Show HN: PaperMETAR – An E-Paper Aviation Weather Display for Pilots
papermetar.comHi HN!
I created an ESP32 driven weather display for pilots that looks like a cockpit instrument. The goal was to move METAR off the phone screen and onto the desk where it is always visible. It’s a dedicated, "always-on" desk accessory that fetches real-time aviation weather and renders it onto a high-contrast e-paper display. It also has a quiz mode to help student pilots learn and test METAR decoding.
Jumpseaters: Adding Personality to the Data Raw METARs can be dry, so I implemented a feature called Jumpseaters. These are selectable personality profiles that transform the device into an opinionated flight crew.
Instead of just seeing "OVC001," you might get a report from Downwind Donnie, who sarcastically judges your "personal minimums," or Checkride Charlie, a virtual DPE who delivers weather updates with the uncomfortable silence. It was a fun to map these "personalities" to specific weather triggers in the firmware.
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The Technical Details
Controller: ESP32-S3. I chose this for the native USB support and the power efficiency needed for long-term deep sleep.
Display: 4.2" E-Paper. It uses an open-source library https://github.com/martinberlin/CalEPD
Power: Deep sleep cycles keep the current draw low, allowing it to run for weeks on a small LiPo. I am continuing to optimize the power usage because I feel I can get it to last many months even after the daily screen refreshes.
Tech Stack: ESP-IDF/C++ for the microcontroller. Flutter/Dart for the iOS/Android mobile apps. Nextjs for the website and API.
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I have learned a lot about hardware devices during this process. It has been fun programming for the E-paper display. It has it's own unique challenges because of the nature of the technology (seconds for each refresh vs. refreshes/second for traditional screens). I really enjoy when it refreshes.
The Kickstarter is live and 38% funded with 15-days to go. One thing I wish I had done a lot more of is prelaunch marketing. Ads now have had good conversion driving to the Kickstarter page, but the volume takes time.
On the same prelaunch theme, the other major lesson learned is that I wish I had asked for more feedback publicly (I do have early testers, but all local) and shared more before working on the Kickstarter. Once you say Kickstarter, all the mods put it in the commercial category and don't allow posting ANYTHING related to it.
Check it out at https://papermetar.com or https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/charlie29r/papermetar As an amateur pilot flying a very beat-up Cessna 150, I just wanted to chime in and say this is very cool. I’m not sure how helpful this is as feedback, but I think it might be better to market this as a more general e-ink hardware notification device that can sync with any number of data sources, not just METAR. For example: - General weather reports - RSS feeds - Stock reports You could then make it developer-friendly so people can easily create new integrations, and over time you’d build up a library of them. Hey, a Cessna 150 is cool airplane! I started my training on my local airport 152. I think Aviation101 uses one of those for his YouTube channel. Thanks for the feedback. There are other general purposes ePaper devices out there meeting that need (TRMNL comes to mind). I wanted something smaller for my desk that looked like a cockpit instrument. That's why I created this. I am curious to see if there is more general use demand for this form factor. haha thanks I do like it even if its a rusty bucket of bolts! Had no idea TRMNL even existed so thanks for the info. If you're doing something more specialized - maybe consider adding NOTAMs as well? Just a thought. Either way congrats on launching!