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?
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.
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.
Ouch, shade on the SensorPush. I had 2 and I got 2 more. It requires an app, but they're quite well made imho.
But yes, open source would be better. If physical portability is not a requirement, Xiaomi hygrometer 2 with this custom firmware https://github.com/atc1441/atc_MiThermometer is quite excellent
He does it all: the YouTube face, the math floating around, non-working greenscreen, some memes and then he goes camping (including a Blair Witch style run through the snow). This is so brilliant.
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?
While I'm not sure about the exact e-paper panel model used in this project, in my experience with these small e-paper screens, a full refresh is pretty much mandatory every 10 or so partial refreshes—which is significantly worse than Kindle-level performance. Just about every screen I've worked with suffers from some level of ghosting, and it definitely gets noticeably worse in higher temperatures during the summer. Plus, these cheaper e-paper displays tend to degrade quite fast—after a couple of years, the aging becomes painfully obvious.
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.
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[ 3.7 ms ] story [ 48.6 ms ] threadAlso: If I take very good care of my Weathergotchi, do I get to change the weather?
temperature, humidity, audio in AND out!!!
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.
[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I44iGj7gLGA
But yes, open source would be better. If physical portability is not a requirement, Xiaomi hygrometer 2 with this custom firmware https://github.com/atc1441/atc_MiThermometer is quite excellent
Mark Your Territory - Check Into Foursquare by Peeing
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rRdfeb7vDWg
https://github.com/quitmeyer/Mark-Your-Territory---Pee-to-Ch...
https://www.instructables.com/Pee-to-Check-In-to-Foursquare-...
https://popupcity.net/insights/pee-to-check-in-to-foursquare...
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.