The insight that a blank status area means "the house is healthy" is the best part of this whole project imo. Most smart home dashboards try to show you everything all the time and you just end up tuning it all out. This is basically the opposite approach and it makes way more sense for something you glance at 50 times a day.
I tried something similar with a Kindle a few years back for just weather + calendar and ran into the same jailbreak maintenance hell. Ended up giving up. The Visionect displays look great but $1000+ per screen is brutal. Curious if the author has looked at the Waveshare e-paper panels driven by an ESP32, they're like $40-80 for a 7.5" screen and you can do partial refreshes. Obviously way smaller than the Boox but might work as a cheaper bedroom/mudroom option for people who want to build something like this without spending $3k.
Same experience, the job of the display is to help manage attention, instead of information delivery.
If we think about paper calendars hung on a wall, and updated sporatically we know what's there is likely good information, only that it might not be up to date.
If a calendar can be calm by default, surface what's changed or newly relevant, and fade when it resolves. The next level could be understanding who's attention something needs, and when, in a personalized way.
I tried something similar with a Kindle a few years back for just weather + calendar and ran into the same jailbreak maintenance hell. Ended up giving up. The Visionect displays look great but $1000+ per screen is brutal. Curious if the author has looked at the Waveshare e-paper panels driven by an ESP32, they're like $40-80 for a 7.5" screen and you can do partial refreshes. Obviously way smaller than the Boox but might work as a cheaper bedroom/mudroom option for people who want to build something like this without spending $3k.