Would be cool if there was a cheap always-on tablet that could display arbitrary web widgets like a calendar, slack etc
You can do this with any $100 Android tablet or - to a lesser degree - a left-over iPad that's too old for anything relevant.
Software-wise you have a bunch of options: Magic Mirror and Home Assistant are the most common ones. Dakboard works as a SaaS solution without their custom hardware, the free option is way too limited. HA is more for home automation though and Magic Mirror's actual purpose is to mount the display behind a two-way mirror (thus the "Magic" part)
I've got a cheapo chinese dual boot Atom Windows/Android tablet mounted on my kitchen wall with an analog clock, our shared family calendar, Netatmo data (indoor+outdoor) and weather forecast. Works like a charm.
If it wasn't so crappy I could use something like Kiosk Browser[1] to have it use the front-facing camera and only turn the display on when it detects motion. Now I just use Tasker to turn the display off at night and dim it during evenings.
A bunch of people are just mounting old computer monitors on the wall and using a Rasperry Pi (Zero/2/3/4) as a kiosk-browser. The Wife Acceptance Factor is a bit lower on those though. Most likely you'd need to disassemble the display and add some fancy frames.
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You can do this with any $100 Android tablet or - to a lesser degree - a left-over iPad that's too old for anything relevant.
Software-wise you have a bunch of options: Magic Mirror and Home Assistant are the most common ones. Dakboard works as a SaaS solution without their custom hardware, the free option is way too limited. HA is more for home automation though and Magic Mirror's actual purpose is to mount the display behind a two-way mirror (thus the "Magic" part)
I've got a cheapo chinese dual boot Atom Windows/Android tablet mounted on my kitchen wall with an analog clock, our shared family calendar, Netatmo data (indoor+outdoor) and weather forecast. Works like a charm.
If it wasn't so crappy I could use something like Kiosk Browser[1] to have it use the front-facing camera and only turn the display on when it detects motion. Now I just use Tasker to turn the display off at night and dim it during evenings.
A bunch of people are just mounting old computer monitors on the wall and using a Rasperry Pi (Zero/2/3/4) as a kiosk-browser. The Wife Acceptance Factor is a bit lower on those though. Most likely you'd need to disassemble the display and add some fancy frames.
[1] https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=de.ozerov.full...