I’m new to Home Assistant, its up and running on my Proxmox server and now I want a remote dashboard so the household can view important info. I should say I’m not a programmer.
So I have a 13.3" ePaper w/HDMI (Dasung Paperlike Pro 4:3 1600x1200). To get a good experience I’m happy to use any low-power computer <10w to drive it.
Hi, for starters it all depends on which OS you will use on that RPi.
If it’s HDMI I guess you don’t have to be picky to get output to the display.
What I have done with a RPi3B and the official 7" touchscreen: installed raspbian (raspberry OS now) with the GUI (the desktop version) and use Chromium in kiosk mode to display a dashboard specific for this device.
This works well but you have to aware that you cannot use CPU intensive cards/content.
For instance I have IP camera’s and trying to show the live image doesn’t go smooth.
Also, navigation is not that snappy so I wonder how that would go with you Zero…
Now in your case it’s only to view info & since it’s ePaper I guess the speed is not an of an issue that much.
Since your using HA already, you know that your dashboard can be configured with default light & dark themes.
I have no experience with ePaper/e-ink so I guess you have to just try.
I don’t think your choice of OS and how you display a dashboard doesn’t play a big role.
About OS: I don’t know about your Linux skills but to make the RPi as snappy as possible, I once tried that setup with a server (no GUI) version of, I think Raspbian, and managed to get the browser running as well - don’t ask my how, just trial and error.
For instance there is TinyCore but I have no clue how that would go.
If you want to experiment in that direction, HDMI output must be supported and then you have to find a way to display a dashboard.
TinyCore runs from RAM which makes it fast + you don’t get SD-card corruption/wear with accidental shutdowns and/or power failures.