Cheap customizable small screen smart home dashboard
Dedicated small-screen displays for family calendars and smart home dashboards remain either prohibitively expensive or lack customizable software. As a result, people cannot easily put live schedule and home data into physical living spaces without buying $600 specialized hardware or overpaying for niche e-ink devices.
What the numbers show
Counted from the threads quoted below. How we count
- The most recent one is from September 2026.
- It is not one crowd: 2 people on Reddit and 1 on Hacker News ran into the same thing.
What people tried
Every workaround mentioned in the threads below. We haven’t tested any of them — and nobody here is claiming they worked.
Found another way around this?
Share your steps and trade-offs so fellow engineers don't have to reinvent the wheel. No account required.
- 1Keeping data accessible through phones and tablets instead of dedicated physical displaysDid this help you?
- 2Using a physical magnetic whiteboard on the fridgeDid this help you?
- 3Using standard notes apps like iOS Reminders that sync in the backgroundDid this help you?
- 4Building custom dashboards on Android TV/Fire TV using Home AssistantDid this help you?
- 5Using open-source Home Assistant cards like Daylight (daylight-calendar-card) or ha-lucarneDid this help you?
- 6Combining a cheap $20 Onn Google TV stick with an existing TVDid this help you?
- 7Using custom Home Assistant dashboard setups or homescreens.dev for chore and calendar trackingDid this help you?
In their words
Unedited, grouped by where they were said, most upvoted first within each place, each linked to the thread it came from.
“rarely does anyone actually put that data into their physical spaces, because there's no obvious choice for small-sized screens, long-lasting batteries, cheap, customizable. Something like Trmnl comes close, but is too expensive for most.”source ↗
Where this came up
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