HomePlate
A Trmnl and Home Assistant E-Ink Dashboard for Inkplate e-paper boards.
Supported Boards
- Inkplate 5
- Inkplate 5v2
- Inkplate 6
- Inkplate 6v2
- Inkplate 6 Plus
- Inkplate 6 Plusv2
- Inkplate 6 Flick
- Inkplate 6 COLOR
- Inkplate 10
- Inkplate 10v2
- Inkplate 13 Spectra
Activities
HomePlate supports multiple display modes called activities. See activities.md for screenshots of each.
- Home Assistant — Display a Home Assistant dashboard screenshot
- Trmnl — Display a Trmnl mashup
- Guest WiFi — Show a QR code for guests to join your WiFi
- Info — Device info screen (battery, IP, version, etc.)
- Message — Display text messages sent via MQTT
Features
- Trmnl support
- Display Home Assistant dashboards on a beautiful e-ink display
- Display WiFi QR Codes for guests/friends to connect to home/guest wifi
- Display messages directly from Home Assistant over MQTT
- Makes full use of the ESP32’s cores with FreeRTOS
- Reports sensor data to Home Assistant over MQTT (Temperature, Battery, WiFi, etc.)
- Change activity displayed via MQTT command (HASS dashboard, WiFi QR, Stats, text message, etc.)
- Syncs RTC over NTP
- Touch-pad buttons can start activities and wake from sleep
- 1 month+ battery life!
- Low battery warning displayed and sent over MQTT
- Test display output directly from the config portal (message, WiFi QR, info screen)
- OTA updates over WiFi
- Partial screen updates in grayscale mode (B&W boards only; the Inkplate COLOR and 13 Spectra panels only support full refreshes).
- Power saving sleep mode.
- Optional always-on mode for externally-powered devices, so MQTT commands apply immediately instead of at the next wake.
- Skips the e-ink refresh when the image server reports the image is unchanged.
- Display any image from MQTT command
- Supports PNG, BMP, and JPEG images
Installation
Web Installer (recommended)
The easiest way to install HomePlate is using the Web Installer — no development tools required, just a USB cable and Chrome or Edge. Pre-built firmware is also available on the Releases page.
- Connect your Inkplate to your computer via USB.
- Visit the Web Installer in Chrome or Edge.
- Select your board variant.
- Click Install HomePlate and select the serial port.
After flashing, the device will create a HomePlate-Setup WiFi network for configuration — see the Setup Guide for next steps.
If you prefer to build from source, see the Development Guide for PlatformIO build and flash instructions.
Setup
HomePlate is configured through a WiFi captive portal — no config files required. Flash the firmware, connect to the HomePlate-Setup WiFi network, and configure your settings through the web interface.
See setup.md for detailed setup instructions, settings reference, and timezone configuration.
To change settings later, hold the wake button during boot to re-open the config portal. On the original Inkplate 6, short GPIO 13 to GND during boot instead.
If you use Home Assistant, most settings are also exposed as MQTT-Discovery entities under the HomePlate device — including sleep duration, default activity, TRMNL credentials, dither kernel, timezone, and Reboot / Enter Setup Mode buttons — so you can change them from HA without touching the device. See hass.md.
Tips for mounting your Inkplate in a picture frame, including adding an external USB-C port.
Set the TRMNL ID and TRMNL Token in the WiFi setup portal, and set the Default Activity to Trmnl.
The Alias Plugin can be used to display images from your local network, such as a Home Assistant Dashboard.
See trmnl.md for more information.
Home Assistant Dashboard
Create a Home Assistant Dashboard you want to display. I recommend using the kiosk-mode, card-mod and layout-card plugins to customize and tune the dashboard for your display.
Setup the Screenshot Home Assistant using Puppeteer service to create screenshots of the desired dashboards for the HomePlate. This also works with the Trmnl Alias plugin.
See hass.md and dashboard.md for additional details.
Upgrading
Update via Web Installer (recommended)
The simplest way to upgrade is via the Web Installer:
- Connect your Inkplate to your computer via USB.
- Visit the Web Installer in Chrome or Edge.
- Flash the latest firmware — your settings will be preserved.
WiFi Manager OTA
You can update the firmware over WiFi without a computer connected, using a firmware .bin file from the Releases page:
- Download the firmware
.bin for your board from the Releases page.
- Boot the device into setup mode by holding the wake button during boot (on the original Inkplate 6, short GPIO 13 to GND).
- Connect to the HomePlate-Setup WiFi network.
- Upload the new firmware through the captive portal’s firmware update page.
For developers building from source, HomePlate can also be flashed via PlatformIO over USB or OTA. See the Development Guide for details.
Acknowledgments
Thanks to Soldered Electronics for donating hardware that helped expand board support.
Development
See the Development Guide for building from source, PlatformIO setup, debugging, tests, and advanced compile-time configuration.
评论