USB IPS3.5¶

Shows the AMD BC-250's live system values on a small Turzx USB IPS screen on Bazzite: CPU, GPU, memory, fan, temperatures, network and disk, and the weather if you want it. It reads the same sensors as System Overlay, without root, and changes nothing on the board.

Screens¶

The app works with the Turzx screens that report USB ID 1a86:5722:

Screen	Size	How the app knows it
Turing Smart Screen 3.5"	320 × 480	it does not answer the app's hello
UsbMonitor 3.5"	320 × 480	answers 1
UsbMonitor 5"	480 × 800	answers 2
UsbMonitor 7"	600 × 1024	answers 3

The header shows which one it found. To check what is plugged in:

lsusb | grep 1a86:5722          # ... QinHeng Electronics UsbMonitor

These screens need no driver on Linux. They are USB serial devices: the kernel's cdc_acm driver makes them /dev/ttyACM0 (or the next free number) as soon as they are plugged in. The "driver" in the Windows download is only Microsoft's USB serial setup file.

Access to the screen¶

The port belongs to root and the dialout group, and Bazzite's users are not in that group. The first time, the window shows Access to the screen: Allow access… asks for your password and adds a udev rule that gives the user at the board the screen's port, for this USB ID only. It takes effect at once; there is no need to unplug the screen or log out.

The rule is /etc/udev/rules.d/70-bc250-usb-ips35.rules:

SUBSYSTEM=="tty", ATTRS{idVendor}=="1a86", ATTRS{idProduct}=="5722", TAG+="uaccess"

install.sh --uninstall removes it again (with sudo).

What it shows¶

Each value is a tile; tick the ones you want on the Values tab. The tiles fill the screen in one column standing up and two lying down. The header shows your own text (the Look tab) and the time, with the time zone and the date if you want them (the Clock tab). Hover a value on the Values tab to see what it shows.

Tile	What it shows
CPU	load, with a bar; clock and temperature
GPU	load, with a bar; clock, power and temperature. Without the GPU governor's fix-metrics the BC-250 reports no GPU load, and the tile shows the clock instead
CPU temp	the CPU's temperature in large, with a bar from 0 to 100 °C
GPU temp	the GPU's temperature in large, with a bar from 0 to 100 °C
VRAM	used / total of the GPU's share of the memory, with a bar
RAM	used / total, with a bar
Fan	the fastest spinning fan and its name
VRM temp	the temperature of the VRM (voltage regulator module): the regulators beside the chip that feed it its power
NVMe temp	the SSD's temperature
Network	download, and upload beside it: all network interfaces, or the one chosen on the Values tab
Disk	read, and write beside it
Weather	the temperature, the sky in words and an icon for it (a moon at night), at the place chosen on the Weather tab

A temperature turns the tile orange from 80 °C and red from 90 °C. A tile shows "—" when the board does not offer its value. The values update every second.

The link to the screen is slow: a whole 3.5" picture takes almost two seconds. The app sends only the parts that changed, usually a few KB a second; hover Connected in the header to see how much the last update sent.

Settings¶

The window shows the screen's picture at its own size (the 5" and 7" scaled down to fit), with the settings on six tabs beside it, or under it when the screen lies down. Every change shows on the screen at once.

Under the picture:

Save picture… saves what the screen shows, at the screen's own size, as a PNG.
Save report… saves every value at that moment as a text file, all of them, also those not on the screen, with the date, the time and its time zone.

Screen

Brightness: 0 to 100 %. The Screen off pill in the header switches the screen dark while the app keeps running, and reads Screen on until you click it again.
Orientation: portrait or landscape, each either way up. Choose the one that matches how the screen stands (where its USB cable is).

Values

The tiles to show.
Network tile: the network interface the Network tile measures. Each one says what it is: Ethernet (a cable), Wi-Fi, or Virtual (a bridge, VPN or container network). All interfaces, the default, adds them up.

Look

Theme: Dark (with the suite's accent color), Light, Midnight, Ember, Forest or Mono. Moving through the list shows each theme in the window's picture; the screen changes only when you choose one.
Colors: your own color for the Text, the Tiles, the Accent (the tiles' edge and bars) or the Background, over the theme. The window's picture shows each color you try in the color dialog; the screen changes when you choose OK. A button with your own color shows it; Theme's puts back the theme's colors. The warm and hot temperatures stay orange and red.
Header text: your own text, up to 24 characters: the board's name, its CPU, anything. Empty leaves only the time.
Background: a picture of your own behind the tiles, cut to the screen's shape; the tiles let it show through a little. The app remembers where the picture is and does not copy it: if you move or remove it, the theme's color comes back, and the tab says so.

Clock

Time: 24-hour, or 12-hour with AM or PM.
Time zone: not shown, its name (CEST) or its offset from UTC (UTC+2). The choices show the zone the system is in now.
Date: not shown, or under the time: Thu 22 Oct, 22-10-2026, 10/22/2026 or 2026-10-22.

The time is the system's, in its time zone. Summer and winter time follow by themselves: in Amsterdam the header says CEST (UTC+2) in summer and CET (UTC+1) in winter.

Weather

Type a city or town and Search, pick the right one from the list (the region and country tell same-named places apart) and Use this place; the Weather tile is switched on with it. No weather forgets the place.
The tab shows the current weather in more detail: temperature, sky, wind and humidity.
The weather comes from Open-Meteo, free and without an account or key. Search sends the name you typed; after that, the place's coordinates go to Open-Meteo every 30 minutes, and only while the Weather tile is on the screen. Without a place nothing is sent. If Open-Meteo cannot be reached, the screen keeps the last weather it had. See Privacy.

Start

Start with the desktop, minimized: the screen shows the values from the moment you log in. The window may stay minimized; the screen keeps being updated.
Switch the screen off when the app quits: on by default, so the screen does not keep showing values that no longer change.

Each time the app connects to the screen, it restarts the screen once (it is gone from USB for about two seconds). That also clears a picture that was cut off halfway, by an app that was killed or a cable that was pulled; without it, everything after would land shifted. If the screen is unplugged, the app finds it again when it is plugged back in.

Install¶

Install it from the BC250 Bazzite Suite portal, or from a clone or release folder, as your own user:

./install.sh                         # app menu entry and Desktop icon
./install.sh --no-desktop-shortcut   # app menu entry only
./install.sh --uninstall             # remove the app, its udev rule and its autostart entry; keeps its settings
./install.sh --uninstall --purge     # also remove its settings

It installs:

the app in ~/.local/share/bc250-usb-ips35/app, with the bc250_core it was tested with;
PyQt6 in the suite's shared venv ~/.local/share/bc250-bazzite-suite/venv;
the launcher ~/.local/bin/bc250-usb-ips35, an app menu entry and a Desktop icon.

bc250-usb-ips35 --minimized starts it minimized, as Start with the desktop does. Settings are kept in ~/.config/bc250-usb-ips35/bc250-usb-ips35.ini.

License¶

GPL-3.0-or-later — see LICENSE.