Turn an Android Tablet Into a Family Calendar Display

Yes — and it's the cheapest good wall calendar you can build. An Android tablet already has a screen, a browser and a charging port, which is the entire hardware requirement. Old ones are abundant and cost about $50 used, so this is the version of a $600 family display that costs almost nothing.

What you need

DinkyDash is a web page, not an app you install. So there are two parts:

  1. Something to serve it. A Raspberry Pi or an old computer on your Wi-Fi — free, MIT licensed, and about an evening's work. Or start a free 14-day hosted trial, no card required.
  2. The tablet, which is the screen. It opens that address in Chrome.

Nothing goes through the Play Store, and there's no Google account to sign in to.

The DinkyDash dashboard on a tablet in portrait, stacked into one column: today's events, whose turn each chore is, countdowns and the daily note

The dashboard reads the shape of the screen: one column on a tall display, two on a wide one. So a tablet standing upright looks like the picture above, and one lying on its side splits the agenda and the chores into two columns.

Set it up

1. Open the dashboard in Chrome. On your own network the address looks like http://192.168.1.50:5000 — the machine running DinkyDash.

2. Add it to the home screen. Chrome menu → Add to Home screen. Launched from there the dashboard runs full screen, with no address bar, and gets the DinkyDash icon and your family's name.

3. Stop the screen sleeping. Settings → Display → Screen timeout → the longest option. That's usually 30 minutes, which isn't enough on its own, so also turn on Stay awake while charging in Developer options. (Developer options appear after tapping Build number seven times under About tablet.)

4. Leave it plugged in, brightness down to about a third. A right-angled USB cable and an adhesive wall mount are the usual answer.

When you want it locked down properly

The steps above give you a tablet showing a calendar. They don't stop a child swiping out of it, and Android's own screen timeout will fight you on some devices.

Fully Kiosk Browser is what most people end up with. It holds the screen on regardless of Android's timeout, hides the status and navigation bars, locks the tablet to one address behind a PIN, and can switch the screen off overnight and back on before breakfast. There's a free version, and a one-off paid unlock for the locking features. Point it at the same address and you're done.

That's the only extra piece of software in this whole build, and it's optional.

What ends up on the screen

The dashboard refreshes itself every five minutes. If the Wi-Fi drops, it keeps the last dashboard on screen with a small "Reconnecting" note rather than an error page, and catches up when the connection returns; with JavaScript switched off it falls back to a plain HTML refresh. Nothing to tap, nothing to maintain — you keep editing events in your normal calendar app and the wall follows.

What it costs
A tablet already in a drawer $0
A used Android tablet ~$50–80
DinkyDash Free, MIT licensed, no subscription
The AI daily note ~$0.13/month, and optional

A Skylight Calendar is $299.99 to $599.99 plus an optional $79 a year for the same wall. The best digital family calendar page puts them side by side.

Buying a tablet for this? Screen size matters more than speed. The dashboard is a static page that redraws every five minutes, so a slow tablet is fine; a small or dim one isn't. Ten inches or more, and check the screen is bright enough to read across a kitchen.

Other screens

Start here

The setup guide covers the other half: getting DinkyDash running, adding your calendars, and pointing the tablet at it. The code is on GitHub under an MIT licence.

Rather skip the setup? Start a free 14-day hosted trial, no card required.

Last updated 2026-09-20.