There is no dearth of E Ink displays designed to showcase weather info, be it either as a standalone weather station or as part of a broader information package. Now, in what can be considered a tribute to human ingenuity, here comes a new project that involves using an E Ink panel to display weather info in cartoon style. This makes for a refreshingly new development considering most other such displays would rather opt for a graphical interface.
Designed by [lds133], the E Ink weather display incorporates a cartoon landscape to show what the day ahead going to be like. As Hackaday revealed, there are various elements included that show how the weather is expected to unfold as the day progresses. For instance, there are trees shown which indicate the wind direction as well as the wind speed. Palm trees show wind coming from the south while pine trees give the indication of wind from the north. Also, the taller the trees are, the more is going to be the wind speed.
The landscape again has an uneven feel to it, with the undulations matching the ups and downs of the temperature reading. So, if greater is the temperature variation, more undulating is going to be the forest floor. Then there are going to be the familiar icons for the sun and the moon which would appear at the right time to indicate sunrise and sunset times. Similarly, there are going to be the cloud icons which is directly proportional to the cloud cover expected in real life. Rain and snow too are going to be depicted using appropriate animations.
Coming to the hardware side of it, there is the ESP32 module that makes up the core of the device. The front end is taken care of by a Waveshare E Ink display having 296 x 128 pixels. A custom Python program runs the entire thing, with weather info updated every 15 minutes from the OpenWeather API.
This isn’t the first weather info station we have come across and it certainly won’t be the last either but it definitely is the most interesting that we have come across in recent times.
With a keen interest in tech, I make it a point to keep myself updated on the latest developments in technology and gadgets. That includes smartphones or tablet devices but stretches to even AI and self-driven automobiles, the latter being my latest fad. Besides writing, I like watching videos, reading, listening to music, or experimenting with different recipes. The motion picture is another aspect that interests me a lot, and I'll likely make a film sometime in the future.