I have a lot of different smart displays and gadgets around my home, but some of the best and most simplest are the ePaper displays that I have a significant number of. I have the XIAO ePaper Panel which started it all, the reTerminal E1001/E1002, and the TRMNL DIY display. The TRMNL DIY display is a particularly interesting one, as it doesn’t even come with a case: as the name implies, you build it yourself. That’s why I put mine in a photo frame.

Over time, I’ve found different uses for it, and the most recent way that I’m using it is likely the one I’ll settle on. Basically, it serves as a smart home dashboard, pulling in data from my power sensors, showing my network conditions, and displaying both the weather outside and the conditions inside.

I’ll admit that it’s pretty basic, but as an item that sits on the shelf in my living room, it’s exactly what it needs to be. Plus, a photo frame doesn’t look out of place, so it fits seamlessly with the rest of my home. The TRMNL DIY packs a basic 7.5-inch ePaper display, a XIAO ESP32-S3 soldered to a driver board, and a battery. It’s a pretty simple project to build yourself!

ePaper is designed to be seamless

You won’t even notice it

Here’s the thing with ePaper: it’s not bright, nor is it backlit. While that’s obviously a downside in some scenarios, something that sits in your home on a shelf probably shouldn’t be bright or backlit at all times. On top of that, that means it can be incredibly energy efficient. Mine updates once every minute, using the deep_sleep component in ESPHome to sleep between updates, but I still only get two days maximum of battery life. If you wanted to have something a little less real-time, then you could easily extend this to multiple weeks or even months of battery life.

ePaper displays only draw power when updating, and thanks to partial refresh technology, the screen changes very quickly. In under a second an update can be drawn, and a full refresh (which only takes a few seconds) can be automated to occur every X refresh cycles. That means you could fully refresh it every time if you wanted, or let it refresh 30 times before it does a full refresh. You decide, and for what it’s worth, I’ve had no issues with a full refresh every 30 refresh cycles.

In other words, you could charge up the battery for one of these displays, leave it inside of a picture frame, and put it on a shelf for a couple of months before needing to take it down and charge it again. You can display any information on it too, and while I used ESPHome so that I could pull data from my Home Assistant installation, you can use any supported deployment method, such as PlatformIO or Arduino IDE.

Building the perfect dashboard

What it actually shows (and why)

When I set out to design this dashboard, I had one main goal: elegance. I didn’t want a cluttered mess of information competing for attention. Instead, I wanted a clean, organized display that shows me exactly what I need to know at a glance. The result is a three-column layout that divides information into logical categories: weather and climate on the left, power consumption in the middle, and network status on the right.

The time and date sit prominently at the top in a large font that’s impossible to miss, though this is only useful if you’re refreshing every minute or every couple of minutes. On top of that, there’s a battery indicator in the corner, and a footer showing system stats like the total number of refreshes and the last updated time. There’s space between all of the sections, and it can be expanded even more in the future if needs be. I experimented with some icons for the weather information, but I preferred the clean, text-driven layout instead.

The weather section is straightforward: current temperature with the weather condition, humidity, and what it feels like outside. Below that, there’s indoor climate data from my living room sensor. It’s useful to see both at a glance, especially when deciding whether to open windows or turn on the heat, especially when I’m gaming in my office and my PC starts to heat up the room.

The power monitoring section is where things get interesting. I have smart plugs on my PC, server, and networking equipment, and the dashboard pulls real-time power consumption from all three. More importantly, it calculates the total and estimates daily energy usage in kilowatt-hours. This might seem trivial, but knowing that my always-on equipment is consuming a certain amount of kWh per day makes me think twice about leaving things powered on unnecessarily, and also allows me to keep tabs on when things might be awry if I see a sudden spike in usage.

The network status column shows my WAN connection state, public IP address, and real-time download and upload speeds. Again, it’s simple information, but having it visible means I know immediately if something’s wrong with my connection. No need to run a speed test or check my router, as it’s just there and pulling from my OPNsense Home Assistant integration.

ePaper is deeply satisfying

I love using it for everything

There’s something deeply satisfying about a piece of technology that just works quietly in the background. This dashboard doesn’t demand attention with bright LEDs or notifications. It doesn’t need to be plugged in constantly. It just sits there, updating itself periodically, looking like a stylish photo frame that happens to show useful information. It feels intentional and refined, and doesn’t try to show you everything... just what matters the most.

Being honest, this is the kind of tech that smart homes should be built on. It’s unobtrusive, it’s informative, and it’s helpful. I have all kinds of ePaper displays for different things, from ones that show me nice artwork to ones that show my tasks for the day and more detailed weather statistics over the coming hours. This is yet another to add to my arsenal, with a bigger focus on my smart home than my other displays. And I absolutely love it.