ESP32 Matrix Clock and Weather Display

Leonardo Mirabella's device uses an ESP32 and eight LED matrices to show time and environmental conditions in old-school style.

Jeremy Cook
9 months agoDisplays

When you want to know the time and temperature at a glance – along with easy access to the date, humidity, and atmospheric pressure – the ESP32-WeatherStationRTC from Leonardo Mirabella looks like an excellent option. It features eight MAX7219 8x8 LED matrix modules arranged in a 4x2 pattern for an old-school-style display. As each individual matrix is 8x8, the final resolution is 32x16 pixels, giving it plenty of room to show two lines of information in its fun pixelated format.

Upon initial startup – or after losing power to its DS3231 RTC module that tracks the time – the ESP32-WeatherStationRTC displays “POWER LOST.” The user must then press a button to allow it to connect to Wi-Fi and set the time using NTP. A BME280 sensor obtains the atmospheric temperature, humidity, and pressure, and a BH1750 light sensor module is used to adjust the light output level of the LED matrices. It also has a buzzer that beeps every hour like a chime.

With this information obtained, the device shows the time and temperature in celsius, and can switch to displaying the date or humidity and pressure with the push (or two) of its button. The unit's settings can be modified via a web server that it generates.

The ESP32-WeatherStationRTC is programmed using the Arduino framework via PlatformIO / Visual Studio code. Although other Arduino-compatible boards could be used for this project with the appropriate pin changes, they would need to include wireless capabilities for initial setup.

Code and more info are available on Mirabella's GitHub page!

Jeremy Cook
Engineer, maker of random contraptions, love learning about tech. Write for various publications, including Hackster!
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