I have a bunch of these little LCD displays laying around for various projects, and a lot of them get gutted out from time to time because the project outlived its usefulness. One such display is a small 3.5″ USB-C display that was intended for use as a PC case monitor (displaying CPU/GPU temperatures, fan speeds, etc.)
I have a different PC case that I’m using now, so this little display doesn’t really serve much purpose. Instead, I plugged it in and whipped up a little band conditions dashboard that sits in front of my rig’s external speaker. The displays themselves sell for about $20 on everybody’s favorite A-to-Z shipping store, but you can get them a lot cheaper from the less favorite (and less fast) overseas merchant.
Anyway, I’m just beginning my rebuild of my ready-set-go-box, and I wanted a pretty little clock, band conditions, and space weather information available in that box. The 7″ HDMI screen currently in there doesn’t give me enough screen real estate to provide that info. I just don’t have the room (or the pocketbook) for a bigger display, so I think I can find a little spot in the corner of the inside lid panel where this little display will tuck in just ducky.
The downside is that it currently relies on an internet connection to gather that data from N0NBH.
WWV provides time in a digital packet that I could translate to set the clock, but space weather data? That’s a real chore. It’s only available from WWV by voice at 18 minutes past the hour (a scratchy HF voice signal isn’t much use to a little Raspberry Pi computer without speech recognition), and W1AW only feeds that data digitally a couple times per week. Neither option is good for setting up your mobile shack and getting that data on-the-fly.
My understanding is that Winlink does provide some NOAA space weather product files, but that’s an experiment that will have to wait until my next rainy day. More to come on that, I suppose. In the meantime, I thought I’d share some progress.
For reference, the color bands on the left are band conditions: blue = good, yellow = fair, red = poor, grey = closed. (I avoid red/green when possible because colorblindness sucks.)
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