Soldered Inkplate 10 • Home Assistant • HomePlate • Puppet • AI Art
Quick Take: I thought the Soldered Inkplate 10 would become another Home Assistant dashboard. It can certainly do that, but the thing I ended up keeping is much stranger. An always-there e-paper display that turns a daily quote into two pieces of AI-generated dog art. HomePlate and Puppet made it easy.
When the Soldered Inkplate 10 showed up, I honestly wasn't sure what I would be getting.
I knew it was a big e-paper display. I also knew I wanted to connect it to Home Assistant, duh. And I figured I'd end up with another dashboard somewhere in my office, showing important things that I could stare at while ignoring whatever I was supposed to be doing.
That part worked just fine.
But after a few weeks, the thing I actually enjoy… is looking over at a bunch of cartoon dogs trying to preserve what’s left of humanity after AI has all but wiped us out.
They're sitting beside my plants.
The dogs, I mean. People are nowhere to be found.
My First Piece of E-Paper
This was my first experience with this kind of display, so I didn't have anything to compare it with.
The packaging made a good impression (even the foil tape was nice). Someone clearly thought about how this thing would arrive.
Mine came with the battery and a 3D-printed enclosure. The frame looks 3D printed, but like it was done by someone who is very good at 3D printing, better than me for sure. And it makes the Inkplate feel like something you can actually put in a room instead of another exposed board waiting for YOU to figure out a case.
I'm glad they sent the kit. Unless you already have specific mounting plans, I suggest the kit because it’s a finished product.
The actual screen is 9.7 inches, with a 1200 × 825 resolution and grayscale support. It's a recycled e-reader panel, which is a pretty cool second career for a screen.
Retirement plans? Dog philosophy…
Of Course, I Wanted Home Assistant
The initial instructions confused me a little, although some of that was probably because I immediately skipped ahead to - how do I get this into Home Assistant?
Take a chill pill, dude. Maybe look at the thing first.
So… I did that and played with the initial display options before finally installing HomePlate.
I also considered ESPHome. That could be fun for a more custom project, but HomePlate let me build and change things in Home Assistant (simply changing a dashboard) without constantly changing the firmware on the Inkplate. That made more sense for figuring this thing out.
There are actually two pieces to my setup:
HomePlate runs on the Inkplate. It connects through MQTT and exposes controls and sensor information to Home Assistant, including battery information and display settings.
Puppet runs on Home Assistant. It uses a browser to render a dashboard and serves a screenshot through a URL. HomePlate fetches that image and displays it on the Inkplate.
So the Inkplate isn't running my dashboard in a tiny browser. It's displaying a picture of it, a snapshot on a schedule.
That distinction is what helped everything click for me. I can edit a dashboard, preview what Puppet produces, and have that become the next image on the e-ink screen.
One tip from my own experience. If you haven't created the dashboard screenshot yet, set HomePlate's display activity to Info first. Mine got stuck in a loop, and I ended up back at the USB installer. I had to check the logs to figure out why.
The Dashboard Phase
I started with something very basic, mostly the time, just to see how the whole thing worked.
Then I made a “lab dashboard” with entities from whatever smart home projects I was working on at the moment, swapping out the entities as projects change. Keeping the current experiments visible.
I also tried a to-do list. Things I wanted to remember, things I was building, things that might be useful to glance at while sitting at my desk.
All perfectly reasonable uses for a big e-paper screen.
Then I added “artwork.” Well, maybe art isn’t the right word here. It’s a stretch for sure. But I added something else entirely.
If Vibe Coding Isn't Controversial Enough…
How about vibe art?
I already had a Quote of the Day RSS feed from BrainyQuote coming into Home Assistant. Usually, it's something philosophical or stoic or historic. Today's happened to be Elon Musk talking about technology, which felt suspiciously appropriate for this project.
The feed picks the quote, the dogs just have to react. Sound familiar?
Every morning, Home Assistant takes that quote and uses the “AI image task” with instructions for two dog-themed illustrations designed around the Inkplate's screen. The images get saved locally and shown through a dashboard.
The first image is basic. Anthropomorphic dogs acting out some piece of famous human wisdom. Vibe art, depicting serious ideas, except everybody has paws.
The second image uses the same quote but is set in a future where AI has nearly destroyed civilization. The dogs are basically all that’s left… resisting the machines and hanging onto our quotes, photos, toys, leftovers and memories.
They remember us.
That's what is happening here. First, AI respectfully illustrates our wisdom. Later, it imagines wiping us out and leaving the dogs to clean up the mess. All while reminding us every day who our best friends really are/were.
The two images now alternate hourly, and for me, that makes sense. E-ink shouldn’t be busy. At least not when it’s on a battery.
Every time I turn around and look at this thing, I smile.
Getting the Right Picture
My early images were inconsistent. Some images looked good, others had too much shading or detail or were off-center.
Changing the prompt helped a lot. I had to be crystal clear about the size and format of the screen, how the image should be placed, and shading. It took some trial and error, but once I started asking for the right things, the images were crisp.
The Inkplate looks great in normal room lighting. A truly dark room is another story, but I’m not sure I’d have it any other way. It’s not flashing and screaming at me, and I like that for a change.
I don't miss touchscreen controls either. I'm glancing at artwork, reminders or project information. Anything I need to control is already available elsewhere.
The image refresh is also excellent. Soldered lists a full refresh at about 1.61 seconds, and in everyday use it feels like a quick blink. Most of the time I don't even notice it happening.
Let the Thing Sleep
My first setup refreshed every five minutes and stayed online. That gave me roughly a week of battery life.
Which seemed a little disappointing for something I'd imagined leaving around or hanging on the wall.
Then I changed the refresh to hourly and let HomePlate sleep between updates.
Over six days, Home Assistant recorded the battery falling from about 33% to 16%. That's roughly three percentage points per day, suggesting around a month between charges if that trend holds.
And the picture stays there while the device sleeps. The dogs don't need Wi-Fi to keep fighting, which is something else to ponder.
I also added a low-battery image that replaces the vibe art with one very obvious reminder to charge it.
What Would You Put on Yours?
If I bought this purely for my dog art project, I'd have a hard time justifying the price, but it does make me smile every day, and that’s real.
I think you could do something similar to make this your own. Maybe the football score comes to life on Monday morning, or you’re treated to a “hang in there” type poster/motivational image every time you have a big day showing up on your calendar. The sky’s the limit.
But there's also an open-source ESP32 development platform behind that big display, with battery monitoring, an RTC, microSD storage, GPIO, I²C, SPI and Qwiic expansion. There are a lot of directions you could take it, and I’d be curious what you’ve built with yours.
I probably won't start attaching a bunch of sensors to mine. But it’s cool that I can. What I wanted was the screen and the freedom to decide what happens on it.
HomePlate and Puppet made that pretty easy with the Inkplate 10. I can keep changing the Home Assistant side, try different stuff, or eventually build something more custom.
For now, it lives beside the plants, quietly showing me something that makes me giggle.
I came in thinking about another dashboard. A few weeks later, I'm looking to dogs for the answers to life.
What would you put on a big piece of e-paper?
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