A family calendar in the kitchen

With the help of Figma's agent and Codex, I built some software for an e-ink calendar to display our family's activities and a little almanac for the day. Inspired by projects like Wes Bos's smart photo frame dashboard, I wanted a way to see what was coming up, but I really didn't want a bright screen in my kitchen. So I'd been looking for an e-ink panel for the past few months.

A framed portrait e-ink calendar hanging on a kitchen wall, with a large date above a monthly calendar.
The calendar at home: today's plans up top, the month below, and no glowing screen.

Finding the panel

The problem: the 32-inch panels I kept finding cost more than $1,500. This is too much money. But, for reasons I still don't understand, I found a Samsung EM32DX on Newegg for about $600. Still not cheap, but a much better price.

While the panel charged, I hooked up my computer so Codex could set up the display and the calendar service. I'd seen this Himekuri calendar, and wanted something similar in vibes: a big date, a clear view of the day, and the feel of a paper calendar. I kicked it off with a prompt:

The initial Codex prompt asking for a Himekuri-style calendar, a Mac mini service, and a local interface.
The starting brief for Codex: get the panel working, run the service on my Mac mini, and give me a local interface to adjust it.

Designing a year at once

I workshopped the initial look while I was out. Once I had an image of what I wanted, I used the Figma MCP server to lay out the months and see how the calendar would look throughout the year.

The first calendar design, with a muted green date panel and a simple monthly grid.
1. Green: the first pass, with a restrained palette and a big date beside the day's plans.
The next calendar design, with blue borders, paper texture, handwritten details, and an illustration of the Flatirons.
2. Blue: paper texture, handwritten details, and the Flatirons bring in more personality.
The later calendar design, with large orange numerals and an autumn leaf motif in the upper-right corner.
3. Orange: warmer colors and an autumn leaf motif move it toward the seasonal design.

It's so much easier to understand the whole design when the pieces are spread out on a canvas. I could compare the colors across months, adjust the layout, and make the seasonal artwork feel like it belonged to the same calendar.

A Figma palette board comparing the calendar's accent, secondary, highlight, ink, wash, and paper colors across the year.
A year of color in one view. Each month gets its own palette while the paper stays white.
Twelve seasonal botanical motifs arranged in Figma, from winter pine and snowflakes to autumn leaves and holiday holly.
The twelve seasonal motifs together: snowflakes, flowers, summer grasses, and autumn leaves.

Tweaking little things, like where the bats or snowflakes sit among the branches, was easy with the Figma agent. Once I was happy with them, I could export the artwork through the MCP server.

October's calendar artwork: warm maple leaves on branches with small purple bats flying underneath.
A closer look at October, exported from Figma. Small adjustments to the bats and leaves are much easier to judge on the canvas.

School lunch and the mini in the closet

My kids get lunch through their school, so I also made a little widget to show what's on the menu. Figma made it easy to view the illustrations together, tweak each generation, and keep them in line with the Himekuri feel.

I have a Mac mini in a closet that runs a bunch of little sites for my house. The calendar service lives there too. I added controls so I can remove calendars, have Luna shorten event names, and use the Luna Decisions API to work out whether an entry on my calendar is a duplicate of one on my wife's.

A Figma sheet of small hand-drawn school lunch illustrations, including sandwiches, pasta, pizza, and bowls of food.
The lunch illustration sheet. Even a tiny menu widget should feel like part of the calendar.
The calendar's local controls showing calendar sync status, refresh and send buttons, and a duplicate-entry review with an explanation.
The local controls: sync status, sending an update to the panel, and a review when two calendar entries might be the same event.

Still plugged in

I really love how this looks in the house, and that it's a service I can easily update. If I see something that I don't like, I ask my dot to change it, and it kicks off a Codex thread to update everything, which then updates my designs in Figma. Truly personal software.

My only gripe right now is battery life. Samsung's manual describes about 200 days on a charge, but that's with one screen refresh a day and without using Wi-Fi or the mobile app. It recommends the charger when using the mobile app or VXT Player app. That's a different setup from my running calendar.

If I could get closer to 30 days, I'd happily leave it unplugged. For now, that part is still a work in progress.