A device that can be (almost) everything. Clock, calendar, stock ticker or weather station. The data is retrieved public REST APIs over the Internet and displayed on VFD tubes. REST stands for REpresentational State Transfer, API for Application Programming Interface. This refers to a programming interface that describes the communication between applications (e.g. apps or IoT devices) and web services in networks. You can find a good choice of public REST APIs here:
An ESP32 handles both the connection via REST APIs and the control of the VFD tubes. The APIs to be accessed are configured in a JSON file. This provides the greatest possible flexibility.
The device is controlled by a rotary encoder. This allows to select a specific web service (or its REST API) as well as the individual data points returned by it.