Zvonimir Durcevic: The Solution-Focused Retrospective for Agile Teams, Turning Problems Into Goals

Read the full Show Notes and search through the world's largest audio library on Agile and Scrum directly on the Scrum Master Toolbox Podcast website: http://bit.ly/SMTP_ShowNotes.

Zvonimir defines Scrum Master success as being explicit and intentional about defining and achieving goals. He references Richard Hackmann's model of team effectiveness as a framework to evaluate whether he's helping teams become truly effective. For Zvone, success comes from creating structures that provide teams with feedback about their performance and being explicit about the team's purpose through practices like chartering. By focusing on these elements, Scrum Masters can help teams build the foundation for sustainable success.

Featured Retrospective Format for the Week: Problems Are Disguised Goals

This solution-focused retrospective format, inspired by the work of Ralph Miata and Veronika Jungwirth, allows teams to briefly acknowledge problems before pivoting quickly to what they want to achieve instead. Zvonimir explains that while teams need space to express challenges, the format redirects energy toward envisioning a better future through solution-focused questions. The process includes validating problems, using scale questions (0-10) to assess current status, reviewing past attempts at reaching goals, and designing small experiments to move toward desired outcomes. This approach helps teams shift from problem-orientation to goal-orientation.

Self-reflection Question: How might reframing your team's persistent problems as goals change your approach to addressing them?

[Scrum Master Toolbox Podcast Recommends]

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[Scrum Master Toolbox Podcast Recommends]

About Zvonimir Durcevic

Zvonimir has worked in agile product development since 2005, holding roles such as Scrum Master, Agile Coach, IT Project, and R&D Manager. He works with teams to co-create tailored solutions to increase engagement and improve customer focus and effectiveness, enabling accelerated value delivery and rapid adaptation to change.

You can link with Zvonimir Durcevic on LinkedIn.

Download audio: https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/scrummastertoolbox/20250403_Zvonimir_Durcevic_Thu.mp3?dest-id=246429

Three Teams, One Global Stage: Meet the 2025 Imagine Cup Finalists

The journey to the Imagine Cup World Championship has been nothing short of extraordinary. After months of innovation, problem solving, and competition, three standout teams have emerged, earning their place on the global stage to compete in the finals at Microsoft Build in May. These finalists have demonstrated exceptional creativity, technical expertise, and a commitment to driving real-world impact through their innovative AI-powered solutions. 

We want to extend our heartfelt congratulations to all the incredible teams who participated in the semifinals. Your dedication, creativity, and passion for innovation are truly inspiring. Every team showcased remarkable potential and ingenuity. 

As these three incredible teams prepare for the Imagine Cup World Championship, they will receive expert mentorship to refine their pitches and enhance their products before showcasing their groundbreaking solutions on the global stage. The winning team will not only take home the prestigious Imagine Cup trophy but also receive a $100,000 USD* and a mentorship session with Microsoft Chairman and CEO Satya Nadella. Each runner-up team will receive $25,000 USD*. 

Watch the championship at Microsoft Build on May 19!

Let’s meet the teams!

Listed in alphabetical order:

Argus: Two-part device empowering individuals with vision disabilities 

Stanford University
United States

Argus is a two-part device that empowers individuals with a vision disability by aiding them in navigating the world. With a camera and compute module, it responds to voice commands and answers questions about a user’s environment, aiding with tasks like object identification, facial recognition, and navigation. The use of Wi R and a combination of edge and cloud AI, including Azure AI Speech for voice recognition and Azure OpenAI Service for image analysis, results in a lightweight device with high performance. 

Over 100 million people worldwide have a vision disability, and many experience a slow loss of independence as their condition progresses. “Both Daniel and I have grandparents with uncorrectable visual impairments, and they’re the inspiration for Argus,” said Arjun Oberoi. Arjun and Daniel understand the profound impact visual impairments have on daily life and overall well-being. “It takes just one idea to make an impact, and we believe Argus will help us make an impact on the lives of our grandparents, [and] the hundreds of millions of others with visual impairments,” said Daniel Kim.

In 2024, Argus won the Red Bull Basement US National Final. 

Meet the team: 

Arjun Oberoi – Growing up, one of Arjun’s favorite family activities was building robotics projects for FTC Robotics, which ignited his passion for the intersection of hardware and software. This hands-on experience also honed his ability to think both technically and creatively. 

Daniel Kim – As a second-generation American, Daniel's parents instilled in him a strong commitment to helping others while embracing self-expression and creativity. This foundation has inspired him to launch various social good initiatives and projects within his community. 

---

HairMatch: AI-powered hair analysis

Georgia Institute of Technology, University of North Carolina – Chapel Hill 
United States

Finding the right hair products can be a frustrating and costly challenge for women with textured hair. HairMatch, an AI-powered hair scanning mobile application, simplifies this journey by analyzing hair type, porosity, and texture to provide tailored product recommendations, step-by-step hairstyle guides, and expert advice. HairMatch uses Azure AI Foundry to host a Vision Language Model, processing image data and enhancing hair analysis.

Co-founder Alycea Adams, who once struggled to find the right products herself, was inspired to create HairMatch after building a social media following of 1.2M+ and seeing thousands of women share the same struggle. As one of the only AI-driven solutions in the natural hair space, HairMatch empowers women to embrace their curls with confidence. "It's not just hair, embracing your curls is a journey to newfound confidence," said Alycea.

Meet the team: 

Alycea Adams – Alycea found inspiration in her older brother, who fueled her ambition and planted the seed for her winner mentality. Her greatest supporter was her grandfather, who was a successful entrepreneur in Information Technology. Alycea embodies his legacy to build her own, and give back to her community, while cheering on the success of others. 

Matt Steele – While growing up, Matt spent much of his focus on swimming, yet did not become clearly talented until high school. This resulted in an appreciation of the impact of small things that build up over time, and the importance of working towards long-term goals. Matt also spent time in rural parts of Pennsylvania, where he observed the disconnect between most of the world and the impact of technology. This sparked his passion for building solutions that reach beyond major tech hubs. 

---

Signvrse: Real-time sign language translation with 3D avatars

The African Leadership University, Machakos University, Technical University of Mombasa, United States International University - Africa
Rwanda

Millions of individuals who are deaf face communication barriers that limit access to education, healthcare, employment, and mental health support. Traditional solutions, like human interpreters, are costly, geographically limited, and not always available. Signvrse bridges this gap with a platform that enables real-time translation between speech, text, and sign language. Using Azure AI Speech, spoken language is converted into text and translated into sign language using hyper-realistic 3D avatars, making communication more accessible anytime, anywhere. 

“Our goal is to create and scale one of the world’s largest and most comprehensive datasets—expanding to 20,000+ words, integrating multiple sign language dialects across the continent, and enhancing the lifelike quality of our avatars. This groundbreaking resource will drive the development of a sign language [large language model] (LLM), unlocking a wide range of applications to empower the Deaf community and bridge critical accessibility gaps, ensuring no one is left behind.” - Branice Kazira

Meet the team: 

Anthony Marugu – Growing up in Nairobi, Anthony was a curious explorer, always questioning how things worked. This passion for problem-solving led him to AI. Now, as Signvrse’s Data Scientist, he ensures AI-driven sign language translations are accurate, contextual, and culturally meaningful. 

Branice Kazira – Growing up in rural Kenya, Branice saw limited access to information but found a passion for writing and STEM. She founded Weeds4Feeds, won national STEM awards, and later, while teaching robotics, witnessed the struggles of Deaf students—sparking the idea for Signvrse. Now a Mastercard Foundation Scholar and Software Engineering student at ALU, she is committed to building inclusive technology that empowers marginalized communities. 

Daniel Phillip – Born deaf in rural Kenya, Daniel faced communication barriers, limited resources, and societal stigma. Rooted in his Luo heritage, he champions advocacy and inclusion for the Deaf community. As Signvrse’s Deaf community lead, he ensures cultural and linguistic accuracy, bridging technology with lived experiences. 

Gheida Abdala Al Mashjery – Growing up in a traditional Arab community in Kenya, Gheida saw girls’ dreams cut short by early marriage. Determined to break this cycle, she excelled in school, earned a scholarship, and founded Girls I Save, empowering young girls through education and advocacy. 

Cheer on the finalists and watch the World Championship

These teams have inspired us, and we hope they inspire you as well! Tune in to see who will win the 2025 Imagine Cup World Championship at Microsoft Build on May 19, when these teams will compete for the grand prize. Who will claim the title? We can't wait to find out! 

Join us on LinkedIn, X, Instagram, or Facebook, as we follow their journey to the championship. 

 

*Open only to enrolled high-school or college/university students 18+. For additional eligibility criteria, round start/end dates, and detailed instructions on how to participate, see the Imagine Cup Official Rules and Regulations. 

Here’s a summary with what rolled out: Create pages with Copilot in SharePoint, Viva Connections: New News experience, SharePoint agents: New usage reports, a new Table toolbar, annotation layout and tools for editing PDFs, approval workflows to any list or library, OCR for OneDrive, and more.

Plus, we recap the output of the SharePoint Hackathon - celebrating the winning submissions.

Full details and screenshots below, including our audible companion: The Intrazone Roadmap Pitstop: March 2025 podcast episode – all to help answer, "What's rolling out now for SharePoint and related technologies into Microsoft 365?"

All features listed below began rolling out to Targeted Release customers in Microsoft 365 as of March 2025 (possibly early April 2025).

Inform and engage with dynamic employee experiences

Build your intelligent intranet on SharePoint in Microsoft 365 and get the benefits of investing in business outcomes – reducing IT and development costs, increasing business speed and agility, and up-leveling the dynamic, personalized, and welcoming nature of your intranet.

 

Create pages with Copilot in SharePoint

"Paging, Copilot. Copilot. Paging, Copilot!" We're excited to announce the release of page creation with Copilot -- in SharePoint! Get the value of Copilot generative AI plus Microsoft Graph -- using your existing Word, PowerPoint, PDF, and Loop documents as the source of grounding data. This makes page creation fast and easy.

With built-in templates and design ideas, Copilot helps you create visually appealing, engaging pages while consistently meeting your organization's standards. To do this: Select the +New button located in the upper left of your SharePoint site > AND choose Page with Copilot. You then can use out-of-the-box designer-curated templates, or by entering specific instructions using the open prompt box at the top; this is a little choose-your-own adventure ‘Mad Libs’ style prompt building. Then, sit back and watch Copilot crunch through the content you pointed at to create a new page ready for your to refine in edit mode, and ultimately publish, faster!

• Learn more with FAQs and nice tips & tricks.  

 

Microsoft Viva Connections: New News feature in Microsoft Teams

We are evolving the Feed experience in Viva Connections, within Microsoft Teams. Instead of the singular Feed, you will soon see an expanded SharePoint News experience - a fresh new look that simplifies news visibility and consumption. News flows in based on sites you follow or frequently access, plus posts from people you work with, and other trending sites - always within the boundaries of news you have appropriate permissions to see. And if a news item is audience-targeted, the News feed will honor that and filter out news items. Boosted news and news from your organization's news sites will always be prioritized at the top of the News feed. It's interactive, too. So, you can like news items and save them for later.

Note: This change will be on by default and applies to Viva Connections in Teams for Windows desktop, Teams for iOS/Android, and Teams for the web, with this exception: This rollout will also include a Microsoft 365 Copilot-powered summary experience initially available only in Teams for Windows desktop. Microsoft 365 Copilot licensed users get an additional option to generate a Copilot summary of the top 10 (or fewer) news items in a person's News feed.

• Learn more.
• Roadmap ID 472018.

 

SharePoint : New usage reports through Microsoft PowerShell for the SharePoint agents trial

SharePoint and Global Admins will be able to use a Microsoft PowerShell cmdlet to review tenant-level usage data for the SharePoint agents - currently in trial through June 2025. The new PowerShell cmdlet, Get-SPOCopilotPromoUsage, will show usage data of SharePoint agents at the tenant level -- including total trial queries used, trial queries remaining, and trial queries available in tenant.

This report will show historical data starting from January 2025 when the SharePoint agents trial started. If you haven't yet signed up for the SharePoint agents pay-as-you-go trial, there's still time. The trial period lasts until June 30, 2025.

• Learn more.
• Message ID: MC1015905

 

SharePoint: New Table toolbar

The SharePoint user interface design team reviews a ton of usage data, to determine what is easy for people to find and use, and what seems challenging, or could use a boost in visibility and clarity.

So, in March, the team introduced an easier way to work with tables within the Text web part. This new Table toolbar allows authors to use more easily and refine table functionality. You'll see a menu that is always in focus when working on a table. And it's responsive design ta boot: The Table toolbar will automatically adjust by expanding or compressing based on the section layout used. When compressed, the table options move into the overflow (...) button.

Discover the new Table toolbar at the top of a table within a SharePoint Text web part.

To see this in action: Drop a Text web part on your SharePoint page and insert a new table. Within the Table toolbar, you can do all the table editing and formatting, including change layout, add/delete row/columns, and new table features like merge, split, add space before and after, and others.

Note: This new table toolbar is available when working in SharePoint and Viva Amplify. The next time you work with tables in SharePoint, you're going to find it more intuitive and faster to design the exact table you need.

• Roadmap ID 394278.

 

OneDrive and SharePoint: New annotation layout and tools for editing PDFs

The data proves it every time, people love PDFs. And we love making it easier to view and work with PDFs. We're fans of Adobe just like you. So, we've introduced a new PDF annotation layout that features a more intuitive design.

Updated annotation tools at the top of an Adobe PDF opened from within SharePoint.

All annotation tools will be in a single row at the top of the screen, to add text, draw, highlight and now includes a new type of eraser that can remove pen and highlighter annotations pixel by pixel.

You love your PDFs. We love that you love your PDFs. And now you can love annotating your PDFs with great ease and flexibility - all while maintaining the original content storage service location - SharePoint in Microsoft 365.

• Roadmap ID 483156

Teamwork updates across SharePoint team sites, OneDrive, and Microsoft Teams

Microsoft 365 is designed to be a universal toolkit for teamwork – to give you the right tools for the right task, along with common services to help you seamlessly work across applications. SharePoint is the intelligent content service that powers teamwork – to better collaborate on proposals, projects, and campaigns throughout your organization – with integration across Microsoft Teams, OneDrive, Yammer, Stream, Planner and much more.

 

Add approval workflows to any list or library in Microsoft 365

It's time to leverage the power and simplicity of lightweight approvals on any list or library -- with a few simple clicks! We all know that SharePoint and Teams seamlessly integrate across files, lists, loops, and pages. And now, we’re excited to release the latest integration. SharePoint + the Teams Approvals app bringing you fast, easy approval-tracking business solutions – to any list or library.

A single toggle gets you started - creating a new Approval column. Essentially setting the foundation for new review and approval automation. Once enabled you can specify the approver for the file or list item, submit a request which will appear in the Approvals app in Teams or can be approved directly in the document library or list. Once approved, the metadata update in the Approval status column.

Create, approve, reject, and cancel – without leaving your content or the context of your Teams-based conversations. There's a lot of smarts behind going on that keep things on track, avoid any list or library edits during review, and notifications are built in.

• Learn more.
• Roadmap ID: 420336.

 

Manage SharePoint pages using the left navigation pane

The SharePoint start page has a new experience for SharePoint pages. Not only can you create new pages, navigate to recently edited sites, and duplicate existing pages. You can now use the left navigation panel to filter pages related to various sites.

Once you click on a specific recent site, you can then create a new page for that site, right from the broader SharePoint start experience. This will save you a few clicks and keeps things in context, making it easy to navigate across sites to find and create new content.

From within the SharePoint start experience for Pages, clicking on a site name showcases pages within that site and the ability to create a page for that site.

Quick FYI: To see all SharePoint sites to which you've started or published pages, go to View all sites at the bottom of the Recently edited list. It's all there.

With this new feature and the previously mentioned pages with Copilot, or goal is to make SharePoint page creation easy and intuitive.

• Message ID: MC1042934.

 

Optical Character Recognition (OCR) for OneDrive

Images speak a thousand words - and with those words you can do so much. We are excited to announce a new capability in the Microsoft 365 admin center that allows administrators to enable OCR for OneDrive.

Enable OCR for OneDrive from within the Microsoft 365 admin center.

You'll turn on OCR for selected OneDrive groups and users or enable it for all OneDrive users within their organization. This enhancement ensures that all files become searchable, improving discoverability and supporting compliance initiatives such as eDiscovery.

Note: OCR is a pay-as-you-go feature. Turning on the OCR feature will incur cost for the organization.

• Learn more.
• Message ID: MC1041953

Related technology

Introducing the Windows roadmap

The Windows roadmap shares what features and improvements are coming to Windows 11 - to help you manage change. Use this roadmap to see what’s coming to the Windows Insider Program, what’s gradually rolling out, and what’s generally available -- with estimated release dates. 

Screenshot of the Windows Roadmap website.

You can filter by a specific version of Windows, the release channel, device type, or the latest status. The Windows roadmap provides estimated release dates and descriptions for features being released. Some features and applications may not be available in all regions or all languages. And as a feature or product release is postponed or canceled, information will be updated on this website.

So, track features like Recall, Click To Do, Improved Windows Search, Live Captions, and more - through their release cycle and onto your Windows device. Just type aka.ms/WindowsRoadmap into your browser now and take a look.

• Read the official announcement. at Introducing the Windows roadmap.
• Message ID: MC1042590

 

Introducing Researcher and Analyst in Microsoft 365 Copilot

March revealed two first-of-their-kind reasoning agents for work: Researcher and Analyst.

• Researcher helps you tackle complex, multi-step research at work—delivering insights with greater quality and accuracy than previously possible.
• Analyst thinks like a skilled data scientist, so you can go from raw data to insights in minutes. Analyst uses chain-of-thought reasoning to progress through problems iteratively, taking as many steps as necessary to refine its reasoning and provide a high-quality answer that mirrors human analytical thinking.

Each analyzes vast amounts of information with secure, compliant access to your work data—your emails, meetings, files, chats, and more—and the web to deliver highly-skilled expertise on demand.

• Learn more + deeper dives on Researcher and Analyst. 

Microsoft 365 subscribers can now experience Copilot in OneDrive

Microsoft Copilot is an AI-powered digital assistant designed to help you with a range of tasks and activities. It can create drafts of content, recommend different ways to reword something you've written, suggest and insert images or banners, create PowerPoint presentations from your Word documents, and many other helpful things.

And now, we bring new Copilot features available to subscribers on the web version of OneDrive. AKA, new Copilot value lands within our Microsoft 365 Personal and Family subscriptions. Your subscription unlocks AI credits to experience Copilot across Microsoft 365 apps and beyond.

Use Copilot within OneDrive (Microsoft 365 Personal and Family plans).

Consumers can now get more out of their OneDrive files utilizing the power of AI. You can get information to help you make decisions and get work done quickly - without opening a file. Less time in your files means more time with loved ones. Now you can summarize, compare, get questions answered,

Simply click on the Copilot button to choose from a menu of suggested actions or ask your own question. You can also select up to 5 files and click the Copilot button in the command bar to get started.

Whatever you need from your OneDrive, Copilot is just a click away within your personal world.

• Check out the getting started guide. + related blog.

 

BONUS | The SharePoint Hackathon has come to a close, with a glorious Awards Ceremony finale celebrating all the winners.

We had an overwhelming number of submissions on this hackathon, and it was a great pleasure to review the submissions during the past week. The SharePoint Hackathon was a two week long online event with 6 live streams, office hours, and competition to submit designs and solutions which were built with or for SharePoint.

We had four different official submission categories, and many submissions were valid for numerous categories. Judging was performed by the feature owners from Microsoft for their specific categories. The winners:

• Most beautiful intranet home page: Richard Plantt and Mallika Limbu.
• Most creative use of SharePoint agents: Kuntal Chakraborty, Pritam Mallick, Snehasish Das & Sudipta Kumar Basu.
• Most useful Viva Connections dashboard: Stian Svendsen, Omar Khan, Harsh Damania, and Kyrre Holstad.
• Most creative intranet with extensibility (SPFx): Fabio Franzini and Angelo Gulisano.

Congratulations to our winners. And thank you to all for being part of this event!

• Learn more.
• FULL SharePoint Hackathon video learning series.

April 2025 teasers

Psst, still here? Still scrolling the page looking for more roadmap goodness? If so, here is a few teasers of what’s to come to production next month…

• Teaser #1: Microsoft Viva Connections cards in SharePoint agents [Roadmap ID: 412621] 
• Teaser #2: Use SharePoint quick steps to automate common tasks and workflows [Message ID: MC1025215]

… shhh, tell everyone.

Helpful, ongoing change management resources

• "Stay on top of Microsoft 365 product and feature changes"
• "Microsoft 365 Message center"
• Install the Microsoft 365 Admin app; view Message Center posts and stay current with push notifications.
• Microsoft 365 public roadmap + pre-filtered URL for SharePoint, OneDrive, and related tech in Microsoft 365.

• SharePoint Facebook | Twitter | SharePoint community blog | Feedback

• Follow me to catch news and interesting SharePoint things: @mkashman; warning, occasional bad puns may fly in a tweet or two here and there.

Thanks for tuning in and/or reading this episode/blog of the Intrazone Roadmap Pitstop – March 2025. We are open to your feedback in comments below to hear how both the Roadmap Pitstop podcast episodes and blogs can be improved over time.

Engage with us. Ask those questions that haunt you. Push us where you want and need to get the best information and insights. We are here to put both our and your best change management foot forward.

Stay safe out there on the road’map ahead. And thanks for listening and reading.

Thanks for your time,

Mark Kashman – senior product manager (SharePoint/Lists) | Microsoft)

The Intrazone Roadmap Pitstop - March 2025 graphic showing some of the highlighted release features.

We’re excited to announce the topics and speakers for .NET Conf: Focus on Modernization, our latest virtual event on April 22-23, 2025! This event features live sessions from .NET and cloud computing experts, providing attendees with the latest insights into modernizing .NET applications, including technical upgrades, cloud migration, and tooling advancements.

To get ready, visit the .NET Conf: Focus on Modernization home page and click Add to Calendar so you can save the date on your calendar. From this page, on the day of the event you’ll be able to join a live stream on YouTube and Twitch. We will also make the source code for the demos available on GitHub and the on-demand replays will be available on our YouTube channel.

Learn more: https://focus.dotnetconf.net/

Why attend?

In the fast-changing technological environment we now find ourselves, it has never been more urgent to modernize enterprise .NET applications to maintain competitiveness and stay ahead of the next innovation. Updating .NET applications for the cloud is a major business priority and involves not only technical upgrades and cloud migration, but also improvements in tooling, processes, and skills. At this event, you will get the end to end insights across latest tools, innovations, and best practices for successful .NET modernization.

What can developers expect?

The event will run live for up to five hours each day, covering different aspects of .NET modernizations. Scott Hanselman will set the tone for day one with discussion of the experiences and processes to modernize .NET applications in the era of AI. This will be followed by expert sessions on upgrading .NET apps and modernizing both your apps and data to the cloud. Day two will soar higher into the clouds, with sessions to help with cloud migration, cloud development, and infusing AI into your apps. You can interact with experts and ask questions to deepen your expertise, as we broadcast live on YouTube, or Twitch.  Recordings of all sessions will be available with materials after the event.

Agenda

Here’s a quick snapshot of the schedule. Things may change, and we recommend that you please visit the event home page for the latest agenda and session times: https://focus.dotnetconf.net/agenda

 

 

Day 1 – April 22, Tuesday

 

Day 2 – April 23, Wednesday

 

Save the Date!

.NET Conf: Focus on Modernization is a free, two-day livestream event that you won’t want to miss. Tune in on April 22 and 23, 2025, ask questions live, and learn how to get your .NET applications ready for the AI revolution.

Save the date!

Stay tuned for more updates and detailed session information. We can’t wait to see you there!

 

 

 

 

The vibrant community and commercial ecosystem around Raspberry Pi helps people to bring their ideas to life. Here, student Jaeheon Shim uses a Raspberry Pi Pico W–powered e-ink display from one of our Approved Resellers to help him focus and stay on track with the demands of a packed timetable.

If you’ve got a busy schedule, then it’s all too easy to become overwhelmed. Without a good system in place, you’ll find deadlines slip, appointments are missed, and you’re constantly playing catch-up. It’s why there are so many calendar and task management apps on the market and, crucially, why Jaeheon Shim decided to take his scheduling to another level.

“As a student, staying organised is crucial for keeping up with the demands of college life,” he says. “I found myself relying on productivity apps like Google Calendar, Todoist, and Notion, but they weren’t enough. Instead, I wanted my calendar to be physically present at my workspace, updating in real time to accommodate last-minute events. I also wanted it to be aesthetically pleasing — something that would perfectly complement my workspace while being as informative as possible.”

Task master

To that end, Jaeheon devised the Inky Dashboard — effectively an e-ink display connected to a Raspberry Pi Pico W microcontroller running a bespoke UI. “I think e-ink displays are awesome. There’s just something about their crisp, paper-like quality that makes them so uniquely satisfying to look at,” he says. “I also wanted something that could sit on my desk without being a distraction; something that I could occasionally glance at but was otherwise running quietly in the background.”

At its core, Jaeheon wanted a week-by-week calendar, where daily events would be laid out in a chronological column. “That way, I could visualise my week ‘at a glance’ and mentally prepare for the upcoming days of the week,” he says, deciding to integrate his data from iCal. 

But when he later opted to integrate tasks from the Todoist app as well, to help him stay on top of his assignments and projects, he knew that he needed to compromise. “I had to shrink the calendar to only two days wide to make space for the to-do list, but in my experience, being able to see today and tomorrow is enough for almost all purposes,” he adds. 

Quick FACTS

• The dashboard remains in a low-power state
• It’s woken up by Raspberry Pi Pico’s on-board real-time clock
• Data is drawn from a custom server
• It will update every 30 minutes or so
• The project is entirely open source

To-do list

Working with a Raspberry Pi Pico W presented a learning curve for Jaeheon. “I’d never seriously worked with embedded programming before,” he says. It took numerous attempts to create the UI he wanted, having tried libraries provided by Pimoroni and developing his own UI library. “Ultimately, I ended up settling on Light and Versatile Graphics Library (LVGL), and it took about a week to figure out how to port LVGL to Pico and Pimoroni’s Inky Frame.”

In the process, he figured out how to lay out overlapping events — “that was a fun algorithm design challenge,” he says. He also needed to create a server to retrieve the latest information, since the Pico wasn’t powerful enough to fetch it on its own. But, because the microcontroller connects periodically (“no more than every 30 minutes or so”) and displays information on an e-ink screen, the project is power-efficient. It’s also rather flexible.

“The data displayed on the calendar is presented in an agnostic format by the server, so I can always choose to add different sources by editing the Python code on the server (which is way easier to work with than the C++ running the display!),” Jaeheon says. “There are also many more features I want to add, such as a widget to show a basic weather forecast. The possibilities are endless!”

The post Stay on schedule with Raspberry Pi Pico W and an e-ink dashboard appeared first on Raspberry Pi.

Astro 5.6 brings first-class astro:env and experimental session support to Cloudflare, and gives more control over prefetching.