I made an LED METAR Weather Map; A gift for my father. [OGvmJ9lKyQg]
Sooo, about a week before Christmas, I was wasting time on Facebook before going to bed when I came across a post where someone had finished their METAR Weather Map. I decided to make one for my father who has been a private pilot for at least 50 years. I had hoped to have this done sooner, but it took about a month to build and work out the issues. I also did not work on it for about 2 weeks due to frustration. The post had a link to a blog tutorial on creating this. The post used different addressable LED’s than what the tutorial uses. I got the ones from the post. I used most of what the tutorial suggested using. However, I made my map 24x36 inches. I went to staples and had it printed on heavy paper. I found foam board of the same size at Hobby Lobby. I used 3m spray adhesive to attach the map to the foam board. I found a 24x36 inch snap frame on Amazon to create my frame. If I create another one of these in the future, I am going to use 24 gauge solid core wire instead of the 22 ga that I used. Here is a link to what I used on this map. You can find the 24 gauge solid core in a similar pack on Amazon. This is the USB cord I used to provide power. I found a 5 volt output wall adapter locally. The tutorial links to one driver needed for a computer to see the ESP8266 controller. I found out that my computer also needed a CP210x driver. I believe I found this on GitHub as well, but I cannot locate the link. For Ardiuno, I used ESP core ver. 2.7.4 and fastled ver. 3.3.0. I was not able to upload the sketch as it gave me a pin error. I later discovered by changing my pin from 14 to 5, I was able to upload these versions with the code that allowed my map to work. Last, use quality tools such as a good soldering iron and possibly an optivisor if you choose to go with LED’s that need to be soldered. Please post any comments or questions in the comment section, and I will do my best to try and answer any questions.