My spare monitor became a family dashboard, and a Raspberry Pi is all it needed

Old monitors rarely get attention, especially if they're low-resolution and use older display technology. I have a Frontech monitor (a rarely heard-about brand) that I bought a few years back. It's not IPS, doesn't have a high refresh rate, and cost about $25 at the time. I used it as an external display with my old Lenovo laptop, and now it has no use. Occasionally, I try to connect a thin client or an SBC, and the monitor stays idle the rest of the time.

I had heard about family dashboards before, and projects like MagicMirror made it possible. However, I used a different self-hosted tool for this project and combined a Raspberry Pi and the old display. It's now a useful device that acts as a sticky note, chore reminder, information portal, and a meal planner. Let's discuss how I built it and the room for improvement.

An old display and an SBC are a perfect pair

Cheap and accessible dashboard setup

I love touch-screen dashboards, but my monitor isn't a touchscreen one. It can only display content that it receives via the HDMI connection. The setup needs a brain, and a Raspberry Pi is perfect for it. I don't need a powerful mini PC or a laptop to host a lightweight dashboard. A Raspberry Pi 4 Model B is perfect for my project, and even the 1GB of memory didn't feel like a roadblock.

The SBC runs DietPi, a lightweight Raspberry Pi operating system, because I want to keep most of the computing power free for the dashboard. DietPi can work under 100MB of memory, and it's a staple on most of my home servers. I picked Home Screens, a relatively powerful dashboard project from GitHub for this experiment. It can build custom pages, has an intuitive web portal for management, and a separate one for remote edits.

Setting up the dashboard

Enabling kiosk mode and figuring out issues

A family dashboard must be interactive, or it becomes a bunch of static pages woven into a carousel. Because I didn't want to host the tool elsewhere, it required a few elements for setup. Home Screens runs on the Raspberry Pi, and the OS forces the dashboard to launch in the Chromium window. It's full screen and doesn't feel like a browser session at all. There's additional configuration required to force Chromium to load at startup and launch the dashboard.

I got the installation correct in the first attempt, but the Home Screens UI loaded for a couple of seconds and then closed. The terminal showed a bunch of errors, and it kept restarting without success. There was a problem with Wayland setup and how the SBC booted in a predefined kiosk mode. After a long troubleshooting session and some AI assistant help, I got it working as an automatically loading service.

After that, the Raspberry Pi booted the dashboard without issues, and memory usage was around 50%. It was blank, so I gave it a basic dashboard using the predefined templates. Home Screens web portal is available on port 3000. I opened it in a Chrome tab and built one. It was a simple one with the weather, calendar, and a few more cards. The dashboard page updated after a few seconds on my spare monitor. I tweaked the page background to some extent and liked the fact that changes synced instantly.

I then used the web portal to build a couple more pages. One was a photo carousel to create a slideshow of my selected photos. I added an API for my Google Photos account to enable the dashboard to pull the selected images. Similarly, I configured the iCal links to display my upcoming calendar events on the dashboard. The calendar card shows up on the first page and not this one. I like the idea of templates because they give you a working build you can improve later.

The third page is a combination of a meal recipe card, calendar, to-do lists, and a few more things. I need to optimize this card further and have only run a few tests to tweak the behavior of each element. The web portal lets you design the pages, but edits happen on a different page.

Editing the page contents

Much easier than you think

The dashboard needs to be fed information so that it is useful for you. I already automated some elements like the calendar and photos, but chores, meals, and lists don't populate automatically. Home Screens has some AI features, but I'm yet to try them. For now, you can access the content edit portal by adding /remote to the end of the web portal URL.

The remote page lets you adjust the screen brightness, sleep or wake the monitor, and send alerts on the screen. Alerts are useful if a member forgets a task and the big, visible message reminds them. You can set a timer for it or make it persistent. Similarly, you can edit chores, add users, make meal plans, and even upload photos for the background or the carousel page.

I like the idea of keeping the page builder and content editor separate. It becomes impossible to break the dashboard with this approach, and the user can only have a limited interaction. There's much more to explore in Home Screens, and I feel like I've barely scratched the surface now.

My old display became the center of attraction

The monitor didn't have a purpose until now and is now one of the most important screens in my home. My family uses it for meals; I use it for planning my workday and guiding my cousin to do a few chores. It's free and powerful, which is rare to find in a free dashboard. Several paid options exist, but Home Screens' current feature set makes it a strong rival. If you have an old Raspberry Pi lying around, it won't hurt to use it to breathe new life into an old display.