4.2" E-Paper Weather Station V2 w/ ESP32 - Case by Wi_Zeus

Last crawled date: 3 years, 4 months ago

This is the UPDATED VERSION (Jan. 2021) of the popular ESP32 Weather Station Case!
Changes: improved case design:
hole for micro USB for charging and indicator LED
improved design of the back cover
This is a case designed for 4.2" E-Paper or E-Ink Displays. It can be used as a Weather Station for example.
It operates from rechargeable batteries and is thus completely wireless. A WiFi-Connection is needed for the Weather Station program. In my experience the two 500mAh batteries (combined 1Ah 3.3V) last for three months provided that they don't get drained when there's no WiFi or Internet and the ESP32 is constantly attempting to get data.
in order to protect your cells from over-discharge I'd advise to use a dedicated LiFePO4 battery protection board.
The ESP32 is directly connected to the battery voltage, with no regulator in-between. This avoids any losses in the regulator but also means that the absolute maximum voltage on the ESP supply pins can get reached while charging the battery. Be careful about that. I like to turn off the Weather Station via the small switch, which disconnects the ESP.
For programming I recommend a CP2102 based module. It can be plugged into the 2.54mm header on the back and makes updating the software easy.
Electronics:
4.2" E-Paper Display made by Waveshare
ESP32 (Preferably on a minimalistic breakout board for the lowest possible power consumption and due to space constraints) I like to use this board: https://www.aliexpress.com/item/2017-High-Quality-ESP-32F-Bluetooth-and-WIFI-Dual-Core-CPU-IoT-Wifi-Wlan-BLE-Module/32834183871.html Please note that all my previous boards had the same issue: Pin 21 (SDA was not connected on the PCB), this particular pin isn't used in this project.
1x or 2x 14500 LiFePo4 batteries (mine have about 500mAh each)
LiFePO4 BMS / Protection: https://www.ebay.com/itm/1S-12A-3-2V-PCB-BMS-Protection-Board-F-26650-18650-LiFe-LiFePO4-Battery-Cell-PCM/322654560816
LiFePO4 Charger Board (TP5000 based) https://www.aliexpress.com/item/4000045854515.html
Micro USB port
Wires, connectors etc.
Decoupling capacitors (1uF, low ESR and leakage ceramic; needed when WiFi is active)
CP2102 USB to UART https://www.aliexpress.com/item/32666564996.html
Software:
G6EJD's awesome weather station code is used by me: https://github.com/G6EJD/ESP32-e-Paper-Weather-Display
Here's the code that I'm running on my Weather Station V1: https://github.com/wilhelmzeuschner/misc/tree/master/old_E-Paper_Weather_Station_Code
On this project and the uploaded images I'm using the current software from G6EJD (as of late 2020).
If you build this project and want to give me something back in return, I'd be extremely happy to see a post under "Makes"! :)
Older design: https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:2954579
I plan to write a full build-guide at some point when I have the spare time.