This Tiny '90s IBM PC Is Actually a Modern E Ink Weather Station
The Oldputer is a weather station with a retro twist, putting an ESP32 and E Ink screen into a tiny, 3D-printed 1990s IBM PC.
Weather station projects are a favorite of electronics hobbyists, but let’s face it — most of them are pretty bland. The typical formula involves using a single-board computer, an LCD display, and a rectangular 3D-printed case. This tried-and-true approach gets the job done, but a good number of these builds wind up back in the spare parts drawer before long.
If you want something different that you’ll actually be excited to display on your desk or bookshelf, then look no further than Andrzej Górski’s latest creation: the Oldputer. It is an ESP32-powered weather station built into a miniature, 3D-printed computer case resembling an IBM PC from the 1990s. The Oldputer captures indoor environmental metrics from an onboard sensor, and connects to external APIs to tell you what’s going on outside.
Inside the case is an ESP32 DevKit V1 board, a WeAct 4.2-inch black-and-white E Ink display, a BME280 environmental sensor, and three LEDs. The LEDs act as power indicators for the faux computer and monitor. There is also an LED that blinks when the system is working, simulating the disk drive activity indicators of the past.
The firmware pulls weather and time data directly from Home Assistant every ten minutes. Forecast information for today and tomorrow is displayed in a clean 2x2 dashboard layout, complete with day and night weather icons, humidity readings, air quality data, and sunrise or sunset information depending on the time of day.
A built-in BME280 sensor can optionally provide indoor temperature, humidity, and pressure readings locally instead of relying on Home Assistant entities. Those readings can also be published back to the smart home ecosystem over MQTT, complete with Home Assistant auto-discovery support. This means the tiny weather station is not just a display, but an active participant in a larger home automation setup.
On first boot, the ESP32 creates its own WiFi access point and configuration portal, allowing users to enter WiFi credentials, Home Assistant API details, MQTT settings, and display preferences through a browser-based interface.
If you’re interested in having your own Oldputer, Górski has made it easy. Source code and documentation are available on GitHub, and you can grab the 3D design files from MakerWorld. All of the work has been made open source under an MIT license.