I made this thing [1] for us, it uses a cheap 10" e-paper display off aliexpress, an ESP32 and a couple of I2C sensors. The case is 3D-printed. It runs on two 18650 batteries, and all in all it cost less than 100$. The OpenWeather API is free for personal use.
Thanks! I intentionaly made the weather symbols somewhat "childlike" to give it some personality and also make it obvious that it's a custom device, and not some off the shelf gadget. Works well as a conversation starter!
The sun is greeting you! I drew these freehand, kind of quickly. And while I personally like the style and think it's a good fit for us, I did intend to make several sets of weather icons. At the very least I need to make the sun symbols adapt to the seasons - we don't really have a full sun during the darkest months of the year where I live.
I incorporated OpenMeteo into a project recently and got frustrated with their aggressive rate limiting. If in the US, weather dot gov has an excellent, free API. Or, OpenWeatherAPI which works internationally and has support for more things that weather dot gov does not. OpenWeatherAPI will also synthetically provide weather data based on their models if there is missing station data
> I incorporated OpenMeteo into a project recently and got frustrated with their aggressive rate limiting
Which one? They seem to do 600 calls / min, 5.000 calls / hour, 10.000 calls / day, 300.000 calls / month, how many times do you need to look up the weather for personal use? Fine, maybe you want 3 different locations, you can still call each of those sufficiently with those rate limits, no?
a redis geospatial index + redis distribution locks you can build a performant cache layer that is consumed by a ton of people and stay well under that rate limit.... the weather data only updates every 5 minutes too, so you can use that for your cache ttl.
Right, but less "I want to know what the weather is locally and maybe in my summer house" and more "I'm curious about sampling global weather/temperatures", right? I don't think the intention of the API is for the latter, but more for the former.
Yes, I think so. Electronics prototyping is so accessible now, and there's such a deluge of inspirational projects out there to learn from. YouTube is a gold mine, and I'll leave links to a few channels I follow, below.
If you get an Arduino or Esp32 microcontroller (maybe in one of those starter-kits with various sensors), some breadboards, assorted jumper-cables and a kit with electronic components (resistors, caps) you'll be good to go. A device like a wall clock most likely won't require soldering, since it won't be jostled or moved around much.
If you already have Home Assistant running, I think it should be simple. Most of the time you can buy devices with pins already soldered and it's just the matter of connecting them together. AIs are pretty good with ESPHome configs. You can even take a picture so that they can help you identify the correct pins. Some coding may be required for drawing things on the display though.
+1, and have you tried running 2 displays side by side ? That should give you an effective diagonal of 14 inches or so, and for those displays, cutting it in two does not really affect the utility of the display (likely tabular content anyway).
Seems like the author has experimented with 2 kindles side by side.
I source most of my components from aliexpress. It's been a while, but these are the components I used:
Microcontroller: FireBeetle 2 ESP32
Display: Generic 10" e-Paper display with driver board included
Timekeeping: DS3231 Real Time Clock Module
Temperature and humidity: BME280 module
Charging: Type-C USB 2S Li-ion BMS
That, along with a breadboard, two 18650 batteries, some resistors and capacitors make up the hardware. I modelled and 3D printed the case. I used the PlatformIO plugin (available for VSCode-based IDEs) for programming and transferring code to the esp32.
I used to play GTA on my 133 mhz Pentium, running windows 95. I distinctly remember the game running smooth and at a reasonably high resolution! My memory must have betrayed me because playing this now is hard to stomach. I just can't get over the jaggy motion of the hardlocked framerate (especially while driving at high speeds).
I played GTA III at like 14-16 fps. After a while you brain get used to it and feels a like a smooth experience. Maybe we have frame generation integrated in our brains? or just happens when we are kids? idk.
Agreed. I have a bunch of little command-line apps that I use 0.3 to 3 times a year* and I'm never going to memorize the commands or syntax for those. I'll be happy to remember the names of these tools, so I can actually find them on my own computer.
* - Just a few days ago I used ImageMagick for the first time in at least three years. I downloaded it just to find that I already had it installed.
I get what you're saying - I personally scratch that itch by doing woodworking and hobby electronics; I just love doing it and the end product is often just a means to an end; to craft something and enjoying the process of it.
But programming doesn't give me that same feeling, and honestly; the scope of doing and learning everything needed to make my projects without LLM's are just way out of reach. Learning these things would not be relevant to my career or my other hobbies. So, for me I use LLM's the way a person who's not into carpentry might buy the services of a carpenter, despite the possibility of them doing the project themselves after investing tons of time into learning how.
This resonates with me. I'm not a programmer, and before LLM's I could only make basic hello world apps and simple websites. Now I am developing my own versions of various apps that I've used but maybe have limitations that I've become frustrated with. For example, I didn't like how the fitness tracker Strava didn't allow me to customize audio announcements, so now I have my own (and in my own eyes) better version of Strava that I use instead. It's absolutely blowing my mind that this is possible and available today, and not some tech-optimists wet dream about an impossible future.
Audiologist and hearing aid user here. It's a great time to be looking for new hearing aids! Speech in noise capabilities have improved massively this generation, and I can personally attest to this. For me, the most important performance metric is speech perception in noisy / challenging listening situations. For you there might be other considerations, so keep that in mind.
With that said, my recommendation are the new Phonak Infinio Sphere devices with with their "Spheric speech in noise" feature. It's a complete game changer in terms of speech perception in loud noise. Activating this program in a noisy situation feels like turning off the background noise, leaving only (nearby) voices.
The caveat is that to achieve this they use a separate, power-hungry processor and compensate by increasing the battery size (making the whole hearing aid bigger than other, similar hearing aids). The upside to this is that if you're _not_ using the spherical program, you'll have really good battery life. I use mine for exactly 16 hours a day and if I'm careful I can make them last almost three full days. The charger is much better than the previous ones; they use magnets to keep the devices in place instead of relying on plastic friction.
The Oticon Intent and new Starkey AI aids are also great. You should always try more than one model before you make a decision.
I'm one of those excited people! We haven't lost anything with this new technology, only gained.
The way I see it, most people aren't creative. And the people who are creatives are mostly creating for the love of it. Most books that are published are read exclusively by the friends and family of the author. Most musicians, most stand-up comedians, most artist get to show off their works for small groups of people and make no money doing so. But they do it anyway. I draw terrible portraits, make little inventions and sometimes I build something for the home, knowing full well that I do these things for my own enjoyment and whatever ego boost I get from showing these things off to people I know.
I'm doing a marathon later and I've been working my ass off for the prospect of crossing the finishing line as number four thousand and something, and I'll do it again next year.
In cold climates the humidity can drop to uncomfortable levels during the winter (sub 30% where I live). Especially when combined with wood fired stoves.
This brings me back to my N64 Perfect Dark fansite webmaster-days. I wonder if there's a similar article detailing another cultural internet phenomenon; the tech-forum signatures.
For example; I remember the heyday of the MadOnion forums (the makers of 3D Mark, before they changed their name to Futuremark) and their users having these massive information-dense signature banners showcasing their PC-specs, 3D-mark scores, OC-info, etc.) with and without animations. Even at the time I remember thinking some of them were over the top and distracting, but people really put their hearts into making those things and it took some skill to make a really good one.
About two years ago I wanted to replay a game demo I remembered from an old (early 00') computer magazine demo disc. The actual game was nowhere to be found anywhere on the internet, but I did locate the developer and sent him an email.
Turns out the game was never actually released - its only public existence was as a demo game alongside a bunch of other games and software. He still had the installer for the game, which was small enough to fit as an attachment in the reply he gave.
He didn't say, but I got the distinct feeling that I might have made his day asking about that game he made more than 20 years ago.
[1] https://mjones-foui.no/img/wall_clock_1.png
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