M5CYBER NEWS is a standalone Italian RSS news reader and NTP clock that runs on the M5StickC Plus2 — a thumb-sized ESP32 device with a 1.14" colour display.
No phone. No app. No subscription. Press a button and read the headlines.
When idle it shows a full-screen clock. Press a button to open the menu, pick one of seven major Italian outlets, and read fresh headlines fetched directly over WiFi. After 30 seconds of inactivity it slips back to the clock face.
It is designed to sit on a desk, in a workshop, or in a pocket: something glanceable and distraction-free for staying informed during the day.
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| Splash screen | Reading news | Feed menu |
|---|---|---|
 |
 |
 |
| Pixel-art boot screen | Headlines word-wrapped, scrollbar on the right, source and battery in the header | Switch between feeds, clock, and power off |
- 7 Italian news feeds — ANSA, Corriere della Sera, Repubblica, Il Sole 24 Ore, TGcom24, La Stampa, Il Fatto Quotidiano.
- On-device feed menu — switch source without reflashing.
- Per-source colour coding — the header colour tells you which outlet you are reading at a glance.
- Word-wrapped headlines with a proportional vertical scrollbar for long titles.
- Auto-refresh every 60 seconds in the background.
- Robust RSS text cleaning — HTML entities, UTF-8 accented vowels, typographic quotes, Windows-1252 leftovers, and CDATA wrappers are all stripped before display.
- Full-screen NTP clock as the idle/home screen — large time, date, and detected location in the header.
- Automatic geolocation — on first run the device detects its country and UTC offset by IP (via ipapi.co, with FreeGeoIP as fallback).
- Manual timezone setter — a clear, structured on-screen menu to pick the UTC offset by hand if automatic detection is unavailable.
- Auto-return to clock — after 30 seconds idle in news mode the display returns to the clock face.
- Startup and shutdown jingles — short melodies played through the built-in buzzer on power-on and power-off.
- BYE BYE screen + POWER OFF — a dedicated menu entry cleanly powers the device down with a farewell screen, so you always know it is off.
- Persistent storage (NVS) — timezone, location, and last-used feed are saved to flash and survive a full power cycle.
- Fast boot — once the timezone is saved, the device skips network geolocation entirely and connects straight away.
- Pixel-art splash screen — bitmap "NEWS!" drawn at boot from a custom 5×7
pixel font rendered with
fillRect(). - Battery saver — display dims after 12 s of inactivity, sleeps after 20 s; first button press wakes it without triggering an action.
- WiFi captive portal — first-run setup via WiFiManager; credentials are saved to flash and survive reboots. No hardcoded passwords.
| Component | Notes |
|---|---|
| M5StickC Plus2 | ESP32-PICO, 240×135 px ST7789V2 display, 200 mAh battery, built-in buzzer |
| USB-C cable | For flashing only |
| 2.4 GHz WiFi | For fetching feeds and time sync |
| # | Outlet | RSS URL |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | ANSA | https://www.ansa.it/sito/ansait_rss.xml |
| 2 | Corriere della Sera | https://xml2.corriereobjects.it/rss/homepage.xml |
| 3 | Repubblica | https://www.repubblica.it/rss/homepage/rss2.0.xml |
| 4 | Il Sole 24 Ore | https://www.ilsole24ore.com/rss/italia.xml |
| 5 | TGcom24 | https://www.tgcom24.mediaset.it/rss/homepage.xml |
| 6 | La Stampa | https://www.lastampa.it/rss/copertina.xml |
| 7 | Il Fatto Quotidiano | https://www.ilfattoquotidiano.it/feed/ |
RSS endpoints occasionally change. If a feed stops loading, update its URL
inside the FEEDS[] array — see Customization.
The device boots into clock mode. Press A to open the menu.
| Button | Action |
|---|---|
| A short press | Open the menu |
The menu lists the 7 feeds, then CLOCK, SET TZ, and POWER OFF.
| Button | Action |
|---|---|
| B short press | Cycle to next entry (wraps around) |
| A short press | Select the highlighted entry |
| A hold 2 s | Exit the menu |
Selecting a feed loads it. Selecting CLOCK returns to the clock face. Selecting SET TZ opens the timezone setter. Selecting POWER OFF shows the BYE BYE screen and powers the device down.
| Button | Action |
|---|---|
| A short press | Next article |
| B short press | Scroll text down / back to top |
| A hold 2 s | Open the menu |
| B hold 4 s | Open WiFi configuration portal |
After 30 seconds of inactivity the display returns to the clock.
| Button | Action |
|---|---|
| A short press | UTC offset forward (+1) |
| B short press | UTC offset backward (−1) |
| B hold 1.5 s | Save and exit |
The chosen offset is written to persistent storage and reused on every subsequent boot.
In Arduino IDE: Tools → Board → Boards Manager → search esp32 by Espressif Systems → Install.
Select M5StickC Plus2 as the target board.
Tools → Manage Libraries, install the latest version of each:
| Library | Author |
|---|---|
| M5StickCPlus2 | M5Stack |
| M5Unified | M5Stack |
| M5GFX | M5Stack |
| WiFiManager | tzapu |
Preferences and time.h are bundled with the ESP32 core — no extra install.
Open M5CyberNews.ino, select the correct serial port, click Upload.
If upload fails with "port is busy or doesn't exist": unplug the device, fully quit the Arduino IDE, replug, reopen, and reselect the port. On macOS you may also need the CH340 USB-serial driver.
The device has no hardcoded network credentials. On first boot it starts a captive portal:
- On any phone or laptop, connect to the WiFi network
M5-CYBER. - A configuration page opens automatically in your browser.
- Choose your home network, enter the password, save.
- The device connects, detects your timezone, and shows the clock.
To reconfigure WiFi at any time: hold Button B for 4 seconds in reading mode. The portal reopens and closes automatically after 3 minutes if unused.
On first connection the device tries to detect your country and UTC offset
automatically. If detection fails, the clock header shows SET TZ as an
invitation: open the menu, choose SET TZ, and pick your offset by hand.
Either way, the result is saved permanently — you only do this once.
All user-facing settings are #define constants and the FEEDS[] array at
the top of M5CyberNews.ino.
const FeedSource FEEDS[] = {
{ "ANSA", "https://www.ansa.it/sito/ansait_rss.xml", 0x07E0 },
{ "MY FEED","https://example.com/feed.xml", 0xF800 },
// up to however many you need
};Each entry is { display name (max ~9 chars), URL, RGB565 colour }.
The colour becomes the header bar and accent colour for that source.
| Constant | Default | Description |
|---|---|---|
REFRESH_INTERVAL |
60000 ms |
How often to fetch fresh headlines |
CLOCK_RETURN_MS |
30000 ms |
Idle time in news mode before returning to clock |
DIM_TIMEOUT |
12000 ms |
Idle time before screen dims |
SCREEN_TIMEOUT |
20000 ms |
Idle time before screen sleeps |
BRIGHTNESS_FULL |
200 |
Normal backlight (0–255) |
BRIGHTNESS_DIM |
40 |
Dimmed backlight (0–255) |
MAX_NEWS |
15 |
Maximum headlines stored per feed |
boot
└─ loadSettings() reads timezone / location / last feed from NVS
└─ renderClock() draws the clock face
└─ playStartupJingle() ascending melody on the buzzer
└─ startWifiPortal() connects or opens captive portal
│ └─ timezone saved? apply offset : geoLocate() by IP
└─ main loop
├─ MODE_CLOCK live clock, refreshed every second
├─ MODE_MENU feeds + clock + set-tz + power-off
├─ MODE_NEWS headlines, auto-refresh, 30 s return-to-clock
└─ MODE_LOADING shown while fetching a feed
Headlines are fetched over HTTPS (WiFiClientSecure, certificate check
disabled for simplicity). The raw XML is scanned with indexOf() — no XML
library dependency. Text is cleaned, word-wrapped into a std::vector<String>,
and rendered to an off-screen M5Canvas sprite, then pushed to the display in
a single pushSprite() call to avoid flicker.
Time is kept by the ESP32 internal RTC, synced via NTP after connection. The
timezone offset, detected location, and last-used feed are stored in
non-volatile storage (Preferences) so they survive a full power cycle.
M5CyberNews/
├── M5CyberNews.ino Main firmware (single-file Arduino sketch)
├── README.md
├── LICENSE
├── .gitignore
└── docs/ Device photos used in this README
Released under the MIT License — see LICENSE.
News content belongs to the respective publishers. This project only fetches and displays their publicly available RSS headlines; no content is stored or redistributed.