InkyPi: Building a Colour E-Ink Dashboard

I spent today building a colour e-ink dashboard based on DIY Machines’ InkyPi guide. The display rotates through a playlist of screens — calendar, weather, comics — and looks more like a printed poster than a glowing screen. I 3D-printed the case from Lewis’s Printables models for now; I’ll probably swap in a nice frame later.

Here is the finished build showing my Google Calendar for August:

Demo

Watch on YouTube — the display cycling between playlist screens.

The Hardware

The build follows the DIY Machines BOM:

Microcontroller: Raspberry Pi Zero 2 W
Display: Waveshare 7.3” Spectra 6 colour e-paper panel with the matching HAT (E-model)
Enclosure: 3D-printed frame and back panel from the Printables models, plus the optional rear kickstand leg

Assembly was straightforward — screen into the front frame, ribbon connector board bolted to the back, Pi and HAT stacked with printed standoffs, then the ribbon between the two Waveshare boards. The SPI select switch on the HAT stays on 0 (4-line SPI).

Inside the 3D-printed case — Pi, HAT, and ribbon routing

Rear view with kickstand and USB power

Software Setup

The dashboard runs InkyPi on Raspberry Pi OS 64-bit. I flashed the SD card with Raspberry Pi Imager, set hostname inkypi, configured Wi-Fi, and enabled SSH before the first boot.

After cloning the repo and running the install script, the first attempt hung on driver setup. The fix was identifying the panel as the Waveshare Spectra 6 E-model and re-running with the correct flag:

git clone https://github.com/fatihak/InkyPi.git
cd InkyPi
sudo bash install/install.sh -W epd7in3e

Once that finished, the display refreshed and showed the InkyPi web UI URL.

Integrations

I wired up a few plugins through the InkyPi web interface:

Google Calendar — added the secret iCal address from Google Calendar settings
NASA APOD — obtained a NASA API key and set NASA_API_KEY in /home/inkypi/InkyPi/.env
Weather and Comic — added to the rotation playlist alongside the calendar

The active playlist runs on a 24-hour schedule (00:00–24:00) with a 5-minute refresh interval. That matches what the 7-colour e-paper hardware can handle — these panels have sleep-cycle locking, so pushing updates faster than that does not really help.

What’s Next

The 3D-printed case works fine on the counter with the kickstand. Longer term I’d like a wooden Ikea Rodalm frame (the option in the DIY Machines guide) or something similar so it blends in more. For now it is happily rotating calendar, weather, and comics on the kitchen counter.