User guide

📡 Calendar Feeds

Sub-tab · left of Events

Add any calendar that publishes a standard iCal/ICS link — Google Calendar, iCloud, Outlook, most booking or scheduling tools. Each feed gets a name and a color, which shows up on every event it brings in across every widget and profile.

• Add a feed by pasting its ICS URL — most calendar apps have a "secret address" or "public URL" for this under their sharing settings.
• Rename or recolor a feed anytime; existing events update automatically.
• Remove a feed to stop syncing it — this doesn't delete anything on the original calendar, just stops pulling from it here.
• Feed events are read-only in Piazza HQ. You can't edit or delete one (it would just re-sync), but you can hide it from the displays — see Events below.
• Show location — tap a feed to edit it and turn on "Show location on the display" to surface each event's venue/address (from the calendar's own location field) under its title in the Agenda / Upcoming / Today views. Off by default. Each calendar widget also has its own Show Location toggle and a 📍 Per-Feed Location override, so you can show a location on one display and hide it on another.

📤 Push events to iCloud & Google

Set up in Settings → Data Sources

Opt-in, one-way: an event you create in Piazza HQ can also be written to your real iCloud and/or Google calendar, so it shows up in Apple Calendar or Google Calendar on your phone. Changes made on Apple's or Google's side don't sync back, and subscribed feeds are unaffected.

• iCloud — your Apple ID plus an app-specific password (generate one at appleid.apple.com → Sign-In and Security). Tap "Find my calendars", pick one, turn it on.
• Google — tap Connect, sign in and approve in the browser window that opens; then pick a calendar and turn it on.
• Only events created after you connect are pushed — no backfill. Edits and deletes propagate to the same remote event.
• Best-effort: a push that fails (wrong password, service down) never blocks or delays the event itself; it's retried automatically.
• No duplicates — if you also subscribe to that same calendar as a feed, Piazza HQ recognises its own pushed-out events and won't re-import them.

🗓️ Events

Sub-tab

Every event from every feed, plus any you've created here, in one browsable list, automatically scrolled to today. Useful for a quick "what's coming up" check without looking at the wall display.

• Add an event from the wall display — long-press any day on a month-view calendar widget for a quick add sheet (title, date, all-day or a time, optional multi-day end). An "Add to" picker chooses where it goes: this device only, an iCloud calendar, or Google.
• Handwrite the title — with handwriting turned on (Settings → Data Sources, needs a free MyScript key), the add sheet gets a ✍️ pad.
• Delete — tapping one of your own events on the display shows a Delete button; it's removed from iCloud/Google too if it was pushed there.
• Hide a feed event — tapping a subscribed-calendar event offers "Hide from display" (and "Hide every…" for recurring ones). It stays in the source calendar but never shows on the displays. Restore it from Manage events in this sub-tab.

🖼️ Your Photos

Upload photos here once; use them anywhere — a Photo widget on any profile, or a screen's Ambient Mode (see Devices → Screen Settings) when it's otherwise idle.

• Tags let you group photos (e.g. "vacation," "kids") so a specific widget or ambient mode can be scoped to just that group instead of your whole library.
• Bulk-tag mode lets you select many photos at once and tag them together, rather than one at a time.
• Deleting a photo removes it everywhere it was being used.

🎛️ Editor

Sub-tab · default

Pick which profile you're editing and which orientation (landscape/portrait) at the top, then drag widgets around a live-scaled canvas. Tap a widget to select it, drag its edges to resize, drag its body to move it.

• Add a widget from the palette below the canvas — clock, weather, calendar, photos, chores, and more.
• The layer list shows every widget on this layout by name. Selecting a widget there (or on the canvas) reveals an expand button (grows it 10% per tap, centered in place) and a delete button — handy when a widget's gotten too small on the canvas to grab directly.
• Fine-tune position and Live Preview both reflect whichever orientation you're currently editing — if a screen is physically rotated 90°, make sure you're editing the matching orientation, not just picking based on the screen's usual landscape/portrait shape.
• Save as Preset stores the current layout in Saved Layouts for reuse elsewhere.
• Layout Switcher is a widget like any other in the palette — drag it onto a layout and assign it a set of buttons, each pointing at either a saved layout or one of your other live displays. Tapping a button on the actual screen swaps that screen's entire arrangement instantly. Since switching replaces the whole layout (including the switcher widget itself), Copy This Switcher To Another Layout places an identical one somewhere else, so switching away from a layout never leaves you somewhere with no way back.
• The "Editing Layout" dropdown at the top only lists profiles currently on an active screen by default — pick Show all from the dropdown itself to reveal the rest.

✏️ Live Editing on the wall display itself

No app, no phone — right on the screen

Everything the Editor above does from your phone, you can also do by walking up to the actual wall display and touching it directly — the display isn't just something you point a phone's browser at from across the room, it's fully editable in person.

• Tap anywhere on empty screen space — a small ✏️ icon appears briefly in the corner. Tap it to turn on Live Editing.
• Tap a widget to select it: drag its corner handles to resize, drag its body to move it, or open its settings to change a title, font size, and — for Calendar and Weather widgets — a fuller set of options, right there on the panel.
• The ➕ button adds a brand-new widget: pick a type from the same full palette the app offers, then tap wherever on the screen you want it placed.
• Tap Done when you're finished. Every change saves immediately and shows up in the app's own Editor too — it's the same underlying layout, edited from whichever side is more convenient in the moment.

🏠 Entity Status & Smart Home widgets

Widgets in the palette · needs Home Assistant connected

With Home Assistant set up (Settings → Data Sources), two widgets bring your smart home onto the display — and they're interactive, not just read-outs:

• Entity Status — one entity, with the right control for its type: on/off for a light or switch; a brightness slider (and, for colour bulbs, a warm-cool slider or preset swatches) for a dimmable light; open / stop / close for a garage door, blind or cover; Lock / Unlock for a lock; previous / play-pause / next and a volume slider for a media player; a speed slider for a variable-speed fan; a trigger button for a scene or script.
• Numeric sensors in an Entity Status widget also draw a small 24-hour trend line under the value.
• Smart Home Dashboard — many entities in one grid, optionally grouped by room, with the same controls in each tile. It can also show whole areas from Home Assistant as single tiles.
• Tapping a control updates the display immediately and then settles to Home Assistant's confirmed state a moment later. A change made in the HA app shows here within a few seconds.

The phone app's Favorites tab has matching cards — Light/Switch, Room/Group, Scene/Script, Cover, Lock, Media Player, Thermostat — for the same one-tap control without the wall display.

📹 Camera widget

Widget in the palette (Smart Home) · live video

Puts a live camera feed on the wall — the driveway, front door, nursery — next to the calendar. Add it from the Layout editor like any other widget, then in its settings add a camera:

• Direct URL — an rtsp://, rtsps://, ONVIF, or MJPEG stream (from Frigate, an NVR, or the camera itself). Not an RTSP camera's web page — the actual stream URL. Any username/password in the URL is stored on the server only and is never sent to a display.
• Home Assistant camera — pick a camera. entity; Piazza HQ asks Home Assistant for the stream. Your HA token stays on the server.

Each device runs a small bundled media service (go2rtc) that pulls the camera once and hands it to the browser, so several displays showing the same camera still only connect to it once. Tap the widget on the display for a fullscreen view. Per-widget options: Fit (show the whole frame, or fill and crop) and a show/hide title. A Test button in settings confirms the stream is coming through.

Performance: decoding live H.264/H.265 is real work. A Raspberry Pi 4 or 5 handles one or two camera widgets comfortably; on an older Pi, run the Piazza HQ server on Docker or Windows instead — those bundle the media service, and a Pi just displays the browser. RTSP-only cameras work through Frigate, go2rtc, or Home Assistant; there's no direct "paste RTSP into a browser" anywhere, which is why the media service exists.

🖼️ Profiles

Sub-tab

A profile is a complete, independent widget layout. Most households only need one, but you might want a second for a different room, or a simplified one for a guest bedroom.

• Add, rename, duplicate, or delete a profile here. Swipe a profile left to delete, right to duplicate.
• Only shows profiles currently on an active (online) screen by default — tap Show all to reveal ones that aren't assigned anywhere right now.
• Force Orientation and Rotate View default to "Use Screen Settings" — meaning this profile defers to whatever the assigned screen itself is configured for (see Devices). Override either one here only if this specific profile needs to differ from its screen's own setting.

🎨 Templates

Sub-tab

Pre-built starting points — a theme plus a sensible widget arrangement, ready to use. Applying one always creates a new profile; it never touches or overwrites an existing one.

💾 Saved Layouts

Sub-tab

Your own presets, saved from the Editor's "Save as Preset" button. Apply one to an existing profile or use it to start a new one.

🖥️ Screens

Every screen that's checked in appears here automatically — nothing to manually add. Assign each one a Profile from Layout and it switches instantly, no reboot needed.

📺 Add a Display

"Checked in" just means a browser opened one of your Profile links — it isn't specific to a Raspberry Pi at all. An old tablet, a Fire Stick or Chromecast's built-in browser, a spare monitor on a cheap streaming box — any of these can be a real second screen.

Scroll down on the Devices tab to the "Add a Display" card: pick which layout the new screen should show, then either scan the QR code on that device or type in the address shown. It'll appear in your Screens list above the first time it loads the page, same as any other display.

⚙️ Screen Settings

Expand a screen's card to reach four collapsible sub-sections:

• Display — this screen's own orientation, rotation, and theme, used whenever an assigned profile is set to "Use Screen Settings" rather than overriding these itself.
• Ambient Mode — a photo slideshow this screen falls back to when otherwise idle, drawing from Your Photos (optionally scoped by tag).
• TV Control — network power on/off for a compatible TV (e.g. Samsung), plus scheduling.
• Screen Switcher — see below.

🔀 Screen Switcher

An always-present button overlaid on top of whatever this screen is currently showing — lets you switch what it displays without needing a Layout Switcher widget on the current layout itself. Two independent sections once expanded:

Show Screen Switcher — turn the button on or off. Its own appearance settings — position (top/bottom/left/right), style (a cluster of circles, or a thin bar spanning the edge), always-visible vs. tap-to-reveal, color, and which displays or saved templates it offers as buttons — only apply while it's turned on.

Schedule — always reachable here regardless of whether the button above is turned on; a schedule can be running and switching this screen's layout automatically even while the button itself is hidden.

• Two modes per rule: At a time (a specific time of day, on whichever days you pick) or Rotate (cycles evenly through a list of targets on its own clock, no specific time needed).
• Each rule has its own on/off toggle — turning one off keeps its settings saved rather than deleting it, and if it was the one actively overriding what the screen shows, the screen goes back to its own real, assigned layout automatically.
• You'll get a warning if two enabled rules are set to fire at the exact same time on the same day.

✅ Today's Chores

Everyone's chores for today in one place, with a reassign option for anything not yet done — useful when plans change and a different kid needs to pick something up.

🧒 Kids

Add, edit, or remove a kid profile: name, avatar, color, and how their own chore list displays (pictures, words, or both — useful for pre-readers). Allowance is optional, either a flat weekly amount or per-completed-chore, with an optional savings goal.

🧹 Chores

Define what needs doing: title, icon, who it's assigned to (a specific kid, or "Everyone"), how often (daily, certain days of the week, or once), optional pay, whether a photo is required to mark it done, and whether it's a bonus chore — a shared pool anyone can claim, rather than assigned to one person.

⭐ Stickers & Rewards

A motivational layer on top of the chore chart, not a separate system — earning and redeeming both key off the same chore chart already set up above.

• How stickers are earned — pick Manual (a parent taps "Give a Sticker" on a kid's card, any time, for anything) or Auto (a sticker is granted automatically when a chore with celebration turned on gets completed). Manual giving is always available either way, for anything outside the chore chart entirely.
• How a sticker looks is a per-kid choice in their editor: a colored star with their initial (the default — keeps two kids sharing a first initial visually distinct, since the color is still per-kid), their existing avatar emoji, or a separate custom emoji just for stickers.
• Rewards are parent-defined prizes with a star cost (e.g. "Ice cream trip" for 10 stars), scoped to one kid or everyone. Redeeming checks the balance and is fully reversible — a mistaken redemption can be undone.
• A kid's own tablet page shows their sticker balance and available rewards (view only — redeeming stays a parent action in the full app).
• The Calendar widget can optionally show a small badge on any day a kid earned a sticker — off by default, turn it on in that widget's own Advanced Settings.

📝 To-Do

A fully local alternative to the Todoist-backed Tasks widget, if you'd rather not use a third-party service. Create as many named lists as you want, add items, check them off.

🛒 Shopping

One shared shopping list for the household. Add items, check them off as you shop. Each item gets a Buy link to your preferred store (Walmart, Target, Kroger, or Amazon — set your default in Settings) as a shortcut, not an automatic order.

🍽️ Meals (Meal Plan)

Plan the week's meals so the kitchen wall answers "what's for dinner" without anyone asking. Pick which meals your household plans with the Breakfast / Lunch / Dinner toggle at the top of the Meals tab (just Dinner by default). The tab is a two-week list; tap a meal for a title ("Tacos", "Leftovers", "Grandma's") plus optional notes, or Copy last week to drop the previous week's meals onto this week's empty slots. It also shows as a wall-display Meal Plan widget (Layout tab) — today plus the next few days; a widget can be set to show a different subset of meals than the household default. Off by default — turn it on under Settings → Features & Family Hub.

📝 Board (Message Board)

A whiteboard corner for the household — short notes people leave for each other ("Grandma's coming Saturday", "need milk"). It's a one-way board, not a chat: no threads, replies, or notifications. Post from the Board tab here or from a Message Board widget's ＋ on the wall display; anyone can clear a note with ✕ (there's a brief Undo). 📌 pins a note to the top and keeps it from auto-clearing. When family profiles are set up, the Board tab has a Posting as picker and notes show the poster's avatar, name and colour on the wall and in the app. Old notes clear automatically after a number of days you set (default 14, 0 = never), and the board keeps the 60 most recent. Off by default — turn it on under Settings → Features & Family Hub.

✈️ Flight Map widget

A hand-drawn world map on the wall with live aircraft. Add it from the Layout tab and pick what it shows: a group — all military, all of one aircraft type (an ICAO type code, e.g. a Boeing 737 is B738), everything within a radius of home, or a squawk code; or one flight — a callsign / tail number / ICAO hex; or a saved flight from a family member's list. An airline pilot flies whatever aircraft is on the route, so track the day's flight number (they'll need to tell you), not a fixed tail. Aircraft glide between updates and leave a short trail; over oceans and remote areas — where volunteer receivers don't reach — a plane shows its last known position. Tap a plane for its details, or tap the map for a full-screen view. Positions come from free community ADS-B services (airplanes.live, with adsb.lol / adsb.fi as automatic backups); the small world basemap downloads once. Off by default — turn it on under Settings → Features.

🏠 General

The basics: household or team name, location, and app PIN.

✨ Features & Family Hub

Turn Chores, built-in To-Do, Shopping, Reminders, the Message Board, and the Meal Plan on or off — whichever are on also show up together in the main app's own Family Hub tab, and on the separate, installable Family Hub page (see that tab below) if you use it. A QR code and link here get that separate page installed on a phone in a few taps.

🖥️ Display & Appearance (group)

Display — general on-screen behavior. Photo Widget Defaults — starting brightness/opacity/etc. any Photo widget or Ambient Mode uses unless overridden. Custom Theme — build your own background + drifting decorations, selectable as a theme on any profile.

🔌 Data Sources (group)

Everything that pulls in from — or pushes out to — outside the app: Weather, Travel Time, News, Stocks, Calendar Sync (how often feeds refresh; moved here from Advanced), Push to iCloud Calendar, Push to Google Calendar, Handwriting input, Todoist, and Home Assistant.

Home Assistant connects to a server you already run yourself — a URL and access token, both used only by this app's own server, never sent to the display or your phone. It powers the Entity Status and Smart Home Dashboard widgets (see Layout). This section also holds:

• Alerts — rules like "garage open for 15 minutes" or "freezer above 10°". When one holds for its set time, a red banner appears on every display until dismissed. Each rule has a ✎ to edit it and its own 📺 / 📱 delivery toggles.
• Also send alerts to my phone — turn on, then "Enable on this phone" and allow notifications, to get a fired alert as a push.
• Notification delivery — 📺 Screen / 📱 Phone per notification type, on top of the per-rule toggles (both must allow a channel for it to be used).

👥 Family profiles

Give each person in the household their own view of this app. Someone who only cares about the calendar and the Family Hub doesn't need the Layout or Devices tabs; someone who doesn't use Home Assistant can hide every trace of it.

• It's a picker, not a login. Switch profiles instantly from the avatar chip in the header. An optional per-profile PIN is only a gentle gate into that profile — it doesn't lock anything else. With no profiles set up, the app works exactly as it always has.
• Presets — Basic (Calendar + Family Hub, no Home Assistant or extra integrations), Intermediate (everything except the extra integrations), Advanced (full access), or Custom. A preset just fills in the toggles; change any and it becomes Custom.
• What you can hide — the Photos, Layout, Devices and Family Hub tabs individually; Home Assistant everywhere it appears; and the extra integrations (Todoist, calendar push, the daily email). Calendar, Favorites and Settings are always shown.
• Managers can edit everyone's profile; everyone can tailor their own. The first profile made is always a manager, and the last manager can't be removed.
• Each device remembers whoever last used it. An event added on the wall can be tagged "for" a family member, so it colour-codes by person on every display.

🔒 Security

PIN and related access controls for the app itself.

📱 App Preferences

Personal, per-browser settings — not synced across devices, since different people opening the app from their own phone may reasonably want different behavior.

• Default Tab — which tab the app opens to (Favorites by default, but any tab).
• Auto-hide tab bar when scrolling — off by default; tabs stay pinned in place.
• Pull down to refresh — off by default; mainly useful in standalone/home-screen mode, where the browser's own pull-to-refresh doesn't exist.

⚙︎ Advanced (group)

• Version & License — current app version, your license key, what type of license you're on (trial or active) and when it expires, and a link back here to activate or manage it.
• Multi-Device — run more than one screen from a single set of calendars/photos: one host (source of truth), other screens mirror it.
• Daily Briefing — an optional daily email summary.
• Feedback & Ideas — send a bug report or feature idea directly; replies show up right here, and a banner appears from any tab in the app when the developer responds, so you don't have to remember to check back.
• Backup — download a complete backup (every event, layout, chore, photo, and setting), and restore one — from this device or another Piazza HQ install — right from this same section.

🏠 What's there

• Whichever of Chores, To-Do, and Shopping are enabled show up as their own tabs — anything switched off in the full app's Settings is hidden here too.
• Chores here is a full parent-management view (add/edit kids and chores, reassign today's chores) — the same capability as the main app's Chores tab, not the simplified kid check-off page.
• A settings gear in the Hub itself lets you turn any of the three on or off directly — the same shared setting either way, so it's reflected back in the full app automatically.
• Install it to a phone's home screen for a real app icon and full-screen launch, no browser chrome.