Here’s a great hack sent in to us from [Simon]. He uses an e-paper photo frame as a weather map!
By now you are probably aware of e-paper technology, which is very low power tech for displaying images. E-paper only uses energy when it changes its display, it doesn’t draw power to maintain a picture it has already rendered. The particular e-paper used in this example is fairly large (as e-paper goes) and supports color (not just black and white) which is why it’s expensive. For about US$100 you can get a 5.7″ 7-color EPD display with 600 x 448 pixels.
Beyond the Inky Frame 5.7″ hardware this particular hack is mostly a software job. The first program, written in python, collects weather data from the UK Met Office. Once that image data is available a BASH script is run to process the image files with imagemagick. Finally a Micro Python script runs on the Pico to download the correct file based on the setting of the real-time clock, and update the e-paper display with the weather map.
Thanks to [Simon] for sending this one in via the tipsline. If you have your own tips, please do let us know! If you’re interested in e-paper tech we have certainly covered that here in the past, check out E-Paper Anniversary Counter Is A Charming Gift With Minimal Power Draw and A Neat E-Paper Digit Clock (or Four).
The video below the break is a notice from the UK Met Office regarding their data services.
This would be perfect to display updated WEFAX images!
I’ve never gotten decent automation for it (poorly synced transmissions just delete images), even when I’ve carefully tuned it (usually for the German transmission which is strongest near me).
Be sure to check out the pimoroni site, they also sell the 7.3” version for just a little more.
BTW Pimoroni calls it: E Ink® photo frame / home dashboard / life organiser, so the intention was always to create your own application with this device, but the weathermap is a nice example.
o, and
A new generation of ePaper is coming! Inky Frames manufactured after June 2025 will use a new Spectra 6 E Ink® display panel which brings a number of improvements over the panels that we’ve used previously – notably a shorter refresh time and more saturated colours.
@simon if you read this, in your draw proc add
while graphics.is_busy(): pass
and it could sort out your sleep issue
You know he has an email address on his webpage, right? You could just email him directly.
I would love to have a Blitzortung map (lightning strikes map) on my wall !