Choosing a monitor

There’s no shortage of suitable small monitors to connect to your Raspberry Pi. If you feel comfortable with a small amount of wiring, the Official Raspberry Pi Seven-Inch Touchscreen Display is the ideal size to display a calendar, as well as having a handy slot at the back to place your Pi. The screen, along with assembly instructions, is available from the Adafruit website for about $105 ( www.adafruit.com).

If you don’t like messy wires all over the place, Amazon sells a short micro-USB power cable for about $5, to allow the Raspberry Pi to draw power from the monitor’s USB port.

The Touchscreen Display has the added advantage of enabling you to scroll through appointments with a click of a finger. If this isn’t important, or the display is out of your budget, Amazon and eBay also sell Pi-compatible displays. As the Pi has an HDMI port, any HDMI-compatible monitor will do, but some come with a driver board to allow you to connect it to the Pi’s own DSI port.

If you are very comfortable with electronics, and want to save money, find a broken-down laptop with a working LCD. If you can remove the screen safely and buy a compatible controller board online, it can be made to work with the Raspberry Pi. Visit www.instructables.com/id/Old-laptop-screen-intoMonitor/?ALLSTEPS for some tips.