Ship #1 Pending review

@viivi on spot-electricity-display · 27 days ago

spot-electricity-display

It’s a small ESP-8266 project for displaying the current spot electricity price. I used Arduino IDE for coding the code to fetch and update the data displayed on the screen. I also 3D modelled a case for it with Tinkercad but I haven’t tried to actually print or build it because I don’t have a 3D printer or materials for it. The first photo is an edited demonstration photo how it could look like (perspectives failed). The second photo shows what I actually have.

I made this because it could make life easier. Instead of opening an app it would be much easier to check this to see the price.

It wasn’t easy to make this because I felt like everything was against me. Libraries weren’t the easiest to use, the screen tweaked all the time and there isn’t many guides for this specific board because it’s quite rare.

4 devlogs
5h build

Video of Project → See source code →

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@viivi on spot-electricity-display · 27 days ago

25m 1s logged

#4 devlog

I guessed it rght, on the next day it worked again. One possible reason it didn’t work then was that the text wasn’t set to white, though it should be white as default. I finished readme and filmed a short demo video.

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@viivi on spot-electricity-display · about 2 months ago

1h 27m 5s logged

#3 devlog

Today I…

tried to add timing for API requests, and I think it works but now my oled screen won’t display anything. There’s 50/50 chance it works tomorrow with exact same code :(.
Finished 3D modelling by making a back plate for the case.
Wrote something to the README

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@viivi on spot-electricity-display · 3 months ago

2h 4m 45s logged

#2 devlog

Coding

Lot of time, no progress.
I spent quite a long time trying to make buttons on my board work with my code. I couldn’t make them work :) . Instead of buttons I might make text change with specific a frequence.

3D-modelling

I started making box case for simple electronics (the board and battery case). I used Tinkercad for modelling. I had used Tinkercad before but it’s been long time since I used it last time. I really liked that Tinkercad has ready models of electronics even though it didn’t have the ones I’m using. That’s why I had to use components as close as possible to my actual components.

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@viivi on spot-electricity-display · 4 months ago

58m 40s logged

#1 devlog, days 1-2

This project has now officially started. Git and github are set up and the core feature works! Currently the arduino (it’s actually Wemos, not arduino) is able to show current price.

I use free API to get spot electricity price (it’s price in Finland).

https://api.spot-hinta.fi/JustNow

The board I use is Lolin D1 mini Pro V2.0.0

My plan for this project:

make the screen display current spot electricity price
design and maybe build box/casing for electronics
add leds to indicate how cheap or expensive electricity is now
add buttons for scrolling future prices