Tempus Dash

written by Chuck Aligbe, on 2026-04-24

Tempus Dash display
Tempus Dash display

Last year, I made a Raspberry Pi-powered e-ink weather display called Tempus Dash. It is my first foray into building tech hardware, and it represents a culmination of my skills in physical product design, UX design, and web development. An e-ink dashboard was something I had wanted to build for a long time, and I finally had the gumption (and the extra Raspberry Pi 3) to do it.

TL;DR...

I designed and built an e-ink weather dashboard powered by a Raspberry Pi. Click here to get the parts to build your own.

Hello, Tempus

Tempus Dash rendering
Tempus Dash rendering

There are lots of DIY e-ink dashboard projects on the web, but as I am a control freak, I decided to make my own from scratch. Thus, Tempus Dash was born. After sourcing the Waveshare 7.5-inch e-ink display to attach to my old Pi 3, I designed and 3D-printed a minimalist frame to house the electronics. The frame gives the product a polished look on my desk and allows the Pi to air-cool, since the HAT connecting it to the screen blocks most fans and heatsinks.

I also designed and coded the visual interface and a web app to manage Tempus Dash from my phone. The weather dashboard app was built first, with a clock that shows the current time as a progress bar (inspired by Matty Benedetto). Every 10 minutes, the weather dashboard Python script pulls the current weather, date, and time, then populates an HTML template with the data, takes a screenshot of the rendered page, and finally pushes the image to the display. I initially wanted the clock to be a word clock that updates every minute, but the screen has a limitation on frequent refreshes (no more than once every 3 minutes).

After I developed the weather dashboard (which was a huge accomplishment for an amateur coder like me), I then added a utility to display an image preloaded onto the Pi. I found it somewhat cumbersome to manage the display via the Terminal, so I decided to build a web app to manage the dashboard from my phone or PC. I dusted off my rusty Flask skills and built a simple controller interface that runs on the Raspberry Pi. Inspired by InkyPi, the web app lets me start and stop the Python scripts that update the display with a simple tap.

While building the web controller, I ran into an issue where running the scripts from the app locked up the GPIO connection to the screen, preventing subsequent refreshes. After searching tutorials and forums for an answer, I fixed the lockout by consulting the Warp Terminal AI, which provided a GPIO cleanup function to run after each display refresh. With the web app functioning properly, I was able to serve it via the Raspberry Pi on my local network. As an extra enhancement, I expanded the photo display feature so I can upload photos from my phone to the Pi to display, all through the web app.

Since building the web app, I also added an app to display images from a URL input via the manager and one that shows the year-to-date as a progress bar. I currently have a backlog of features as well, including a calendar, a slideshow, and a QR code displayer. Tempus Dash is an exciting font of ideas for me. It has also helped me keep focus when I work, giving me timely information at a glance. However, while building Tempus Dash, I stumbled upon an off-the-shelf alternative.

A New Challenger - TRMNL

Tempus Dash, meet TRMNL
Tempus Dash, meet TRMNL

I bought a TRMNL, an open-source ESP32-powered e-ink display. Costing about $160 (comparable to the cost of building a Tempus Dash yourself), TRMNL is a perfect solution for those looking to get into e-ink without needing technical knowledge. TRMNL runs playlists that rotate the images the software generates, while Tempus runs a single app at a time. With a robust ecosystem of plugins and lots of people building their own, a TRMNL owner can configure their display's playlist to show pretty much anything they want.

TRMNL ePaper companion
TRMNL ePaper companion

Furthermore, true to their open-source nature, TRMNL offers DIY kits of the display (bring your own case), and they partner with e-ink screen companies to offer integrations into the ecosystem (with additional purchase of a TRMNL license, of course). This means it’s never been easier to get into e-ink displays!

Tempus Dash, all in all, was a super fun project for me. I learned a lot about building tech hardware products, from form factor to software design. I enjoyed creating something new from zero to one that does exactly what I need and helps me every day. Making Tempus Dash also made me appreciate all the effort that went into getting a product like TRMNL to market. And while the TRMNL offers way more features than Tempus Dash currently, the process of making something yourself makes you fall in love with it more.

If you want to build your own ePaper dashboard, take a look at the links below.

For Tempus Dash:

For TRMNL: