Checking The Weather Without A Window

Making a weather display is great because it’s a simple project that shows off some skills and has an obvious daily use. So [ACROBOTIC Industries] decided to make an easy kit for the Hackaday Prize to make weather displays even more accessible.

Calling it the ESPecter, [ACROBOTIC Industries] wanted to make this a simple project for anyone, regardless of skill with a soldering iron or Arduino toolkit. So they decided to base the guts on common components that can be put together easily, specifically a Wemos Mini D1 with an OLED shield as a bright display. They also designed a cool tiltable 3D-printed enclosure for this small device so that you can orient it to your eye level.

ESPecter breadboarded prototype.

While they already have a breadboarded prototype, and a 3D printed case, some software work remains to make the project really shine. They plan to add nice features like a web interface to configure location and network information, alerts, additional locations, and historical weather data. They also want to create a weather library to display well on a low-resolution screen and add battery operation.

We look forward to seeing the final version later in the Hackaday Prize!

This isn’t the first weather project we’ve seen around here. Other variants include mirror weather displays, an ESP8266-based weather monitoring station, a very low-power weather station, and this roundup of weather displays which might give you some inspiration.

9 thoughts on “Checking The Weather Without A Window

  1. I think the date isn’t really as important as other weather information, like high and low temp or percentage chance of precipitation. But nice project still, I need something like this in my life. All the Android weather apps have a buncha ads and bullshit. I just want to know if I can ride my motorcycle as soon as I wake up, I don’t want wait through a 20 second add just to see the hourly temp and rain chance.

  2. Wow that’s amazing how things are put together by them selves of reminders of people that know where all things come from keep plugged in maybe using it here’s plug and play won’t effect how things become misconstrued or taken as offense

  3. When I first read this article before going on to the hackaday.io project page I was a bit offended because the prototype photo shows our existing starter kit and software on the display (https://thingpulse.com/product/esp8266-iot-electronics-starter-kit-weatherstation-planespotter-worldclock/) So how could someone submit an entry to a competition with the work of someone else? Pretty unfair wouldn’t you say? However, [ACROBOTIC Industries] gives credits to our work on the project page so I would only hope that this article would also give our hard work credits… Thank you.

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