Weather on a
$10 embedded GUI.
Aurigae is open-source firmware for the ESP32 "Cheap Yellow Display" — a widget dashboard of live conditions, air quality, UV index and lunar phase, rendered with LVGL on a 2.8″ screen you flash yourself.
Four widgets, redrawn live
Every readout is a native LVGL widget — meters, bars, labels — repainted on a schedule you control. No app, no notifications: glance at the desk and it's already showing you the sky.
Weather
Current conditions and short-range forecast from your chosen provider.
Air quality
AQI pulled from OpenWeather's air-pollution endpoint, when configured.
UV index
Sun exposure risk alongside the day's forecast, no separate sensor needed.
Lunar phase
Calculated locally from date and location — works even offline.
Built on the boring, reliable stack
Nothing exotic — a standard PlatformIO project, pinned library versions, and a fork of the espressif32 platform via pioarduino. Clone it, open it, pio run -t upload.
; board: esp32-2432S028R (ILI9341, 2.8") platform = pioarduino/espressif32 ; fork lib_deps = lvgl/lvgl @ 9.2.2 bodmer/TFT_eSPI @ 2.5.43 bblanchon/ArduinoJson @ 7.4.1 tzapu/WiFiManager @ 2.0.17 PaulStoffregen/XPT2046_Touchscreen @ 1.4
The hardware spec
The whole point of "CYD" boards — an ESP32, a TFT, and a touch controller already wired together on a single cheap PCB. No breadboard, no soldering, just flash it.
Every setting above is configured from the device's own web server on port 80 — no companion app, no third-party account. Switch to OpenWeather with a free API key for 5-day/3-hour forecasts, UV and AQI.
A DIY project, on purpose
Nothing to subscribe to
Runs entirely on the board you flashed. No account, no server dependency beyond the weather API itself.
Fork it, change it
GPLv3 — read the source, redesign the LVGL layout, swap the weather provider, ship your own variant.
Built for hobbyist hardware
Targets a board that already exists in thousands of maker drawers — no custom PCB to order.
include/ board & feature config headers
assets/ source artwork
tools/ helper scripts
docs/ user guide
Firmware source is licensed under the GNU GPL v3.0. A few visual assets ship under separate terms:
- Weather icons are Google's property, redistributed as-is.
- Moon-phase and Santa icon provenance is unconfirmed — used as-is, not covered by the GPL grant.