My wanted a Skylight, I said I’d build one. It actually worked well.
My wife started asking me to buy a commercially available E-calendar devices — you know those dedicated family display devices. I looked into it, seemed decent, but then I saw the monthly subscription fee on top of the hardware cost and just... nope.
Since we had a Facebook Portal sitting in the kitchen doing nothing, thought if I can make use of it.
Fast forward, after spending few weeks with help of AI, I've somehow built a whole family dashboard. Calendar, kids chores, weather, today's meals, grocery list, notes, a music player, news headlines — all on one screen. It pulls from Google Calendar, works on the Portal, on an old iPad mounted on the wall, or on any screen really, you just open a URL.
I called it DashCal. We've been using it daily for months. My wife actually likes it more than the Skylight would have been, which I'm choosing to count as a win.
Anyway I cleaned it up and put it online. It's completely free — no subscription, no credit card, nothing. Felt wrong to charge for something that literally started because I didn't want to pay a subscription fee.
dash-cal.com if anyone wants to try it.
Would love to hear feedback, feature ideas, or if anyone else has gone down this same rabbit hole. Drop a comment or just try it and let me know what breaks.