Show HN: Tesserae, self-hosted dashboards for e-ink panels

This is a project I’ve been working on for the last 10 or so weeks. Tesserae is a self-hosted dashboard server for e-ink panels.

It allows you to build dashboards in two ways. A card-based editor that lets you tessellate different widgets side by side in resizable cells. Or a canvas editor which lets you drag and drop elements on a free-form canvas. You can also drive the canvas editor via MCP for some highly detailed dashboards.

I fell down this rabbit hole after impulse buying a 13.3” Spectra 6 display. I knew I wanted to write my own software for it. I wanted something user-friendly, extensible, and able to host multiple displays.

This drove the drop-a-folder architecture. Adding widgets, themes, devices, and renderers involves just dropping a folder into Tesserae.

Tesserae ships with over 30 widgets pre-installed, plus a community marketplace that hosts many more (admittedly most of those are my own builds).

This began as a solo project but has grown into a small community with people contributing firmware for new hardware, bug fixes, features, and even an open-source iOS app.

Right now Tesserae supports over 10 different panels/devices.

None of this would have been possible without AI assistance.

I should also add that Seeed sent me hardware for development, but no money changed hands.

Tesserae is AGPL and has a few rough edges, so issues and PRs are welcome.

Thank you!