E-Ink Calendar with a Raspberry Pi

The use case is quite simple: You have multiple calendars for private and business events, but you don’t want to check it all the time online. Of course the weather information and the news would also be nice to be shown.

In short:  It’s perfect for staying organised and keeping track of important details without having to check them up online each time.

What you’ll need:

• Raspberry Pi Zero WH ~ 16,49 €
• microSD ~ 4,69 €
• Power supply ~ 5,95 €
• Picture frame ~ 3,50 €
• Waveshare 7.5 Inch E-Paper Display ~ 67,99

In total I payed 98,62 €

Set Up the Raspberry

I will set up my Raspberry Pi Zero WH with a Windows Computer

1. Download a Raspbian with desktop Image
2. Burn the image via Etcher
3. Create a file called SSH in the boot directory of the SC card
4. Add your wifi credentials also in the boot directory called wpa_supplicant.conf

country=DE
ctrl_interface=DIR=/var/run/wpa_supplicant GROUP=netdev
update_config=1

network={
    ssid="NETWORK-NAME"
    psk="NETWORK-PASSWORD"
}

5. Eject the SD card from your computer and put it into the Raspberry Pi.

6. Start your Raspberry by connecting the power supply

7. Log in to your Raspberry via Putty
raspberrypi.local with Port 22
Default username: pi and password: raspberry

8. Change the hostname and password

sudo raspi-config

E-Ink Calendar

There is a great GitHub project called Inky-Calendar

The installation is done in a few simple clicks:

Expanding the file system

sudo raspi-config --expand-rootfs

Enable the SPI bus

sudo sed -i s/#dtparam=spi=on/dtparam=spi=on/ /boot/config.txt

Set the local time

sudo dpkg-reconfigure tzdata

reboot

sudo reboot now

Install the actual package

bash -c "$(curl -sL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/aceisace/Inkycal/main/installer.sh)"

Enter no “2” to install the software

Use your own calendar, location and news

Simply download the Settings Generator from the project and open it in your browser.

The generated settings.json needs to be transferred to any directory. The location does not matter, however, you need to know the path to this file.

scp C:\Users\<name>\Downloads\settings.json mypi@pi:/home/pi/Inkycal

Or you can transfer it via SFTP using FileZilla

Update the calendar script – 25 march 2021

Automatically start of the script at a reboot is now part of the installation routine.

The update is very easy. Simply log in to your Raspberry via Putty and follow this three steps.

1. Rename the old folder

mv Inky-Calendar Inky-Calendar-old

2. Start the update script

bash -c "$(curl -sL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/aceisace/Inkycal/main/installer.sh)"

3. Check the settings.json

Test it and run it