A DIY E-Ink Calendar Powered by a Raspberry Pi Zero W

E-ink displays are fantastic to look at, but come with two serious caveats. Most of them are monochrome, and they’re very slow to refresh…

Cameron Coward
5 years agoWeather

E-ink displays are fantastic to look at, but come with two serious caveats. Most of them are monochrome, and they’re very slow to refresh. Multicolor e-ink displays are available, but they refresh even slower. That means they’re only suited to a handful of specific applications, like in e-readers. Another device that they’re perfect for is a digital calendar, and Redditor Heyninclicks built their own using a Raspberry Pi.

In addition to the calendar functionality, this build also incorporates a weather display. Both are a great use for an e-ink display, since they don’t need to refresh very often and don’t need to refresh quickly when they do. In this case, that e-ink display is a 7.5" monochrome model made by Waveshare. It’s housed within a simple, but elegant, black picture frame.

A Raspberry Pi Zero W was used to update the display, and Heynineclicks created the graphics themselves. The weather data comes from Darksky, and the software to update the display was programmed specifically for this project. The final product looks great, and is a really practical way to always have a calendar and the weather on hand.

Cameron Coward
Writer for Hackster News. Proud husband and dog dad. Maker and serial hobbyist.
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