Weather-O-Matic Displays Digital Weather On An Analog Face

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This clean-looking readout uses analog dials to display the weather. [Nuno Martins] calls it the Weather-O-Matic and after the jump he explains what went into the project.

The hardware is about as simple as it gets. Each hand has a servo motor attached to it. An MSP430 gets the weather via a serial connection to a computer (data is scraped by a Python script) and sets the dials accordingly. The microcontroller also takes user input in the form of a single button on the side of the frame. The words on the left side of the dial are Portuguese for Today, Tomorrow, and After (meaning the day after tomorrow). Pressing the button multiple times will scroll through these three words, followed by the forecast temperature high and low for that day being displayed.

The nice thing about this is that the servo motors will stay in place if you cut the power to them. We bet if he wanted to make this a permanent fixture in his house he could get it to run well on batteries by using the sleep function of the microcontroller and adding an RF transceiver to communicate with the server.

21 thoughts on “Weather-O-Matic Displays Digital Weather On An Analog Face

    1. Another mention that’s probably Celsius. Snow is precipitation. The current icons should work when the temperature is considered, but you still have to guess ice, sleet or snow

  1. Ok, I’m really wondering about the word “limbo” on the face.

    Does this predict the impending death of the user? Provide weather reports for another plane of existence? Suggest doing a dance that involves bending backwards under a pole, but only when temperatures are around 122°F, based on its position on the dial?

  2. Must be for the arctic as the temperature doesn’t go above 45 :-)

    Although confused why no Snow icon. Frightened if the indicator points to limbo… Does that mean the 7th circle of hell is about to open up?

  3. Might have been cool (and useful) five years ago, but now with smartphones, I get the same weather info (and more) on my smartphone main screen and it doesn’t have to be tethered to a full blown computer to do so.

    1. I don’t. I got tired of software issues, so I upgraded to a dumbphone. Wonderful battery life and nice reception.

      Wouldn’t mind having a weather display in the house. Doesn’t do you any good having one outside; you can see the weather and you can do little to shield against it ‘less you carry a wardrobe in your phone too.

    1. Where? On the north pole? Even in Lapland it only ever goes to -40C – -45C, at which point it’s time to switch the electric heating on. Lower than that and you can be pretty sure that you’re not on Earth anymore.

  4. Very nice work. The display repeatability is excellent. What servo did you use? Code posted anywhere? The HAD link for ” uses analog dials to display the weather” appears to be broken or blocked at my workplace.

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