Creator and astronomer Jordan Blanchard has designed a compact solar-powered desktop ePaper climate dashboard, which shops its captured power in a battery salvaged from a disposable vape.
“[It’s] a photo voltaic climate show that’s near the scale of a card,” Blanchard defined of the venture. “The measurement is 12cm by 6.5cm [around 4.72Ã2.6″] and it has little standing to stay.”
This compact, eco-friendly venture powers an ePaper climate dashboard with an upcycled battery and photo voltaic panel. (📷: Jordan Blanchard)
Designed for low energy draw, the “Weather Card” makes use of a LILYGO T5 ePaper show, powered by an ESP32-D0WDQ6 microcontroller on its again. The face is a 2.13″ electrophoretic show panel, able to solely black-and-white imaging however with out energy until it’s within the technique of updating – and provides a sunlight-readable paper- just like the viewing expertise.
That’s notably helpful in Blanchard’s construct, because the show is powered by harvested power from a small 5V photo voltaic panel on the prime of the construct. It is saved in a lithium-ion battery salvaged from a disposable vape pen — holding sufficient energy for the microcontroller to get up the radio each quarter-hour, obtain the newest climate knowledge by way of OpenWeatherMap API, and replace the ePaper show. To end the venture, all of the elements are linked utilizing brass rods — making it an open-frame circuit sculpture.
The body works as a part of the circuit, with a flip-up stand to assist the show keep upright on a desk. (📷: Jordan Blanchard)
This is not Blanchard’s first experiment with solar-powered sculpture tasks. In March final 12 months he unveiled a practical mannequin of a satellite tv for pcwhich used 4 photo voltaic panels to assemble sufficient power to seize time-lapse footage utilizing the Arducam ESP32-CAM board.
The full documentation of the venture, together with the supply code, is out there on Hackaday.io.
