A Raspberry Pi Pico Pen Holder and Calendar for Your Desk

When you go to pick up a pen to scribble notes or sign a document, you may find yourself wondering the date. If you’d like to skip the step of pulling out your phone, or asking the rather uninspired question of “what day is it?” to passersby, then Matthew Page's Raspberry Pi Pico W pen holder and desktop calendar could be the solution.

The device presents your pen on a pair of arms, with a small LCD display in back and above it to show the date. It could theoretically connect to a Google calendar to show today’s events, but this appears to be a work-in-progress. Also on the to-do list is a switch or sensor to change the mode when the pen is removed, and buttons or touch controls for a user interface.

As it stands now, internals consist of a Pico W, plus a 1.3” LCD screen, linked together by a series of wires. Per the device’s Python code, available on GitHub (along with print and CAD files), it uses the Pico W’s Wi-Fi abilities to log on to the local network to synchronize the date.

Calendar events are currently hard coded – which wouldn’t be too hard to keep updated for really important events – but syncing with a Google calendar should be a huge improvement. It’s an elegantly simple design, something that would fit in nicely at a doctor’s office or bank, where the question of the date comes up again and again… and again.