A family calendar for the wall, on a screen you already own
Paste one calendar link and open your dashboard on any tablet, TV or spare monitor. It rebuilds itself every morning, so there is nothing to keep up to date.
Then $39 a year, and nothing is charged without you agreeing to it. The code is public too, so you could always run the same dashboard yourself, free.
Would you rather run it on your own machine? It is free and MIT-licensed →
Every screen on this page shows the real dashboard — the same page yours would serve.
Five minutes, then it looks after itself
Three steps, the second is optional, and the third is opening a web page. After that, the dashboard is the only thing doing any work.
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1Paste a calendar link
Give us an email address and we send a link that signs you in and starts your dashboard — no password, and no card. Then paste in a calendar link: Google, Apple, Outlook and Cozi each give you one.
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2Name the people and the chores
Optional. Names and birthdays become the countdowns. Each chore passes to the next person every day, so nobody has to arbitrate whose turn it is.
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3Open it on a screen
Your dashboard has its own link. Open it in any browser — an old tablet, the TV, a monitor on the counter — and leave the screen on.
It is a link, not a login: nothing to sign in to on the screen, and nothing to install on it. Every morning the dashboard rebuilds itself. The agenda comes from your calendars. Whose turn it is, and the countdowns, are worked out from the date. The headline and the one written line are new each morning, and they are the only part an AI writes.
There is no layout to build and no account to link on the wall. The dashboard has one layout, and it is already right.
It is still right in March
Every family organiser dies the same way. Somebody sets it up in January, and by March nobody is ticking the boxes. So there are no boxes — and here is what it survives without anyone noticing.
Chores move on the date
There is nothing to tick and nobody to chase. Each chore passes to the next person every day, so the wall is still naming the right name in March with no one having touched it.
Countdowns count themselves
Ages and days-to-go are worked out fresh from today's date every time the page loads, so they cannot drift. Try the birthday countdown →
One broken link is not a blank wall
If a feed goes missing or a provider changes an address, the rest of the agenda is built as usual and the settings page tells you which calendar failed.
A bad morning stays honest
The times, turns and countdowns are still today's, because they are worked out as the page loads. Only the written line is old, and the dashboard says so rather than pretending.
The rest of the category is running the other way — tap-to-complete, points, rewards, child locks. Those are apps on a wall, and apps on a wall need feeding. This is a poster that updates itself.
Yours to keep
Every other family calendar is a company standing between you and your own week. Companies raise prices, move features behind a subscription, and close.
Buy the screen, then rent the features
Skylight sells the 15″ Calendar from $329.99. Photo Screensaver, Meal Planning, Magic Import and Rewards are not included — they need Plus, at $79 a year.
Stop paying, and they stop.Or the subscription is not optional
Hearth Display lists at $699, and the membership is required: $9 a month, or $86.40 a year. Routines, rewards and meal planning go with it if it lapses.
Nearly $800 in year one.Or the company simply closes
Maple, a family organiser app, was acquired and shuts down on 31 December 2026. Nothing its users did caused that, and nothing they could have done would have prevented it.
This happens.DinkyDash is MIT-licensed and public, and the hosted version you are being offered is built from that same repository. There is no version of this you can be locked out of.
Which is the honest pitch for the $39: you are not paying us to hold the keys, because there are no keys. You are paying us to run the machine and pay the AI bill. The day you would rather do that yourself, the code is right there and every dashboard on every wall carries on working.
Competitor prices and features checked 6 September 2026. Skylight and Hearth are good products — you just might not need the hardware.
Bring your own screen
DinkyDash is a web page. Anything with a browser becomes the family dashboard — and it measures the screen it lands on, so it fits whatever you point at it.
An old tablet
The retired iPad or Fire tablet in the drawer becomes a kitchen calendar in ten minutes.
Any TV
Open your dashboard in the TV browser or cast it. Dark mode keeps the living room calm.
A Raspberry Pi
The classic wall build. Point its browser at your dashboard's link and leave it there.
A spare monitor
Prop it on the counter, point a browser at your dashboard's link, done.
A screen nobody touches, that is right when you walk past it. You are not buying a tablet for the fridge; you are giving one a job.
One line, written each morning
No other family calendar does this. Claude reads the day ahead and writes a headline and a single line — some days a fact worth repeating at school, some days about the dog.
Swimming, then football — a full day.
Octopuses have three hearts. Two of them stop beating when the octopus swims, which is why it would rather walk.
A busy TuesdayTerm starts tomorrow. Last quiet one.
Mabel has claimed the warm patch by the radiator and is defending it against all comers, including the hoover.
The day beforeNothing on today. Enjoy it.
A day on Venus lasts longer than a year on Venus. It turns so slowly that it laps itself.
An empty SundayIt keeps a month of what it has already written, so it never repeats itself — and on a genuinely empty day it says so, rather than inventing excitement. This is what stops a wall display becoming wallpaper by week three.
Illustrative examples, written to the same brief the real one gets. No real family's data appears anywhere on this site.
No adverts, no camera, nothing sold
The dashboard holds your children's names, their birthdays and your week. Here is exactly where that goes.
There is no camera and no microphone, because it is a web page. We keep your settings so we can build the dashboard each morning, and once a day the agenda goes to Anthropic so Claude can write the line. Nothing else leaves, nothing is sold, and there are no adverts.
You can export the lot and delete the account whenever you like, and the code that touches all of it is public. The privacy policy names every company involved, which is a short list.
What it costs
The competition sells you a screen. You already own three. Here is the first year, all in.
The bring-your-own-screen rivals are closer: DAKboard is $60 a year and Mango Display $59.99. Our planned hosted price is lower than both, but price is not really the difference — theirs is a subscription, and ours is also a repository you get to keep.
Hosted
- Nothing to install and nothing to keep alive
- We run the morning job and pay for the AI
- Your own dashboard link, for any screen in the house
- Settings from your phone, backed up for you
- Paid subscriptions are still in development; planned pricing is $39/year or $6/month
Would you rather run it yourself? Free, MIT-licensed, for ever — the commands are at the foot of this page. Same dashboard, same code, same repository. The only difference is who keeps it running.
Common questions
What happens after the 14 days?
Nothing is charged, because there is nothing to charge with yet: paid subscriptions are still being built. When the trial ends your dashboard stops updating each morning and says so, and we will tell you well before anything changes. The planned price is $39 a year or $6 a month, and nobody is charged without agreeing to it first.
Do I need a card?
No, and there is nowhere to put one. You give us an email address, we send you a link, and that is the whole sign-up. No card details are asked for and none are stored.
What do I have to buy?
Nothing. DinkyDash is the software, not the screen, so it runs on whatever you already have with a web browser: an old iPad or Android tablet, a smart TV, a spare monitor, a laptop on the counter, or a Raspberry Pi with a touchscreen. The dashboard measures the screen it lands on and sizes itself to be read from across the room.
Does it work with Google, Apple and Outlook calendars?
Yes, all three, and Cozi as well. Each of them lets you share a calendar as an iCal link, and that link is what DinkyDash reads. You paste it in, so there is no sign-in to grant and no app to install on the screen. Connect several and they are merged into one agenda in time order.
Where do my children's names and birthdays go?
They are stored so we can build your dashboard each morning, and the day's agenda goes to Anthropic so Claude can write the daily line. Nothing is sold, there are no adverts, and there is no camera and no microphone anywhere in this. If the calendar you connect also holds work and private appointments, you can limit it to the events shared with your partner, and the rest is never stored and never sent.
How is this different from a Skylight or a Hearth?
Skylight and Hearth sell you a dedicated touchscreen, from $329.99 to $699, with a subscription on top that is optional at Skylight and required at Hearth. DinkyDash is just the software, running on a screen you already own, and nothing on it can be taken away later. It also does something they do not: a line written fresh every morning from your actual day.
Can I run it myself instead?
Yes, and that will not change. DinkyDash is open source under the MIT license and the hosted version is built from the same repository, so they are one dashboard with a different person keeping it running. The commands are at the foot of this page. Self-hosting is free for ever, needs your own Anthropic key at well under a dollar a month, and is community-supported rather than something we promise to fix.
What happens to my dashboard if DinkyDash goes away?
If you self-host, nothing happens: the code is MIT-licensed and already on your machine, so it keeps running whether this project continues or not. If we are hosting it for you, the same code is public, and your settings are a small file you can export and run yourself. That is the point of building it this way.
Will features I have today ever move behind a subscription?
Not for anything already released. Everything on the dashboard today is published under the MIT license, and that grant cannot be withdrawn for code that is already out, so a copy you are running stays yours to run. The hosted version is a convenience: we run the machine and pay the AI bill. It is not a key to features you would otherwise lose.
For makers
Everything above is the hosted version. This is the other one: the same repository, on your own machine, free for ever.
DinkyDash has been open source since 2021 and self-hosting is not a demo of it — it is the same code the hosted version runs, in single-family mode. You can have the real dashboard on your own machine in about two minutes, with no API key and nothing to pay for:
git clone https://github.com/caspii/dinkydash.git
cd dinkydash
python3 -m venv venv && source venv/bin/activate
pip install -r requirements.txt
cp config.example.yaml config.yaml
python sample_board.py && python app.pyThat serves the dashboard on localhost:5000, with an invented family and a canned daily line. Add your own calendar links from /settings, and an Anthropic key when you want the real one — it runs once a day and costs well under a dollar a month.
What to know before you do
Setup on a Raspberry Pi is an afternoon rather than five minutes: systemd, kiosk mode, a screen schedule. There is no login — the dashboard and the settings page are both served without authentication, on the assumption they sit on your home network like a printer, so keep the port off the public internet. And self-hosting is community-supported: issues and pull requests are welcome, but there is no support commitment.
Put it on the wall this week
Paste a calendar link, open it on the screen you already own, and leave it there. Free for fourteen days, and we do not ask for a card.
Then $39 a year, and nothing is charged without you agreeing to it. Already have an account? Sign in.