DIY Skylight Calendar: Build a Digital Family Calendar for About $100
A Skylight Calendar Max costs $629, plus $79 a year if you want the Plus features. The thing is, a digital family calendar is fundamentally a screen showing a web page — and that's something you can build yourself for about $100 with a Raspberry Pi, or for $0 with a tablet you already own.
Here's exactly how, using DinkyDash, our free and open-source family calendar software.
What you get
Your DIY calendar shows everything on one glanceable screen, refreshed automatically:
- Today's events from Google Calendar (or any calendar with an iCal link)
- A chore chart that rotates between kids automatically every day
- Countdowns to birthdays, holidays, and vacations
- A daily brief written by AI — a fresh greeting, fun fact, and family challenge every single morning, personalized to your family
That last one is something even the $629 hardware doesn't do.
The hardware: three routes
| Route | What you need | Cost |
|---|---|---|
| Old tablet | The iPad or Android tablet in your drawer + a stand or wall mount | ~$0 |
| Raspberry Pi build | Pi 4 or 5, 7″ touchscreen, SD card, power supply | ~$100–130 |
| Spare monitor or TV | Any screen with a browser, or one connected to any computer | ~$0 |
The Raspberry Pi route is the classic: it draws a couple of watts, mounts cleanly on a wall or shelf, and boots straight into the dashboard in kiosk mode. The old-tablet route is the fastest way to find out whether your family will actually use a wall calendar.
The build, in five steps
The full getting-started guide has copy-paste commands for every step. The short version:
- Install DinkyDash — clone the repo, install Python dependencies (about 10 minutes).
- Describe your family — one config file with names, birthdays, chores, special dates, and your Google Calendar's iCal link.
- Add an Anthropic API key — this powers the daily AI brief. A day's dashboard costs a few cents.
- Set the 6am schedule — one cron line generates a fresh dashboard every morning before anyone wakes up.
- Point your screen at it — on a Pi, Chromium launches fullscreen at boot; on a tablet or TV, just open the dashboard URL in the browser.
DIY vs Skylight, honestly
What you give up: the slick touch interface for editing events on the screen itself (you edit in Google Calendar instead), the polished companion app, and someone to email when things break.
What you gain:
| Skylight Calendar Max | DIY with DinkyDash | |
|---|---|---|
| Hardware | $629 | $0–130 |
| Subscription | $79/yr for Plus features | None |
| Three-year cost | ~$866 | ~$0–130 |
| Your data | Their cloud | Your device |
| AI daily brief | No | Yes |
| Fixable/customizable | No | It's your code |
Prices checked July 2026.
Start here
If you can copy commands into a terminal, you can have this on your kitchen wall by Sunday: the complete setup guide. Rather skip the setup entirely? A hosted version is coming — join the waitlist.
Not sure DIY is for you? See all the Skylight alternatives, including no-setup options.