E-Paper Weather Monitor

As e-paper continues to display its image even after its power supply is removed, it seems like a good choice for a project which spends most of its time powered down, asleep.

This weather monitor obtains its data from a publicly-accessible website: https://openweathermap.org, which is free to use (with some limitations). They only update the data for a given location every 10 minutes so there's little point in calling the server more frequently.

As internet access is obviously a prerequisite for the project, either an ESP8266 or an ESP32 WiFi module is the logical choice. After a few failed attempts to get my e-paper display to work with an ESP8266 module [a LOLIN (Wemos) D1 mini pro], I opted to use a LOLIN D32.

(Apparently, Wemos changed their name to LOLIN in an attempt to combat all the clones that are appearing on the market, so there is some interchangeability and confusion with the name).

There are a few variations of the LOLIN/Wemos D32 module - some with a JST PH-2 battery connector and a 500mA 3.7v lithium charger/controller on-board. All of them will work with this project but I used the Wemos LOLIN D32 v1.0.0 module, mainly because it had a charge-controller and even an on-board voltage divider for measuring the battery voltage.

Connection Diagram

LOLIN D32 v1.0.0 Schematic)

When the Wemos LOLIN D32 is in hibernation mode, the current taken from an 18650 Lithium battery is around 65 µA. Initially, I used a 2N7000 MOSFET to switch off the power to the display while the circuit was sleeping but I could measure no discernible reduction in the current so I decided to leave the display permanently powered on. The GxEPD Arduino library which drives the display contains wakeUp() and powerDown() functions anyway, which it calls when updating the display.
4.2inch-e-paper-specification.pdf,

The Arduino sketch arranges for the LOLIN D32 to wake briefly every 15 minutes to connect to the OpenWeather server and the current rises to around 95 to 100mA for approximately 6 seconds while the data is retrieved and the display updated. When the battery voltage drops below 3.5 volts, the sleep interval increases to every 30 minutes to conserve battery power.

At 3.3 volts and lower, to prevent damage to the battery, the interval increases to one year with a message to "CHARGE BATTERY" on the display - for all practical purposes, the LOLIN D32 no longer wakes up until the battery is charged and the LOLIN D32 is RESET.

Measuring the Battery Voltage

Other variants of the LOLIN D32 bring GPIO Pin 35 out to a header without the on-board 100k resistors so two 47k to 100k resistors would need to be connected externally.

A Second Weather Server

It is experimental and the second server must send its data in exactly the same format as the OpenWeather server. As I was able to simulate a second server at home, I found it useful while developing the sketch to avoid annoying the OpenWeather server with too many calls.

It does, however, come at a cost: As mentioned above, the sleeping current of the entire circuit is around 65 µA but that rises to 190 µA with the jumper closed. However, the sketch will automatically default to the OpenWeather server if the jumper isn't present so, for most people, it can just be ignored.

Printed Circuit Board

As I'm using a metal enclosure with plastic ends, the Wemos LOLIN D32 module is positioned to keep its antenna as close to the "outside world" as possible. Power to the module to charge the battery is through a separate micro USB socket. The USB socket on the module will only be used if/when the sketch needs re-programming.

The PCB layout is only for the particular header pinout arrangement of the Wemos LOLIN D32 v1.0.0 module.

Making the Bitmaps Char [] Array File

To design the icons, I used a very old version of Paintshop Pro but any paint program should do - Windows' Paint works fine. The icons' height and width can vary but keep them around 75 x 75 pixels. Crop the image tightly to avoid leaving any unnecessary "white space" around the image as it just wastes memory in the ESP32 module. Save them as Monochrome (or 1-Bit) bitmaps.

Each bitmap image now needs to be converted into a "char [] {}" array that the Graphics Library uses to draw the bitmap on the e-paper display.

There are a few online tools to do the conversion but I prefer to use an application downloaded to my desktop. The one provided by Waveshare (who actually supply the e-paper display) works well. Download the zip file from https://www.waveshare.com/wiki/File:Image2Lcd.7z, extract the contents of the zip into a suitable folder and run Img2Lcd.exe. Click the Open button and open your weather icon bitmap.

The settings and checkboxes shown below work fine for me. Some people need to check the Reverse color checkbox or select Mirror Left-Right from the drop-down list. There may be a bit of trial and error so use whatever produces a correct image on the e-paper display.

When you click the Save button, you will be asked for a filename. I used the same names as the weather icon's IDs used by OpenWeather. For example: 02d for the "Day Icon with few clouds" icon. Save the file with the .c extension. The default action of Img2Lcd is to automatically open Windows Notepad to show the file. If Notepad doesn't open, click the Set button on the Img2Lcd toolbar.

I recommend that you copy the entire "char [] {}" array from Notepad, paste it into your favourite text editor and save it as a file called bitmaps.h. You can discard the Notepad version.

An example is shown below. Note that Img2Lcd added "gImage_" to form the Array name. Note also the addition of PROGMEM. I added that myself to load the array into PROGMEM although there's plenty of memory available in the LOLIN D32 module so it isn't strictly necessary. Note also that I added the comment /* 75 x 62 */ directly above the Array. That's the width and height of the image as noted in Img2Lcd. We need the size when we draw the image on the e-paper display so it's worth noting down the size for future reference.

For reference, the following line of code in the Arduino sketch displays the icon we've just made (x and y are the icon's position on the display and 75, 62 are the icon's width and height we noted previously. GxEPD_BLACK is the graphics library's code for black "ink").

display.drawBitmap(gImage_02d, x, y, 75, 62, GxEPD_BLACK);      // Few clouds - day.

In addition to the 11 weather icons, there are 16 wind direction symbols (n, nne, ene, etc) and icons for the times of sunrise & sunset and the time the OpenWeather server last updated its data. They're all made in exactly the same way as described above with their char arrays tacked onto the end of the bitmaps.h file. The sketch below expects to find the file in its own folder inside the sketch's folder: {sketch_folder}/bitmaps/bitmaps.h

Creating New Fonts

Although a good selection of fonts is available to us through the Adafruit_GFX library (which the e-paper library uses), a couple of 7-segment fonts add to the appearance of the display. I'll explain where to get some suitable TrueType fonts and how to convert them into compatible Adafruit_GFX 8-bit integer arrays so the graphics library can use them.

Creating TrueType fonts from scratch is beyond the scope of this article (and me!) but I was surprised to find that a lot of free downloadable TrueType fonts are available on the internet. A Google search for free truetype fonts lists dozens of sites. I'd advise taking the usual care when downloading files from the internet: Don't download or run .exe or what claim to be self-extracting exe files.

The 7-segment fonts I've used came from https://github.com/keshikan/DSEG/. Download the zip file and extract its contents to a suitable folder.

There are dozens of fonts to choose from and it may need some trial and error. I used DSEG7Classic_Bold20pt7b and DSEG7Classic_Bold8pt7b. 20pt and 8pt refer to the height of a character. Traditionally 1pt is 1/72 of an inch but, as display resolutions vary so much, well, that's where the trial and error comes in.

Converting a TrueType Font to an Adafruit Graphics Char Array

Click the Choose file button and select one of your downloaded TrueType fonts. Then click the Upload button. When the font file has uploaded, you can change the Font Size and type different Demo text. Click the Get GFX font file button when you're happy with the size - or choose a different font to upload.

You can add the GFX file to the Adafruit_GFX/Fonts/ folder or save it in its own folder inside the Arduino sketch folder: {sketch_folder}/myFonts/{font-name.h} - which is where the sketch below expects to find it.

Of course, truetype2gfx is also useful if you prefer to use an existing Freefont but want to change its size. I find that increasing the font size with the Adafruit GFX function setFontSize() often makes the font look "jagged".

On the truetype2gfx/ page there's a useful discussion about font height versus screen size and it's well worth reading.

Setting up the Arduino IDE

In the Arduino IDE, select File -> Preferences.

In the Additional Boards Manager URLs text box, enter: https://dl.espressif.com/dl/package_esp32_index.json then click the OK button.

If there's already an entry in the text box, separate them with a comma (,).

From the main Arduino IDE window, select Tools -> Board -> Board Manager...

Wait for the platforms index to download then scroll down the list to esp32 ( or type esp32 into the search box) and click Install.

Additional Libraries for the E-Paper Weather Monitor Sketch

Download the zip files to a suitable folder and then use Sketch -> Include Library -> Add .Zip Library (Or install the libraries using your preferred method.)

The OpenWeather API Key

You need to create an account at OpenWeather to be assigned an Api Key. Sign up here: home.openweathermap.org/users/sign_up

Copy the sketch into the Arduino IDE and edit the openWeatherMapApiKey value which you'll find at line 55 in the sketch.. While you're there, change the following lines:

Download the sketch, bitmaps and fonts package.

The Arduino Sketch