This is hardware detection 101.
Can I use a TW to detect (interface with) the current state of my fan? (for instance)
A glitch in the system could be bad.
Can a TW detect/predict it?
What backend would I need?
You would need a server software that can access HW status. This info could be sent to a browser client software. Browsers have no access to computer hardware info for obvious reasons
Do you mean a setup like running a local HTTP server to serve sensors data and in TiddlyWiki using tm-http-request to fetch it?
This simple answer is “no” as Browsers are not supposed to have access to local hardware, there are however examples out in the wild where such things are possible, but there usualy needs to be a host based component because hosts vary a lot, and like to hide this data.
- I have an Intel NUC computer and the intel site has some hardware info available it gets from my host computer, but there is a host exe installed and possibly some modification of the browser
- Running tiddlywiki in TiddlyDesktop, hta files and other non-internet browsers have more access to the file system and possibly other calls to local data
- including but not limited to powershell and other scripts then reading the output.
- Running on node may permit tools installed into node to access local info
- Perhaps there are tools that given the permissions will publish such info to a location where tiddlywiki can access starting with reading files or html pages.
But using tiddlywiki to interogate hardware may just be an exercise in trying to put as many possible layers between the hardware and the application to interogate it.
Microsoft (and other OS) may have tools to export live or static host and hardware details to file you can then parse with TiddlyWiki.