ESPHome LilyGo T5 4.7 inch ePaper Calendar Display

This project allows you to create an ePaper calendar display using ESPHome and Home Assistant. It displays your calendar events from Home Assistant on an ePaper display, providing an elegant way to view your upcoming schedule.

Based on and inspired by the excellent work from:

https://github.com/paviro/ESPHome-ePaper-Calendar/

But instead I am using a LilyGo T5 4.7" ePaper display. This is a 4.7" e-paper display module with a resolution of 960x540 pixels in black and white. The display is based on the IT8951 controller and uses the ESP32 microcontroller. The board includes:

• 4.7 inch e-paper display (960x540 resolution)
• ESP32-S3 microcontroller
• USB-C connector for power and programming
• MicroSD card slot
• Battery connector
• Reset and boot buttons
• Expansion headers

The display provides excellent readability with a wide viewing angle and crisp text display, making it perfect for a calendar application. Since it's an e-paper display, it only consumes power when updating the screen, making it very energy efficient.

System Architecture

1. System Architecture Diagram

This diagram shows the main components of the system and how they interact with each other.

graph TD;
A[ESP32 Microcontroller] -->|Controls| B[LilyGo T5 4.7 inch ePaper Display]
A -->|Connects to| C[Home Assistant]
C -->|Provides| D[Calendar Data]
A -->|Receives| D
A -->|Updates| B
A -->|Deep Sleep| E[Power Management]
E -->|Saves Power| B

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2. Home Assistant Integration Flow

This diagram illustrates the steps required to integrate the ePaper calendar with Home Assistant.

sequenceDiagram
    participant User
    participant HomeAssistant
    participant ESP32

    User->>HomeAssistant: Append configuration.yaml
    HomeAssistant->>ESP32: Send Calendar Data
    ESP32->>HomeAssistant: Request Calendar Events
    HomeAssistant->>ESP32: Provide Calendar Events
    ESP32->>ESP32: Convert Data for Display
    ESP32->>User: Display Calendar on ePaper

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3. Deep Sleep and Wake-up Process

This diagram shows the deep sleep and wake-up process of the ESP32.

stateDiagram-v2
    [*] --> Awake
    Awake --> CheckData : On Boot
    CheckData --> UpdateScreen : Data Updated
    UpdateScreen --> EnterDeepSleep : Screen Updated
    EnterDeepSleep --> DeepSleep : Enter Deep Sleep
    DeepSleep --> Awake : Wake-up Timer
    DeepSleep --> Awake : External Interrupt

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Integrating with Home Assistant

To make your ePaper calendar work properly, you need to add some sensors to Home Assistant by following these additional steps:

1. Configuration Sensors and Integrations:

• Append the contents of configuration.yaml from this project to your Home Assistant configuration.yaml file without overwriting existing configurations you have made.
• If sections like template: or input_boolean: already exist, append the new configurations below them without duplicating section names.

2. Entity IDs Update:

• Update the entity IDs (calendar.x, calendar.y ...) in configuration.yaml to match those of your Home Assistant calendars.

3. Script Setup:

• Copy the python_scripts folder into your Home Assistant configuration directory. If a python_scripts folder already exists, transfer the esp_calendar_data_conversion.py file into it.

4. Calendar Name Adjustments:

• If using multi-word calendar names, add these to the CALENDAR_NAMES list in esp_calendar_data_conversion.py, for example:

  CALENDAR_NAMES = {"calendar.family_events": "Family Events", "calendar.work_events": "Work Events"}

5. Home Assistant Restart:

• Restart Home Assistant to apply the changes.

6. Adding your device to Home Assistant:

• After the firmware is compiled and uploaded, and the Inkplate board is powered, add it to Home Assistant for data synchronization. It should be detected under Settings -> Devices.

sequenceDiagram participant User participant HomeAssistant participant ESP32

User->>HomeAssistant: Append configuration.yaml
HomeAssistant->>ESP32: Send Calendar Data
ESP32->>HomeAssistant: Request Calendar Events
HomeAssistant->>ESP32: Provide Calendar Events
ESP32->>ESP32: Convert Data for Display
ESP32->>User: Display Calendar on ePaper