I got myself an ESP32 with an integrated e-ink display. This little project shows when the next bus to the city leaves, and the current time. I get the live bus data from Skyss through the Entur integration in Home Assistant. Might have to get a few more of these to tinker with.

  • xxdEnglish
    18•5 months ago

    Great work on this project!

    I’m envious that you have available data on your public transport! Where I live they’re still working on an API that has been advertised as “available soon” for multiple years :(

    I have a very similar project with a pi zero and waveshare e-paper display! I’m showing the weather, a countdown to events I’m looking forward to and a virtual pet that changes pose every so often. Here is an older picture of it:

    pi zero dashboard

    • @ramenshamanEnglish
      5•5 months ago

      I’m envious that you have useful public transport.

    • Clay_pidginEnglish
      3•5 months ago

      Maybe they have a GTFS-Real Time feed? It’s a fast-growing standard for worldwide transit agencies.

      • xxdEnglish
        4•5 months ago

        Wow, good tip, I didn’t know of that. Sadly, where I live this is still ‘in preparation’. But I’ll keep looking in case this happens before my cities API! Thank you!

    • @TetchyOyvindOPEnglish
      2•5 months ago

      Nice work on the interface! I especially like the cat :3

    • hendrikEnglish
      12•5 months ago

      https://esphome.io has documentation on all the components, how to draw sth on a display and a few example projects under “Cookbook”.

      • @[email protected]English
        5•5 months ago

        Thanks. I just got a couple of cheap chinese ESP32s and was going to start with some Arduino IDE programming, but I’ll have a look at esphome too

        • hendrik
          5•5 months ago

          I can recommend PlatformIO or Arduino. Or MicroPython, CircuitPython … if you’re into that or the learning curve for C proves to be too steep. ESPhome is really great for connecting to HomeAssistant or doing some standard IoT stuff and getting results without too much coding.

          The ESP32 are really versatile and a good choice to get your fingers dirty with (in my opinion).

        • hendrik
          2•5 months ago

          “something”: how to draw something on the display. Sorry, I’m a bit lazy when typing on my phone.

  • @[email protected]English
    11•5 months ago

    This is awesome. Didn’t know there were ESP32 with integrated e-ink screens.

    I still miss a cheap ESP32 device that can run on an18650 or two for a longer period.

    • 𝒍𝒆𝒎𝒂𝒏𝒏English
      1•5 months ago

      A while back I made a Lolin32-based weather station that lasts for around 60 days on a single disposable vape battery.

      It wakes up every 15 mins, and while it’s connecting to WiFi it retrieves the AM2302 sensor readings. As soon as they’re transmitted it goes back to sleep.

      I wish there was a more power efficient alternative though, like whatever is being used in those BLE LYWSD03MMC sensors that last for around 3-6 months on a cr2032 whilst also having a display built in

  • JeenaEnglish
    8•5 months ago

    I should look into ESPhome too, I think I could find some cool things to do with it, but for some reason I never did. Thanks for posting this, it looks cool. Are you getting the information from some API which also shows if the bus is late or is it a static time table?

    • @TetchyOyvindOPEnglish
      7•5 months ago

      Thanks! I get the information from the Entur integration in HA, which gets data from several of the public transport services in Norway. The information is live, and there’s even an attribute for current delay.

  • @[email protected]English
    2•5 months ago

    I had a small school project with the intention to scientifically show that busses in Oslo were late. A script was written to pull data from entur, and analyze/graph the numbers. We ended up having a 1tb long json file containing the data so it was quite a nightmare to analyze everything 😅.

    One funny thing with entur, is that you can see the GPS locations of all scooters, busses, ferries etc so you can make a realtime map of them moving.

  • @EideenEnglish
    2•5 months ago

    Think you need to prefix it with Skyss :P