Horizontal 2.4“ TFT stand by smily77

Last crawled date: 3 years ago

What plane is above my head, when is the next bus leaving, what is the actual exchange rate to USD, how long does it take home with the current traffic jam, ……. and of course what’s the weather tomorrow? All those and much more information’s can be fetched from the internet and displayed on your desk.
To catch such things from internet API’s become very easy with chips as an ESP8266 programmed on the Arduino IDE. But as not every maker is a master from day one, there are a lot of people offering already programmed examples in the net. They can be adapted to the own needs with only low effort. For example Dani (https://blog.squix.org/) is one of them. He has also complete kits which make the start easier for those which are not highly experienced in soldering electronics. This horizontal TFT display is based on one of them, the ESP8266 WiFi Color Display Kit 2.4″. Beside of this only 4 M3 nuts and 4 M3x20 screws are required.
IMPORTANT NOTE: I realized that I assembled the ESP8266 Wifi Color Display Kit 2.4" slightly different than it's shown in the assemble instruction video on the blog.squix.org page. Instead of using only the male pin headers for the ESP8266 module, I used the male and female pin headers (both in the kit). Please check the picture. If you are using only the male headers the hole for the reset button is wrong located and you require to rasp the connector cutout a bit.
The quite deep electronics and the power socket on the side lead to a pretty big housing. Therefore I tried to design a housing close to the style of the 80ies when the electronics was in general a bit more bulky. This brings a design with a slight vintage touch which I tried to underline with the choice of the grey and white color. I abstain from sanding or treating the plastic with acetone which leads to a texture on the front.
The front sticks to the housing but the socket (in which the power cord is hided) needs to be glued to the housing. For the distance holder on top and bottom a M3 nut needs to be pressed into the holders. The only unhappy thing is the hole for to push the reset switch of the ESP 8266 board. It can be only used if the screw on the bottom right is turned out. This as the switch is located in line with the holes for the distance holder. For the power supply cable which comes with the kit should be used as it has an pretty short stiff length.