The ESPaper Calendar

The ESP8266-based ESPaper Calendar is built around the 2.9” ESPaper Plus Kit, which is a fully assembled Wi-Fi ePaper display DIY kit. The ESPaper Calendar offers a clever way of managing shared resources. By connecting it to a cloud calendar, it lets you manage meeting rooms or shared desks. The embedded app loads calendar resources from the Google Calendar, Apple iCloud Calendar and Microsoft Outlook.com, thus displaying current availability and upcoming meetings.

No wiring is required. The ESPaper Calendar runs on a battery which can last for weeks, because the e-Paper consumes energy only when the content needs to be changed. Also, a smart algorithm reduces the updates to a minimum.

With the ESPaper Calendar app you can also try out the AppFairy, a companion app that provides a new way of installing the Calendar on your device. In fact, the AppFairy is a tool you can download and run on your computer. It is available for Windows and Mac OS X. Linux binaries might follow in the future. This companion app lets you flash the ESPaper Calendar binary directly to your device. No more troubles with the Arduino IDE, libraries, etc!

Once the app is flashed to the device, you can configure all required settings in the web browser. From then on, the device wakes up regularly to check if there are any changes to the online calendar, so that it updates the display accordingly. Marcel and Dani from ThingPulse also implemented a Smart Update algorithm which wakes up the device when a new meeting starts or another one ends.

Last, but not least, ThingPulse is offering attractive volume discounts! You can find more about them, here.