LEDSmartClock

Summary

LEDSmartClock is a ESP32 powered GPS/Wifi enabled wall clock with a 8x32 WS2812B LED matrix display. It has many features, including multiple ways to obtain and keep accurate date & time, timezone, location, local weather conditions, local weather alerts, and outdoor air quality. It has a web interface to display additional information, and many configuration options. It utilizes free subscriptions from openweathermap.org and ipgeolocation.io to obtain location and forecast information over the Internet.

Features

• Auto time/date synchronization with GPS and NTP.
• Large Font 12/24 Hour LED Clock
• Clock color can be automatic based on time of day (yellow morning to blue night) or custom fixed color.
• Automatic timezone based on IP Geolocation or custom fixed timezone.
• Automatic location based on GPS coordinates and IP Geolocation.
• Automatic LED brightness based on room brightness with adjustable high/med/low settings.
• Current & daily weather forecast based on automatic location: Conditions, Temp, Hi/Lo, Humidity, Wind, Air Quality
• Weather Temperature color can be automatic (purple freezing to red hot) or custom fixed color.
• Weather forecast display includes animated icons based on conditions.
• Weather watch and warning alert display
• All display intervals and colors can be customized.
• Adjustable text scroll speed.
• AP mode for initial setup.
• Reset button to reset lost password and force clock in AP mode.
• Full web interface to change settings, view additional info, and OTA wifi firmware updates.

Download

If this is a first time installation, you must flash your ESP32 over USB. Please follow the instructions in the Installation section below.

Latest version can be downloaded in the Releases section. Firmware in the releases section can only be applied directly via the web interface after initial installation.

Components

1. ESP32-S3 30 Pin Version! (NOT the 38 Pin Version) | Link: https://tinyurl.com/4nxevwau
2. 8x32 (256 Pixel) WS2812B LED Matrix | Link: https://tinyurl.com/4wyw3hsw
3. DS3231 RTC Module | Link: https://tinyurl.com/3mbe5wsn
4. TSL2561 Light Luminosiy Sensor | Link: https://tinyurl.com/3jmt8h34
5. NEO-6M GPS Module | Link: https://tinyurl.com/4wyw3hsw
6. 5v (2amp minimum) Power Supply | Link: https://tinyurl.com/2xem9tnv

Circuit Board & Schematics

A schematic and circuit board will be created with KiCad and shared here so you can order your own board from PCBWay to connect all the components.

Enclosure

3D Printing STL files will also be created and shared here for enclosures.

Installation

Because your ESP32 does not have the web interface on it yet to do over the air updates, you must flash your ESP32 over USB. You can clone the main branch and use platformio to flash your ESP32, you can use Avrdude to flash the release firmware binary over USB, or you can download the Espressif Flash tool and flash the release firmware binary over USB without platformio, or even the arduino-ide. The Espressif flash tool is by far the easiest way:

1. Download the Espressif Flash tool here: https://www.espressif.com/en/support/download/other-tools
2. Download the latest LEDSmartClock release in the Releases section
3. Unzip and Run the Espressif Flash tool.
4. Select Chip Type: ESP32-S3, WorkMode: Develop, LoadMode: USB. Click OK
5. Under SPI Speed Select 80Mhz, SPI Mode: QIO
6. At the top, click the first checkbox, and the click the file explorer button and select the release bin you downloaded.
7. Enter 0x10000 as the start address (to the right of the @)
8. Select the COM port of your connected ESP32 and click the green Start button

Configuration

Required Configuration

• All settings are changed through the web interface over the network or directly, when the clock is in AP mode.
• Initial configuration is done by connecting to the clock's wifi hotspot with the name LEDSMARTCLOCK using the wifi password ledsmartclock.
• After connecting to the clock's LEDSMARTCLOCK wifi hotspot, you will be taken to the clock's web interface configuration page automatically.
• Required settings you must change are:
• AP Password - This password will be the admin password for the web interface, and the new Wifi hotspot password when the clock is in AP mode
• Wifi SSID - This is the name of your wireless network (SSID) that the clock will use to get Internet access.
• Wifi Password - This password of your wireless network that the clock will use to get Internet access.
• Click Apply at the bottom of the configuration page and disconnect from the clock's wifi hotspot to continue.
• The clock will now disable its wifi hotspot, and connect to the wireless network with the information you provided. It will scroll the IP address it obtained across the display upon successful connection.
• You can then connect to the web interface again to continue configuration, but now over the network with he IP address that was displayed, instead of directly to the clock's wifi hotspot as before.

Optional Configuration

In order to get all the features of the smartclock (weather, geolocation, air quality), you will need sign up for some API keys:

• LEDSmartClock uses https://app.ipgeolocation.io for location services. Sign up for their free service to obtain an API key, and enter that key in the configuration page. The clock will then be able to automatically determine your timezone and location. These features will not work without an API key.
• LEDSmartClock also uses https://openweathermap.org for weather conditions, forecast, and air quality. The clock will then be able to get weather and air quality information. These features will not work without an API key.
• All other configuration settings are fairly self explanatory. Change display colors, notification intervals, etc.
• The clock colon can be set to always on, normal blink, and fast blink.
• The Alert Flash is a full screen led display flash before any notification.

Upgrading

You can either use the ESP32 flash tool as used in the initial installation (which requires you to plug in via USB), or the much easier uploading of the firmware directly to the clock "over the air":

1. Download the new firmware in the Releases section.
2. Connect to the web interface of the LEDSmartClock (Either over the network or directly in AP mode)
3. Click on the Configure Settings link to navigate to the configure settings page.
4. At the bottom of the configure setting page, click browse and select the new firmware file downloaded from releases.
5. Click the update button to upload the new firmware, and begin the upgrade process. The clock will reboot when finished.
6. Connect to the web interface after it reboots to verify the new firmware version.

The current firmware version running on the clock is displayed on the web interface's info page.

WARNING: Some new major and minor versions may require you to reconfigure the settings on your clock. This will be fairly infrequent (only if new configuration settings are added in the release) and will be clearly announced if the upgrade will cause the settings will be reset.

Status Indicators

• The display uses the lower left corner LED as a system status indicator that can be disabled in the settings.
• The top left corner LED is the air quality status indicator.
• During a weather alert, 2 LED's in the middle of each side of the clock will illuminate yellow for an active watch, and red for an active warning. The watch/warning details will scroll across the display at set intervals.

The overall idea here was if everything is working optimally, no alerts are active, and air quality is good, then all status LED's are off.

Air Quality Status LED colors: OFF/BLACK - Air Quality (AQI) "Good" YELLOW - Air Quality (AQI) "Fair" ORANGE - Air Quality (AQI) "Moderate" RED - Air Quality (AQI) "Poor" PURPLE - Air Quality (AQI) ""

System Status LED colors: RED - Wifi offline, or no NTP or GPS source available (Last sync over an hour) MAGENTA - AP mode. Connect to LEDSmartClock SSID with ledsmartclock password (or the password you have set) YELLOW - Connecting to wifi BLUEGREEN - Wifi connected, no NTP or GPS time sync (Last sync under an hour) GREEN - NTP sync (Last sync under an hour) PURPLE - No GPS fix (Last GPS sync over 10 minutes) BLUE - No GPS fix (Last GPS sync under 10 minutes) OFF/BLACK - GPS fix (Last GPS sync under 10 minutes)

When the status LED is disabled, it will still show red if time is not updated by any source in over an hour

TODO / Feature Requests

Feel free to suggest any new features, changes, and ideas in the discussions section.

• Add sunrise and sunset information and options. Ability to enable text scroll notification to announce these events.
• Add moon phase information and options. Possible new top right status icon for moon phase information. Maybe scroll moon phase information, new moon, full moon, waxing, waning, etc.
• Look into adding other information like equinox, solstice, UV index, etc.

Known Issues

Please post any issues in the issues section.

Developers / Contributions

I create raspberry-pi and micro-controller projects as a hobby, and far from being a decent embedded programmer. (Python was my normal go-to, but I'm creating projects like this to learn C to use in all my future projects) PLEASE, feel free to contribute any bug fixes, code optimizations, updates, security fixes, etc. Your contributions will be much appreciated and you will be included in the project credits.

-The dev branch for development and pull requests. The main branch is only for merges from dev for new version releases.

-The legacy and pre-coroutine branches are archives of early rewrites during development and are locked.

-Release version numbers are formatted Major.Minor.Patch. Some major and minor versions may require the LEDSmartClock settings to be reconfigured as all settings will be lost after upgrading due to IotWebConf options updates and the IotWebConf config version changing.

-images that were used to create the animated bitmaps are located in the icons directory.

-A Jtag connection will be available on the circuit board for easy debugging.

-An extra I2C connection will be available on the circuit board for optional expansion.

-If debug to serial is checked in settings, debug information will be sent to the USB serial port. Make sure DCORE_DEBUG_LEVEL is set to 4 in platformio.txt for full debug log output.

-Single character commands can be sent to the Serial to get debug information: d - Displays all current debug information s - Displays all coroutine states f - Displays all coroutine execution times (Only if #define COROUTINE_PROFILER is set in main.h) r - Forces air quality to check and display w - Forces current weather to check and display q - Forces daily weather to check and display e - Forces date to display

Credits

• LEDSmartClock was created by Ian Perry (cosmicc) https://github.com/cosmicc
• Thanks to Brian Parks (bxparks) https://github.com/bxparks for creating some amazing AceTime, AceTimeClock, and AceRoutines libraries.
• Thanks to Balázs Kelemen (prampec) https://github.com/prampec for the wonderful IotWebConf library.
• Thanks to Marc Merlin (marcmerlin) https://github.com/marcmerlin for creating the great FastLED NeoMatrix library, making interfacing with the LED matrix incredibly easy.