Jordan Blanchard has developed a compact desktop electronic weather board that runs on solar panels and stores the energy generated in a battery.
The display is the size of a postcard - 12 cm by 6.5 cm and has a small stand.
The Weather Card, designed for minimal power consumption, uses the LILYGO T5 ePaper display, which is powered by the Espressif ESP32-D0WDQ6 microcontroller located on the back panel. The display shows black and white images. It is powered by energy obtained from a small 5 volt solar panel. The resulting energy is stored in a lithium-ion battery extracted from a disposable vape pen. This energy is enough for the microcontroller to activate the radio every 15 minutes, download the latest weather data via the OpenWeatherMap API, and update the ePaper display. All components are connected by brass rods.
This isn't Blanchard's first solar-powered project. Back in March of last year, he presented a functional model of a satellite in which four solar panels collected enough power to shoot timelapse footage using an Arducam ESP32-CAM board.
The full project, including source code, is available on Hackaday.io.
The Weather Card, designed for minimal power consumption, uses the LILYGO T5 ePaper display, which is powered by the Espressif ESP32-D0WDQ6 microcontroller located on the back panel. The display shows black and white images. It is powered by energy obtained from a small 5 volt solar panel. The resulting energy is stored in a lithium-ion battery extracted from a disposable vape pen. This energy is enough for the microcontroller to activate the radio every 15 minutes, download the latest weather data via the OpenWeatherMap API, and update the ePaper display. All components are connected by brass rods.
This isn't Blanchard's first solar-powered project. Back in March of last year, he presented a functional model of a satellite in which four solar panels collected enough power to shoot timelapse footage using an Arducam ESP32-CAM board.
The full project, including source code, is available on Hackaday.io.