Here comes another interesting project involving E Ink displays. This time, the device created serves as a weather station and is entirely solar-powered. As it is, E Ink displays are already known for their extreme energy efficiency, drawing power only when the image changes. Ricardo Sappia’s solar-powered weather station takes things to new heights as there is zero power drain from the grid.
The e-paper used happens to be a 2.13-inch tri-color E Ink display sourced from Wemos. The display is capable of showing white, black, and red shades and has a resolution of 250 × 122 pixels. A small LiPo battery keeps the device going and is designed to recharge itself via a small solar cell attached to the rear of the device. As Sappia envisaged with the device, it can be placed against a window that receives good sunlight. This will let the device recharge itself, enough to remain operational for the entire night.
Further, as Hackster.io stated, the weather station comes with a major advantage which negates one of the biggest flaws of the E Ink display, that of slow refresh rates. However, the good thing with the weather station is that though it displays the day’s weather, most of the information shown remains relevant for most of the day.
That way, the display does not need to refresh quite often save for the clock placed at the top left corner which needs to refresh once every minute though that requires a partial refresh only. Making up the heart of the device is an ESP32 controller that is programmed to fetch the latest weather info and display the same on the E Ink panel. Between each update, the device gets into power-saving deep sleep mode to conserve battery power.
The device is designed to display key weather info which includes moon state, sunrise and sunrise times, temperature highs and lows throughout the day, wind speed and direction, and cloud cover conditions. These apart, it also shows the time and date as well.
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.