How to make a Raspberry Pi calendar

We'll need a fresh OS to get started. I'll be using Raspberry Pi OS (formerly Raspbian). If you'd like to join me, visit our guide on how to install and update Raspberry Pi OS.

Once you have Raspberry Pi OS installed, it's time to plug in our peripherals. Connect the screen to the Pi and plug in the power adapter.

When the Pi first boots, Raspberry Pi OS will prompt you through a setup process. It typically guides you through creating a password, defining a timezone, and connecting to the internet. Once you have completed this phase, you'll be presented with a desktop. It’s highly recommended to change the Raspberry Pi host name.

You may need to enable SSH. If so, open the start menu, highlight Preferences, and choose Raspberry Pi Configuration. Under the Interfaces tab, enable SSH and select OK. Restart the Raspberry Pi.

Launch the chromium browser and access https://calendar.google.com. Log into your Google account and save the authentication information in Chromium. This will ensure your account is logged in each time the browser is launched.

Next, we'll tell the Pi to open Chromium to the Google Calendar page every time it's powered on. To accomplish this, we will create a startup script that launches everything for us.

Create the startup script

You can use any text editor you like, I'll be using Notepad++. Create a file with the following script.

Note: Chromium has trouble rendering the Calendar properly, this is resolved by running Chromium with a different user agent. You don’t need to do anything extra for this, I included the user agent information in the script below. Feel free to experiment with other user agents.

chromium-browser https://calendar.google.com --user-agent="Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 6.1; rv:2.2) Gecko/20110201" --disable-infobars --disable-session-crashed-bubble --kiosk &

Edit the autostart file

Now we need to tell the Pi to use our new script when it turns on. We'll do this by editing the autostart file. Connect to the Pi using a terminal, like PuTTY, and run the following command.

sudo nano ~/.config/lxsession/LXDE-pi/autostart

@sh /home/pi/startup.sh

The Pi will disable the screen display automatically. It's rather difficult to check a calendar that isn't there, so we'll need to turn it off entirely. To do this, connect to the pi using a terminal, like PuTTY, and run the following command.

sudo nano ~/.config/lxsession/LXDE-pi/autostart

@xset s 0 0
@xset s noblank
@xset s noexpose
@xset dpms 0 0 0

We will need to hide our taskbar so it doesn't interfere with our display. Right click an empty place on the task bar and choose Panel Settings. Under the Advanced tab, select the option to Minimize panel when not in use.

We’ll use a program called unclutter to hide our cursor. Install it using the following command.

sudo apt-get install unclutter

sudo nano ~/.config/lxsession/LXDE-pi/autostart

@unclutter -idle 0

Restart the Raspberry Pi for a final test of your work. If everything works, the calendar should launch in full screen with no errors and a hidden cursor.

Congratulations! You've created your own automated Raspberry Pi calendar. Now it’s time to set it up and enjoy your new device. Good work!