Weathergotchi – an E-Paper Climate Logger

(github.com)

105 points | by luanmuniz 10 hours ago ago

24 comments

  • markstos 8 minutes ago ago

    I found some kind weather sensor like this in a creek in a sealed clear film canister-sized container.

    I 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.

  • world2vec 8 hours ago ago

    The YouTube video [0] is quite funny, I like when someone doesn't take themselves too seriously.

    [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I44iGj7gLGA

  • Waterluvian 9 hours ago 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?

    Also: If I take very good care of my Weathergotchi, do I get to change the weather?

  • voidUpdate 8 hours ago 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?

    • neom 7 hours ago 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.

    • xd1936 8 hours ago ago

      I think it's evoking "this little smiley face guy on a small monochrome screen", and not implying interactivity.

    • mghackerlady 8 hours ago 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

  • zenith605 7 hours ago 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?

  • inigyou 6 hours ago ago

    As opposed to the climategotchi, which just shows a dead guy on fire.

  • shadowpho 5 hours ago ago

    I see the antenna points straight at ground and buttons. Is the wifi ok?

    • Neywiny 5 hours ago ago

      Other comment says no wifi but even if it did, those antennas don't radiate in a straight line

    • nosrepa 5 hours ago ago

      It does not use wifi or Bluetooth.

  • swingboy 8 hours ago ago

    This doesn’t look as fun as a Tamagotchi.

  • latexr 8 hours ago 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).

    When 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.

    • Xirdus 6 hours ago ago

      It's marketing. Attach yourself to some wildly more popular brand for no reason other than to boost your own popularity. Like JavaScript did with Java.

      • latexr 5 hours ago ago

        Except the repo doesn’t mention “tamagotchi” even once. Even the “gotchi” in the name only appears once in the README.

        I’m talking about the submitted title to HN.