Weathergotchi – an E-Paper Climate Logger
105 points by luanmuniz 11 hours ago | 24 comments
markstos 36 minutes ago
I found some kind weather sensor like this in a creek in a sealed clear film canister-sized container.
replyI took it home and looked up the part number. Looks like it was probably part of a network of sensors monitoring the forest health, but some ziptie broke on this one and ended up starting to get washed away. It ran on a big watch battery. I didn't try to get the data off it.. don't recall how data access worked for it.
Waterluvian 10 hours ago
I’ve been wanting to do some projects like this from the software side. I want an e-ink display + ESP32 inside a case. But I don’t want to do that myself for the nth time as it doesn’t feel novel or interesting. Is there any decent hardware option that begins fully open?
replyAlso: If I take very good care of my Weathergotchi, do I get to change the weather?
lode 9 hours ago
M5Stack has black & white (https://shop.m5stack.com/products/m5stack-esp32-core-ink-dev...) and color (https://shop.m5stack.com/products/m5paper-color-esp32s3-dev-...) development kits that look like exactly what you're looking for.
replywhacked_new 7 hours ago
Here's one that I just ordered myself: https://www.waveshare.com/esp32-s3-epaper-1.54.htm
replytemperature, humidity, audio in AND out!!!
mghackerlady 8 hours ago
Adafruit has a pretty cool esp32 based board with a circular touchscreen and dial
replyvoidUpdate 9 hours ago
I get the weather- part, but I don't get the -gotchi part... Do you have to keep the device alive by... seeing new types of weather?
replyneom 8 hours ago
Uotchi is the Japanese word for watch. Tamago (egg) and Uotchi (watch) - so here they're implying "Weather Watch", it should probably be Weatherotchi or something, but still works fine imo. Korea and Japan love smashing words together to make new words, for example in Korea "Chimaek" is Chikin (치킨 - fried chicken) + Maekju (맥주 - beer), something Koreans often ask if you'd like to go out for.
replyxd1936 9 hours ago
I think it's evoking "this little smiley face guy on a small monochrome screen", and not implying interactivity.
replymghackerlady 9 hours ago
It's dumb anyway. Iirc the -gotchi part comes from the Japanese transliteration of the english word "watch". Unless your program's a pocket watch of some kind as well as a virtual pet, it's just a tama
replyzenith605 8 hours ago
This is charming. E-paper is such a good fit for ambient data like this — always visible, no glow, basically no power. How often do you refresh the display, and does partial refresh ghosting become a problem over time?
replylatexr 9 hours ago
Calling this a tamagotchi is silly. The only thing this and tamagotchis have in common is that they’re small electronic devices with a screen (and even that tech is different).
replyWhen you compare a project to something that it isn’t, you’re doing it a disservice. The people who are intrigued by the tamagotchi angle are disappointed, while the people who are uninterested in it (but might still like the project) won’t even give it a change. Everybody loses.
[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I44iGj7gLGA
But yes, open source would be better. If physical portability is not a requirement, Xiaomi hygrometer 2 with this custom firmware https://github.com/atc1441/atc_MiThermometer is quite excellent
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