Pico Weather Station

A weather dashboard for the Raspberry Pi Pico W, written in Rust using the Embassy framework. Displays current weather, hourly forecast, and multi-day forecast on a 3.5" LCD.

Features

• Current temperature and city from online self-hosted API (via geoip service)
• Hourly temperature forecast for the current day
• 4-day weather forecast with high/low temperatures
• Real-time clock synchronized from the internet
• Automatic night mode (23:00–07:00): display inversion + PWM brightness dimming to 45%
• Partial screen refresh: only redraws changed regions (time, date, weather)
• WiFi credentials loaded from .env file at build time

Hardware

Required Components

• Raspberry Pi Pico W
• Waveshare Pico-ResTouch-LCD-3.5 (ILI9488, 480x320, 16-bit parallel via SPI shift registers)

Pin Connections

• ILI9488 Display:
  • CLK: GP10
  • MOSI: GP11
  • CS: GP9
  • DC: GP8
  • RST: GP15
  • Backlight: GP13 (PWM)

Prerequisites

• Rust:

  curl --proto '=https' --tlsv1.2 -sSf https://sh.rustup.rs | sh

• thumbv6m-none-eabi target:

  rustup target add thumbv6m-none-eabi

• probe-rs:

  cargo install probe-rs --features cli

Configuration

Copy the template and fill in your values:

cp .env.template .env

WIFI_SSID=your_network_name
WIFI_PASS=your_password
BRIGHTNESS_DAY=80        # display brightness during day (0–100%)
BRIGHTNESS_NIGHT=45      # display brightness at night (0–100%)
NIGHT_START=22           # night mode start hour (24h)
NIGHT_END=7              # night mode end hour (24h)
GEOIP_API_URL=http://your_geoip_service_ip_or_domain:8080

The .env file is loaded automatically at build time and is gitignored.

Building and Running

1. Flash WiFi firmware (one-time, or after chip erase)

probe-rs download cyw43-firmware/43439A0.bin --binary-format bin --chip RP2040 --base-address 0x10100000
probe-rs download cyw43-firmware/43439A0_clm.bin --binary-format bin --chip RP2040 --base-address 0x10140000

2. Debug build (with defmt logging)

cargo make flash-debug

Or manually:

cargo run

3. Release build (no defmt, smaller binary, uses panic-reset)

cargo make flash-release

Or manually:

cargo build --release --no-default-features --features release
probe-rs download --chip RP2040 target/thumbv6m-none-eabi/release/pico_weather_station

Build Features

Feature	Description
debug	Default. Includes defmt RTT logging, panic-probe
release	No logging, uses panic-reset for production

Available Tasks (cargo-make)

Task	Description
flash-debug	Build, flash and attach debug serial
flash-release	Build and flash release firmware
build-debug	Build debug only
build-release	Build release only
check	Check for compilation errors

Night Mode Testing

In src/main.rs, there is a FORCE_NIGHT constant to override the automatic time-based night mode:

const FORCE_NIGHT: Option<bool> = None;           // auto (time-based)
// const FORCE_NIGHT: Option<bool> = Some(true);   // force night
// const FORCE_NIGHT: Option<bool> = Some(false);  // force day