I have come up with a fun little piece of computer hardware for my computer, but I am far too undereducated in electronics to really know just what to do.
The idea is this: Have a plasma disk's outputting voltage (and therefore how "active" the plasma disk is) be directly proportional to the CPU load on my computer. I found some Arduino code that uses a VB script on the computer to gather and output the CPU and RAM usage to an LCD on the Arduino via USB, but I am not really certain where to go from here. I know enough about C++ that I could probably modify the VB code myself to replace the LCD output with something more appropriate, and to modify the C code on the Arduino's end to something more appropriate as well, but I am concerned that I will need to use an additional power supply somewhere, as USBs can only carry 5V, whereas the plasma disks seem to need 12V, given the AC adapter's rated output on my plasma disk, not to mention that I don't know how much voltage an Arduino can take without burning up.
So, what exactly do I need (assuming using an Arduino this way is even a usable idea) to make my idea work, and how will I need to edit the code to work with the hardware? I am trying to avoid using any external power supplies (that is to say, if I will need more power, I want to get it from the computer's power supply, if at all possible).
I've looked up "how to make your own plasma disk" to see how people do it, and the driver seems to be something called a "flyback transformer". Since they can apparently be salvaged from old monitors, and the one I saw had an adjustment nob, I am wondering if it would be possible to take off the nob and have the Arduino output a pwm signal to the wire that the nob was controlling, or is that just totally absurd?
Either way, I've been wanting to toy around with Arduinos and learn about electronics on a more basic level than what I'm used to (that is, building gaming computers), and I think this would be a fun way to get started, if you guys are willing to help.
