Cambridge-based ElektroThing is getting ready to launch an open supply, Espressif ESP32-powered sensible desk clock that may push time, climate, and sensor readings to your eyeballs over an LED matrix show: the RetroThing.
“RetroThing reimagines the basic LED matrix show for the IoT [Internet of Things] period,” claims ElektroThing’s YJ of the undertaking. “Its 4 5×7 LED matrices supply a beneficiant show space, good for exhibiting time, climate data, and environmental knowledge. The ESP32-S2 at its core gives sturdy processing energy and Wi-Fi connectivity, enabling a variety of sensible options.”
ElektroThing is trying to put time, climate, and extra in your desk with the vintage-style RetroThing sensible clock. (📷: ElektroThing)
At its coronary heart, the RetroThing is a desk clock — pulling time knowledge from a Community Time Protocol (NTP) server over the Espressif ESP32-S2’s Wi-Fi radio and displaying it on the chunky 5×7 LED matrix dominating the entrance of the board. That is solely a part of the story: along with realizing what time it’s, the RetroThing makes use of a geolocation database to know the place it’s — correcting for native time robotically, and localizing for climate data pulled down over the OpenWeather utility programming interface (API).
Time-keeping and climate monitoring options are rounded out by sensor show performance: the board is designed to host an AHT20 environmental sensor, which feeds temperature and humidity readings to the show. An adaptive lighting system adjusts brightness in response to ambient circumstances, whereas a 3D-printed enclosure — the design of which, on the time of writing, had but to be finalized — diffuses the sunshine for a extra even glow.
YJ has detailed the undertaking on Hackaday.io, with the promise that the RetroThing can be totally open supply; on the time of writing, although, it was not current in any ElektroThing GitHub repository.