This is a cool idea. The other thing to do would be to read from the api of the pool - to display hash rate and balance. You could use an ardunino board to do this for $6.
Thanks! Sorry for the late reply. I spent the last few days figuring out the whole mining thing a bit more.
I think it can definitely be done. And done cheaply. - I think an arduino could work. And the idea of "building a PC" could also be something to work with.
I think the next step I need to do is seriously consider a setup that would look cool, and make a mock version to scale and see how it looks
Because the technical side seems to be way less technical than I thought. And I do think it would be cool. But I should probably make my own thread somewhere.