Grid Control is a free and open source alternative to the CAM application from NZXT.
- Simple to use and resource efficient
- Uses OpenHardwareMonitor to read sensor values
- Individual fan control (manual or automatic with control points)
- Support the Grid+ V2 device
- Developed in Python 3 using QT5 for the user interface
NZXT is not involved in this project, please do not contact them regarding this application. If you have a question, please open an Issue or send me a message on Reddit. Also, while it seems very unlikely that your hardware could be damaged by this application, I do NOT take any responsibility for any damage done to your HW using this software (e.g. overheat due to low fan settings).
Grid Control only supports the Grid V2 device, no other hardware from NZXT like the different Kraken watercoolers or HUE lightning devices. There are other applications available on GitHub for these devices, please check the NZXT Reddit community for details.
Grid Control is available as a stand-alone application (Python does not need to be installed):
- Download the latest release from Releases
- Unzip file
- Run "gridcontrol.exe"
- NOTE! At first startup, you will get the message "No data from OpenHardwareMonitor found", even if OHM is running. Just configure the sensor data on the "Sensors" tab, after this the warning will not be displayed.
Grid Control automatically saves all settings when the application is closed ("x" in the top right corner). The settings are stored in the registry at HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\GridControl\App\ or HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\GridControl\App\
All settings are automatically loaded when Grid Control starts (with default values if no saved settings are found).
Grid Control uses OpenHardwareMonitor to get temperature information from the available sensors in the system.
- Download latest release of OpenHardwareMonitor here
- UPDATE - There is a fork of OpenHardwareMonitor called LibreHardwareMonitor, available here that is in active development
- Note that an update to Windows 10 caused problems with OHM and the WMI communication. This can be fixed by a PowerShell command, see this forum thread
The Grid uses a MCP2200 USB-to-UART serial converter from Microchip.
Driver installation:
-
Windows 10
- No driver is needed, Windows 10 will detect the Grid device automatically and add a "USB Serial Device" in Device Manager
-
Windows 7
- A driver is needed, see "MCP2200/MCP2221 Windows Driver & Installer" on the product page
Assuming you have latest version of Python 3 installed, the following additional modules are required, install with pip:
pip install pyserialpip install wmipip install pypiwin32pip install pyqt5
Run python gridcontrol.py to start the Grid Control application.
For packaging, use PyInstaller:
pip install pyinstaller- PyInstaller is used to package the software into EXE format so that you can run the application without having Python installed
I recommend the free version of PyCharm IDE for Python development.
- For editing the User Interface (
mainwindow.ui), install QT Designer as follows:- Install latest QT5 open source suite from QT main site
- In the install wizard, make sure you include the "Qt 5.3 MinGW" component
- QT Designer will be installed in
C:\Qt\5.x\mingw53_32\bin\designer.exe - Note that the executable is named "designer.exe"
- To convert the
mainwindow.uitomainwindow.pyrun the following command:<python installation directory>\Scripts\pyuic5.exe mainwindow.ui -o mainwindow.py
For troubleshooting, or if you would like to run Grid Control without a Grid device, please have a look at my "Grid Simulator" available here.
I would like to thank the authors of the following projects that have been helpful in understanding the communication protocol the Grid uses.