{"id":405,"date":"2025-02-24T21:54:03","date_gmt":"2025-02-24T21:54:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/hobbies.wielenga.co.uk\/?p=405"},"modified":"2025-06-17T21:15:42","modified_gmt":"2025-06-17T20:15:42","slug":"news-ticker-for-esp32","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/hobbies.wielenga.co.uk\/index.php\/2025\/02\/24\/news-ticker-for-esp32\/","title":{"rendered":"ESP 32 RSS News Feed Ticker"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/p>\n

I had some ESP-32 DEVKITs left over and a SH1106 OLED display. I thought wouldn’t be nice to have a news ticker that would be playing away in the back ground.<\/p>\n

I am Dutch living in the UK so my feeds are a mixture of Dutch \/UK and international news but as long as you can find the RSS feed, you can display anything you like.<\/p>\n

The source code is maintained on my GITHub pages\u00a0 \u00a0https:\/\/github.com\/japywheel\/ESP-32-RSS-News-Feed-Ticker<\/a><\/p>\n

Prerequisites:<\/strong><\/p>\n

    \n
  1. ESP-32 Devkit or similar<\/li>\n
  2. Wifi internet connection \ud83d\ude42<\/li>\n
  3. SH1106 OLED screen. (Will work with different different I2C OLEDs but the code needs to be modified<\/li>\n
  4. Arduino IDE<\/li>\n
  5. Hookup wiring or soldering skills<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    \"\" \"\"<\/p>\n

    Libraries<\/strong><\/p>\n

      \n
    1. WiFi<\/li>\n
    2. WiFiClientSecure (which I think is part of WiFi library)<\/li>\n
    3. HTTPClient<\/li>\n
    4. ArduinoJson<\/li>\n
    5. U8g2lib<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n
      \n

      Feel free to have a play<\/h1>\n

      Code :<\/p>\n

      \/\/ newsticker4.ino file\r\n\r\n#include <WiFi.h>\r\n#include <WiFiClientSecure.h>\r\n#include <HTTPClient.h>\r\n#include <ArduinoJson.h>\r\n#include <U8g2lib.h>\r\n\r\n\/\/ WiFi credentials\r\nconst char* ssid = \"Your SSD\";\r\nconst char* password = \"Your WIFI Password\";\r\n\r\n\/\/ RSS Feed URLs - DEFINE YOUR RSS FEEDS HERE\"\r\nconst char* newsUrls[] = {\r\n\"https:\/\/www.nu.nl\/rss\/Algemeen\",\r\n\"https:\/\/feeds.bbci.co.uk\/news\/rss.xml\",\r\n\/\/\"feeds.nos.nl\/nosnieuwsalgemeen\",\r\n\"https:\/\/feeds.skynews.com\/feeds\/rss\/home.xml\",\r\n\"https:\/\/www.reutersagency.com\/feed\/?best-types=reuters-news-first&post_type=best\"\r\n};\r\nconst int numFeeds = 4; \/\/ DEFINE THE NUMBER OF LIVE RSS FEEDS\r\nint currentFeed = 0; \/\/ START RSS URL\r\n\r\n\/\/ SH1106 Display\r\nU8G2_SH1106_128X64_NONAME_F_HW_I2C u8g2(U8G2_R0, \/* reset=*\/ U8X8_PIN_NONE);\r\n\r\nString headlines[40];\r\nint numHeadlines = 0;\r\nint xOffset = 128; \/\/ Start position off the right side of the display\r\nint speed = 2.5; \/\/ Scrolling speed\r\n\r\nvoid setup() {\r\nSerial.begin(115200);\r\nWiFi.begin(ssid, password);\r\nwhile (WiFi.status() != WL_CONNECTED) {\r\ndelay(1000);\r\nSerial.println(\"Connecting to WiFi...\");\r\n}\r\nSerial.println(\"Connected!\");\r\n\r\nu8g2.begin();\r\nu8g2.setFont(u8g2_font_courR14_tf); \/\/ Use font with Latin-1 support\r\nfetchHeadlines();\r\n}\r\n\r\nvoid loop() {\r\nu8g2.clearBuffer();\r\n\r\n\/\/ Draw all headlines horizontally\r\nint currentX = xOffset;\r\nfor (int i = 0; i < numHeadlines; i++) {\r\nu8g2.drawUTF8(currentX, 40, headlines[i].c_str());\r\ncurrentX += u8g2.getUTF8Width(headlines[i].c_str()) + 10;\r\n}\r\n\r\nu8g2.sendBuffer();\r\n\r\nxOffset -= speed;\r\nif (xOffset < -getTotalWidth() - 10) { \/\/ Check if all headlines have scrolled off\r\nxOffset = 128; \/\/ Reset position\r\ncurrentFeed = (currentFeed + 1) % numFeeds; \/\/ Switch feed\r\nfetchHeadlines();\r\n}\r\n\r\ndelay(1);\r\n}\r\n\r\nvoid fetchHeadlines() {\r\nWiFiClientSecure client;\r\nclient.setInsecure(); \/\/ Ignore SSL certificate validation\r\nHTTPClient http;\r\n\r\nif (http.begin(client, newsUrls[currentFeed])) {\r\nint httpCode = http.GET();\r\nif (httpCode > 0) {\r\nString payload = http.getString();\r\nparseRSS(payload);\r\n}\r\nhttp.end();\r\n}\r\n}\r\n\r\nvoid parseRSS(String xml) {\r\nnumHeadlines = 0;\r\nint pos = 0;\r\nwhile ((pos = xml.indexOf(\"<title>\", pos)) >= 0 && numHeadlines < 40) {\r\nint endPos = xml.indexOf(\"<\/title>\", pos);\r\nif (endPos > pos) {\r\nString headline = xml.substring(pos + 7, endPos);\r\n\r\n\/\/ Remove CDATA tags\r\nheadline.replace(\"<![CDATA[\", \"\");\r\nheadline.replace(\"]]>\", \"\");\r\n\r\n\/\/ Ensure UTF-8 encoding (needed for U8g2)\r\nheadline = convertToUTF8(headline);\r\n\r\nif (numHeadlines > 0) {\r\nheadlines[numHeadlines] = \"-|- \" + headline;\r\n} else {\r\nheadlines[numHeadlines] = headline;\r\n}\r\n\r\nnumHeadlines++;\r\n}\r\npos = endPos + 8;\r\n}\r\n}\r\n\r\n\/\/ Function to ensure proper UTF-8 encoding\r\nString convertToUTF8(String str) {\r\nstr.replace(\"\u00a3\", \"\\xC2\\xA3\"); \/\/ Pound sign\r\nstr.replace(\"\u00e9\", \"\\xC3\\xA9\"); \/\/ \u00e9\r\nstr.replace(\"\u00eb\", \"\\xC3\\xAB\"); \/\/ \u00eb\r\nstr.replace(\"\u00ef\", \"\\xC3\\xAF\"); \/\/ \u00ef\r\nreturn str;\r\n}\r\n\r\n\/\/ Function to calculate the total width of all headlines combined\r\nint getTotalWidth() {\r\nint totalWidth = 0;\r\nfor (int i = 0; i < numHeadlines; i++) {\r\ntotalWidth += u8g2.getUTF8Width(headlines[i].c_str()) + 10;\r\n}\r\nreturn totalWidth;\r\n}<\/pre>\n
       <\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
      I had some ESP-32 DEVKITs left over and a SH1106 OLED display. I thought wouldn’t be nice to have a news ticker that would be playing away in the back ground. I am Dutch living in the UK so my feeds are a mixture of Dutch \/UK and international news but as long as you… 
             Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":431,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-405","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-hobby-elelectronics-and-computing","category-uncategorised"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/hobbies.wielenga.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/405","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/hobbies.wielenga.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/hobbies.wielenga.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hobbies.wielenga.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hobbies.wielenga.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=405"}],"version-history":[{"count":13,"href":"https:\/\/hobbies.wielenga.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/405\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":440,"href":"https:\/\/hobbies.wielenga.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/405\/revisions\/440"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hobbies.wielenga.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/431"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/hobbies.wielenga.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=405"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hobbies.wielenga.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=405"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hobbies.wielenga.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=405"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}