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.
Thats so cool. I wish I could ride a bus
Are there no buses where you live?
Not really. If I travel towards the city yes, but thats a 30 minute drive so why bother
I take Public transit even if it’s longer because driving is stressful for me 😔
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:
I’m envious that you have useful public transport.
Maybe they have a GTFS-Real Time feed? It’s a fast-growing standard for worldwide transit agencies.
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!
Nice work on the interface! I especially like the cat :3
Did you follow a guide?
https://esphome.io has documentation on all the components, how to draw sth on a display and a few example projects under “Cookbook”.
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
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).
sth?
“something”: how to draw something on the display. Sorry, I’m a bit lazy when typing on my phone.
In the beginning I struggled with getting the display to work, until I found this forum post https://community.home-assistant.io/t/using-ttgo-epaper-display-with-esphome/168877/27 Aside from that, I mostly used the ESPHome website that hendrik in the other comment mentioned. It took a lot of trial and error, since I didn’t know any YAML beforehand.
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.
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
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?
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.
Wouldn’t happen to have a link to that board n screen combo you used would you?
This is the one I bought. I went with the “Chip” version, that has an integrated serial-chip https://www.aliexpress.com/item/32869729970.html
Awesome, thanks heaps, going to grab myself one and have a Tinker. You got me inspired
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.
Think you need to prefix it with Skyss :P
Ahhhh suburbia makes it very tough to have bus service
That’s really cool, I’m going to have to get one to play with.
