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Weather Station with ePaper and Raspberry Pi

In this article, I explain how I created a tabletop weather station with ePaper display, a Raspberry Pi, and an enclosure.

In this article, I explain how to build a weather station with an ePaper display (like the kind you find on a Kindle, except this one is tri-color - white, black and red) and a Raspberry Pi and put it in an enclosure so that you have a finished project that you can display on your coffee table or night stand and see the weather information for your location (or locations) of choice!

For the weather data, I use Open Weather Map, a cloud service that offers a Weather API and that has a free tier plan available. It even has a Python wrapper library available to easily invoke the APIs and get the weather data in an object oriented manner, without worrying about underlying protocols and processing JSON results.

For the ePaper display, I use an ePaper HAT for the Raspberry Pi by Waveshare, who also provide a python library for interfacing with it.

Lastly comes the enclosure. Some of you may be aware that I’ve created a new stackable, modular enclosure system called ProtoStax. It was a personal itch that I had to scratch - I wanted an enclosure that supported different stages of prototyping, offering protection and open access when starting out, with the ability to add side walls and the top later, but also have the ability to stack multiple units either side-by-side or one on top of the other, thereby having the ability to expand with prototyping needs and the addition of other boards and components.

In this example I use ProtoStax for Raspberry Pi B+, a clear acrylic enclosure for the Raspberry Pi B+ that is also stackable and modular and has room comfortably for the ePaper Display HAT. It is clear and sturdy and also has rubber feet to slightly elevate it and protect the surface of your table or nightstand, so you can display your weather station and have it easily accessible by your nightstand or coffee table to get the weather information to plan your day! 😊

You can, of course, use any Raspberry Pi, compatible ePaper display or enclosure and just use the code in this project.

Ok, let’s get started!”

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