Selfhosted

I recently found the author clock, and it inspired me to do my own version. I won't actually bother with the clock function; just an e-ink display in my living room I can control. Something I can feed whatever text I like and have it rotate periodically. From a quick look around, I'm finding Waveshare, Inkbox, and TRMNL. I'm looking for something I can have some degree of remote control over so I don't have to go plug it in constantly. It seems like all three can achieve this. I don't love the looks of the Inkbox or TRMNL, and they're more expensive. The wooden housing on the author clock would look really nice in my space and I'd love to recreate that. But I wanted to see how difficult it is to frame up, set up, and maintain a Waveshare before I dive in. Particularly since it seems that you need to integrate a pi for those.