DailyPi is simple on the wall, but not completely plug-and-play to build. Created by Olivier Simard-Hanley, it combines a Raspberry Pi Zero W, a 7.5-inch Waveshare e-paper display and a server-side Python application to show Google Calendar events, Google Tasks and Environment Canada weather in a quiet, glanceable format.
The original design is an excellent reference for a low-distraction household dashboard. However, recreating it involves Linux setup, GPIO wiring, Google OAuth, cloud deployment, secrets and battery scheduling. It is best understood as a lightweight display client backed by a moderately involved cloud service.
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What is DailyPi?
DailyPi is an open-source, framed daily-information display designed for information that changes occasionally rather than continuously. Its original hardware uses a Raspberry Pi Zero W connected to a 7.5-inch Waveshare e-paper panel. The project is available under the MIT license in the DailyPi GitHub repository, with an overview on the author’s project page.
Instead of glowing like a tablet or smart display, the e-paper screen remains readable in ambient light and consumes power mainly during refreshes. That makes it suitable for a kitchen, hallway or home office where a static daily agenda is more useful than a constantly active screen.
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What appears on the screen?
The documented dashboard combines three information sources:
- Google Calendar: the day’s events.
- Google Tasks: grocery lists and other to-do items.
- Environment Canada: weather forecast information.
The original interface is in French, but the labels and arrangement can be adapted through the SVG template and application code. DailyPi is not presented as a general smart-home controller, touchscreen interface, notification hub or real-time monitoring system.
How DailyPi works
The architecture deliberately keeps the Raspberry Pi’s job small:
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Google Calendar
Google Tasks
Environment Canada
↓
Flask application on Cloud Run
↓
Rendered 800×480 monochrome PNG
↓
Raspberry Pi over Wi-Fi
↓
Waveshare 7.5-inch e-paper display
- The server retrieves calendar, task and weather data.
- A Flask application inserts that information into an SVG template.
- The server renders a black-and-white PNG at the panel’s 800×480 resolution.
- The Pi downloads the image from a fixed URL.
- A local display script sends it to the e-paper panel.
- A cron job or PiSugar wake-up process repeats the update.
The repository separates these responsibilities into server/, which contains the Flask application, connectors, rendering and deployment files, and screen/, which contains the Raspberry Pi display code, fallback image and wake-up scripts. The complete setup is documented in the author’s DailyPi tutorial.
Why use e-paper?
E-paper is well suited to a dashboard that refreshes a few times daily. Once an image is displayed, the panel does not need continuous power to keep showing it. It is also readable in ordinary room light and avoids the glow and distractions of an LCD.
There are important limits:
- Refreshes are slow compared with LCD screens.
- The panel may visibly flicker during a normal refresh.
- It is unsuitable for video, animation, touch input or rapidly changing data.
- Ghosting and image-quality problems can occur.
- The Pi, Wi-Fi connection and battery circuitry still consume power during operation.
Consequently, DailyPi is better for a morning agenda, grocery list and forecast than for live weather radar, transit countdowns, cameras or second-by-second smart-home readings.
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Hardware required
- Raspberry Pi Zero W or a carefully checked compatible replacement.
- 7.5-inch Waveshare e-paper display and matching HAT or controller board.
- microSD card.
- Computer for preparing the Pi and running terminal commands.
- GPIO headers, or a suitable solderless header-installation solution.
- Optional PiSugar2 battery hardware.
- Frame or enclosure, if desired.
The project page lists a pair of Raspberry Pi Zero W boards, but that is the author’s listed shopping requirement rather than a technical requirement for one dashboard. A single working display client is sufficient for one installation.
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Cloud and software prerequisites
The original cloud deployment requires more preparation than the finished display suggests:
- Raspberry Pi OS, Wi-Fi and SSH access.
- A Google Cloud project with billing enabled.
- Google Calendar and Google Tasks APIs.
- OAuth credentials for Google services.
- Google Cloud Build, Cloud Run and Secret Manager APIs.
- Secure storage for OAuth tokens and deployment secrets.
The original preparation list also mentions the Gmail API, although the tutorial says Gmail is not currently used and that its connector was inherited from another project. Treat Gmail as an item to verify against the current repository, not as an automatic requirement.
Google’s current Cloud Run documentation confirms that billing must be enabled and advises users to review usage-based pricing. Low request volume may keep costs small, but Cloud Run, build, artifact-storage and secret-related resources should still be monitored. An inactive service may avoid Cloud Run request charges while associated storage can continue to create costs.
Setup sequence
1. Prepare and test the server
- Create or select a Google Cloud project and enable billing.
- Enable the APIs required by the current repository.
- Create OAuth credentials.
- Clone the DailyPi repository.
- Create the environment file from
server/.env.example. - Add the OAuth client-secrets content, weather coordinates, calendar information and Flask session key.
- Run the application locally with
python server/main.py. - Open
http://localhost:8080and complete the Google Calendar and Google Tasks authorization flow. - Identify the correct calendar and task-list IDs.
- Confirm that the application generates the dashboard PNG.
Keep the environment file and token files private. The tutorial explicitly warns not to commit .env, because it can contain access tokens.
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2. Deploy the renderer
The tutorial recommends continuous deployment from GitHub through Cloud Build and Cloud Run. The repository is packaged into a container, and Cloud Run provides the endpoint that the Pi calls.
The deployed service must expose an accessible URL unless the Pi is separately configured to authenticate. Add the required environment values and secrets to the service, and give its service account permission to read the relevant Secret Manager values. The author recommends allocating CPU only while a request is being processed to reduce unnecessary cost.
Before relying on the public endpoint, decide whether exposing a dashboard image is acceptable. A discoverable URL could reveal household schedule information. Authentication improves privacy but requires corresponding changes to the Pi client.
3. Prepare and wire the Pi
- Install Raspberry Pi OS on the microSD card.
- Configure Wi-Fi and SSH.
- Copy the repository’s
screen/scripts to the Pi. - Install the required Python and Waveshare libraries.
- Connect the display using the pinout for the exact HAT revision.
- Run the display script manually, for example
python .../APP_LOCATION/display.py. - Confirm that the panel refreshes and shows the downloaded dashboard.
A visible flicker is normal during an e-paper refresh. A blank display, communication error or incorrect image orientation is more likely to indicate a driver, wiring, panel-revision or resolution mismatch.
4. Schedule updates
For a mains-powered installation, a regular cron job may be enough. For the author’s battery-powered approach, PiSugar handles scheduled wake-up and shutdown. The tutorial’s example makes the scripts executable:
chmod +x /home/osher/.dashboard_pi_env/screen/alarm.sh chmod +x /home/osher/.dashboard_pi_env/screen/display.sh
It then edits root’s crontab with:
sudo crontab -e
and uses an entry such as:
@reboot /home/osher/.dashboard_pi_env/screen/display.sh "/home/osher/.dashboard_pi_env" >> /home/osher/journal.log 2>&1
The username and paths are specific to the author’s machine. Replace them with the actual installation paths. The script synchronizes the clock, schedules the next PiSugar alarm and refreshes the panel. If a shutdown was scheduled too early, cancel it with:
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Battery life and refresh strategy
The author reports approximately three weeks of battery life using a PiSugar2, three refreshes per day and roughly two minutes of wake time per refresh. That is a report from one build, not a guaranteed result. Battery condition, Wi-Fi retries, boot time, software behavior, panel revision and refresh duration can all change the outcome.
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More frequent updates make information fresher but increase power use and cloud requests. A permanently powered dashboard may not need a battery at all. Conversely, a Pico W or ESP32 could potentially improve battery life, but that would be a redesign requiring a different client, driver work and likely a more constrained software environment. It is not part of the completed original DailyPi implementation.
Independent reader supportYour contribution helps us test, update, and keep practical guides available for everyone.Customization
Most visual customization happens in the SVG template. You can change the language, labels, layout, fonts, weather icons, information density and arrangement of events, tasks and forecasts.
Preserve the custom class names used by the code when editing the SVG. The author also warns that moving repeatedly between Adobe Illustrator and code editing can cause Illustrator to reorder or rewrite the SVG and destroy custom modifications. Keep a version-controlled copy of the working template.
The difficulty depends on the change:
- Change labels or layout: relatively approachable SVG work.
- Add a new data source: Python and API integration work.
- Support another display: driver, dimensions, GPIO and image-conversion changes.
- Add interaction: outside the original architecture and likely incompatible with the e-paper client model.
Problems to expect
OAuth and empty data
Expired tokens, denied permissions, an incorrect calendar ID or the wrong task-list ID can make the dashboard appear empty. Reauthorize the Google services, verify the selected IDs and check that secrets were transferred correctly to the deployed service.
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Cloud Run deployment failures
Check billing, enabled APIs, build logs, service authentication and Secret Manager permissions. Also inspect billing and remove unused services, images or other resources rather than assuming low traffic means zero cost.
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Display failures
Confirm the exact Waveshare model and HAT revision, GPIO mapping, image resolution and driver files. A newer nine-pin revision may require the updated driver files identified in the tutorial.
Stale images
The Pi needs working Wi-Fi after waking and a reachable image URL. The repository includes a local-image fallback path, which provides resilience but does not fix a permanently unavailable server or a failed scheduled job.
Clock and sleep errors
An incorrect clock can affect both displayed events and wake-up timing. Check time synchronization, PiSugar RTC behavior, cron paths and whether shutdown occurs before the image has finished downloading and displaying.
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| Choice | Advantages | Costs or limitations |
|---|---|---|
| Server-side rendering | Lightweight Pi client; easy fixed-resolution layouts | Requires internet, cloud hosting, credentials and a working endpoint |
| Raspberry Pi Zero W | Linux, Python, Wi-Fi and existing display libraries | More power use and longer boot time than a microcontroller |
| Cloud Run | Internet-accessible service and continuous deployment | Billing setup, secrets, permissions and usage monitoring |
| Battery operation | Portable, unobtrusive wall display | Wake scheduling, RTC, charging and battery-life variables |
Is DailyPi still a sensible project in 2026?
Yes, if you want a customizable household display and are comfortable maintaining a small software system. The architecture remains appealing: put data retrieval and rendering on a server, then give the Pi a simple job—download one image and refresh the panel.
It is not a maintenance-free appliance, fully offline dashboard or privacy-minimal system. The original build depends on internet access, Google services, OAuth credentials, a cloud-hosted image endpoint and periodic attention to software, tokens, billing and hardware compatibility.
Before buying parts, verify the exact Pi board, Waveshare panel and HAT revision. Before deploying, verify the repository’s current API requirements, determine whether Gmail is actually needed, protect all secrets, configure billing alerts and test the complete flow locally. For a local-only system, move the Flask renderer to an always-on home server. For maximum battery life, consider a microcontroller redesign—but treat that as a new project rather than a simple substitution.
DailyPi is a strong fit for technically comfortable builders who value a calm, glanceable daily display and control over its design. It is a poor fit for anyone seeking touch interaction, live data, broad integrations, guaranteed battery performance or a ready-to-use commercial product.
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