Aether

Aether is a small C application that simulates sensor readings and displays them in a real-time Raylib dashboard.

Features

• Load any number of sensors from a YAML config, each with an arbitrary list of named metrics carrying units (temperature (C), pressure (hPa), ...)
• Adaptive card grid: each metric renders as a chip with its value, sparkline, and up/down change indicator
• Card detail view with large trend lines and min/avg/max stats per metric
• Tabbed navigation: a tab holds as many cards as fit the window; overflow goes to numbered tabs (1 2 ... N), clickable and bound to Alt/Cmd + 1..9
• Settings modal to toggle trend lines, value animation, and change indicators at runtime
• Fixed-slot task scheduler decoupled from data handling
• Bounded per-sensor reading history (ring buffers)
• Unit tests for configuration, history, scheduler, sensor, and dashboard layout modules

Demo

Requirements

• C compiler with C99 support
• make
• pkg-config
• Raylib

macOS

brew install raylib libyaml pkg-config

Linux

Install your distribution's development packages for:

• GCC or Clang
• Make
• pkg-config
• Raylib

For example, package names may include build-essential, pkg-config, libraylib-dev, and libyaml-dev.

Build and run

Build the application:

make

Run it:

./main

Clean generated files:

make clean

Run tests

Build and run all unit tests:

make test

The test suite covers:

• sensor initialization and simulated updates;
• reading history ordering, oldest-entry eviction, and metric statistics;
• task scheduling;
• YAML configuration loading, including malformed input, unknown keys, missing ids, and growing registries;
• dashboard layout math: tab capacity, pagination limits, and range mapping.

Configuration

Sensor data is loaded from:

config/sensors.yaml

Example:

sensors:
  - id: 1
    name: temperature_sensor
    metrics:
      - name: temperature
        unit: C
        value: 22.5
      - name: humidity
        unit: "%"
        value: 45

Each sensor requires:

Field	Description
id	Unique numeric sensor identifier
name	Readable sensor name
metrics	List of metrics, each with name, unit and value

Note: a % unit must be quoted ("%") because libyaml reserves the percent sign.

Controls

Input	Action
Click the cogwheel (top right)	Open/close the settings modal
Click a card	Open that sensor's detail view
Click a numbered tab (bottom)	Jump to that tab
Alt/Cmd + 1..9	Jump directly to tab N
← / →	Previous / next tab
Esc	Close the detail view or settings modal

Project structure

.
├── assets/fonts/ Bundled font (JetBrains Mono, SIL OFL)
├── config/       Sensor configuration loading and YAML data
├── docs/         Screenshots and demo media
├── History/      Bounded per-sensor reading history (ring buffer)
├── scheduler/    Periodic task scheduling
├── sensor/       Sensor data types and simulation
├── ui/           Dashboard rendering, layout math, theme tokens (Raylib)
├── tests/        Unit tests
├── main.c        Application entry point
└── Makefile      Build and test commands

Architecture

sensors.yaml
     │
     ▼
configuration parser
     │
     ▼
sensor registry ◄── scheduled sensor tasks (update in place)
     │                    │
     ▼                    ▼
Raylib dashboard     per-sensor reading history (ring buffers)

License

This project is licensed under the MIT License.