InkBridge

A lightweight app for capturing Home Assistant dashboard screenshots and optimizing them for eInk displays.

InkBridge can render multiple pages at once and even capture any URL, making it a simple way to power custom eInk dashboards.

How It Works

InkBridge lets you reuse your existing Home Assistant dashboards instead of rebuilding them for device-specific eInk firmware. That means you can keep using Home Assistant's UI, cards, and integrations while InkBridge handles the image generation.

InkBridge opens each configured page, captures a screenshot, optimizes it for your eInk display, and serves the result as a BMP image. Images are generated on a schedule and kept ready for your display, so when the device wakes up and requests a new image, it gets an immediate response, renders faster, and can return to sleep sooner to save power.

Features

• Capture multiple dashboards or pages at once.
• Use global defaults and override width, height, colorscheme, dither_mode, zoom, cron_schedule, and render_delay per page when needed.
• Render both Home Assistant dashboards and external URLs.
• Serve pre-generated BMP images over simple HTTP endpoints for low-power eInk displays.
• Choose from these color schemes: MONO, BWR, BWY, BWRY, BWGBRY, GRAYSCALE_4, GRAYSCALE_8, GRAYSCALE_16
• Choose from these dither modes: NONE, BURKES, FLOYD_STEINBERG, ATKINSON, STUCKI, SIERRA, JARVIS_JUDICE_NINKE

Getting Started

Open the Home Assistant App Store from Settings -> Apps, or use the button below.

1. Open the three-dot menu in the top-right corner and select Repositories.
2. Add this repository: https://github.com/Skaronator/InkBridge
3. Return to the overview and install InkBridge.

Configuration

Configuration is done through the Home Assistant frontend, and each option includes a description there. Most settings are straightforward, but these are the ones worth paying attention to.

• The Global Settings section defines the default values for all pages. Each page can override them individually.
• Set Home Assistant URL to the base URL of your instance, for example https://homeassistant.local:8123.
• Home Assistant dashboards require a Long-Lived Access Token so InkBridge can open authenticated pages.
• language controls the Home Assistant UI language used while rendering dashboards.
• Each page needs a slug and a url. The slug becomes the image endpoint path, so a page with the slug dashboard will be exposed as /dashboard.
• cron_schedule controls how often images are regenerated. For example, */5 * * * * refreshes a page every five minutes.
• zoom helps fit more or less content into the capture area.
• Increase render_delay if a page loads slowly or briefly shows placeholders before the final content appears.

To create a token, open your Home Assistant Profile -> Security, or use the button below.

Scroll down to Long-Lived Access Tokens and create one named InkBridge, then paste it into InkBridge Settings under Home Assistant API Settings -> Long-Lived Access Token.

Endpoints

InkBridge exposes a small web server on port 4521:

• / shows an index page with all configured endpoints and their latest generation status. This is useful for checking whether a page has rendered successfully.
• /<slug> returns the generated BMP image for that page.

For example, a page with the slug dashboard will be available at http://homeassistant.local:4521/dashboard.

Troubleshooting

• If an endpoint returns Image not ready yet. Try again shortly., the first render may still be in progress. Wait a moment and check the index page at /.
• If the captured image shows placeholders or incomplete content, increase render_delay.
• If a Home Assistant dashboard does not load correctly, verify both the Home Assistant URL and the Long-Lived Access Token.