E-Paper Family 2 Day Calendar
This repository contains the code for creating and uploading the daily board image for the a family 2 Day Calendar built with a Waveshare 12.48" E-Ink Display and a ESP32 display driver and web server.
It contains the following information:
- Today's calendar events
- Tomorrow's calendar events
- Today's weather including alerts
- Today's all day events
- Tomorrow's all day events
- Headlines of local news
Motivation
My family runs off our shared Google Calendar. With three kid schedules and various other activities, we need to know at a glance in the morning what's going on.
I love the idea of low-power e-ink displays, and have watched various DYI projects showing awesome results.
For us, the most important thing is seeing our calendar events for the upcoming two days. I found a reasonably priced e-ink display that could be mounted in our kitchen and run off a USB power brick.
With a little vibe coding, this was a quick and easy project done over the labor day weekend.
Hardware and Setup
This project uses a tri-color e-ink display (Black, Red, White) with the following components purchased from Waveshare:
Components
-
12.48" E-Ink Display Module - $184.99
- Resolution: 1304×984 pixels
- Colors: Red/Black/White three-color
- Model: 12.48inch e-Paper (B)
-
Universal e-Paper Raw Panel Driver Board with ESP32 - $14.99
- ESP32 WiFi/Bluetooth wireless module
- Driver board for the e-paper display
- Includes web server capabilities
Total Cost: $239.35 (including $39.37 shipping)
Setup
I used the example code for a web-server running on the ESP32, and with minimal changes got it on my network.
For detailed instructions on setting up the hardware and the ESP32 web server, see Hardware Setup.
Daily Board Image
The daily board image is created by a Node.js application that fetches the calendar events, weather, and news headlines, renders them to a web page using puppeteer, and then uploads the image to the ESP32.
It can be personalized with various environment variables, including the calendar URL, weather coordinates, news headlines URL, and more.
Usage
# Install dependencies npm install # Install firefox for puppeteer npx puppeteer browsers install firefox # Create a daily board image npm run run # Upload a specific image to the ESP32 npm run upload -- --ip 192.168.1.123 --input ~/picture.jpeg --fit contain --mode 3
Environment Variables
Create a .env file with the following configuration:
# Timezone configuration TZ=America/Denver # Calendar configuration ICS_URL=https://calendar.google.com/calendar/ical/your-calendar-id/basic.ics # Calendar title CALENDAR_TITLE=Family Calendar # Important event keywords (comma-separated) IMPORTANT_TITLE_KEYWORDS=flight,doctor,dentist,surgery,pickup,drop off,deadline,meeting,night,practice,game,concert,tournament,presentation,parent teacher,school IMPORTANT_LOCATION_KEYWORDS=hospital,clinic,airport,court # Weather configuration WEATHER_LAT=44.46063189245875 WEATHER_LON=-110.82812696440988 WEATHER_TIMEOUT_MS=5000 # Headlines configuration HEADLINES_MAX_ITEMS=5 HEADLINES_TIMEOUT_MS=4000 HEADLINES_URL=https://www.kbzk.com/news.rss HEADLINES_FALLBACK_URL=https://www.kbzk.com/news/rss HEADLINES_EXCLUDE_TOWNS=Springfield,Shelbyville,Ogdenville,North Haverbrook,Capital City # E-Paper display configuration EPD_IP=192.168.1.123 EPD_MODEL=12.48inch e-Paper (B) EPD_MODE=1 # Rendering configuration RENDER_TRI_COLOR=true RENDER_DEBUG=false
Docker
I did my best to dockerize the project, but Linux font rendering is not as good as macOS, so I run this on a older MBA with scheduled wake-ups to upload the image to the ESP32.
For more details on font handling and image rasterization, see Font & Rasterization Details.
Build and Run
# Build the Docker image npm run build # Run with Docker (using .env file) npm run run-docker # Run interactively for debugging docker run -it --env-file .env -v .:/app epaper-calendar bash