I was gifted a Tidbyt. These gadgets are ok, not super useful. Just consumption for consumption sake
this post was submitted on 23 Jan 2026
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A LED matrix with audio and home assistant integration. ...what for?
So... a screen
With really low resolution
And talking AI.
I saw this use-case and was immediately interested. This hangs near my front door so I know what’s coming. This particular one has some limitations, but I think the low-res nature of this class forces some nice design decisions.
Little devices like this are popular amongst some Diabetics for displaying their continuous glucometer data (I built something similar using an eink screen and the Dexcom home assistant integration). It's fun to see what people use these for!
My mom recently found out she has diabetes, and doing something like this for her I think would make life nicer. How did you manage to build something like this?
I can't really give you a step-by-step guide, but here's the gist of how I did it: I have a dexcom CGM, and use the dexcom share functionality in the app to sync the CGM data to a Home Assistant plug in. From there, the blood glucose data is treated like any other sensor value in Home Assistant, so the sky is the limit.
How you could implement this for your mom would depend on what brand of CGM she can get, and the level of tech aversion or savvy she is. xDrip and Nightscout are excellent projects which would also help you make something that uses or displays CGM data, if you didn't want to use Home Assistant.
Ahhh, honestly this was a lot more helpful than you probably know, so thank you very much for sharing <3.
Ok great! Best of luck and have fun.
Thanks for the insight. That's a really awesome use case: near real-time health tracker data.
I guess it's cool, but why not a regular display? The LED array's 2:1 aspect ratio (128x64) is kind of constraining.
Because of style. Some people like this. A couple of years ago I'd have bought this because it's a neat looking gadget. Now I don't have money for these unnecessary items.
To take myself as an example ….
- all smart home stuff is arguably a gimmick. None of it is necessary, but for some of us it can add value or interest.
- the resolution is plenty for many applications
- I always liked the idea of a moving ticker for status or info, like the stock ticker. I assume this could
- I always wanted a clock large enough to read without my glasses, without all the crap on the cheap ones, or maybe configurable to my choice of crap
- I’m gradually putting together a house status alert system, and this is so much more expressive than the colored LEDs I’m looking at so far
- this is so much more interesting, more of a statement than a simple screen
- it’s local. We’re not locked into some god awful vendor portal
- someone was creative, had an idea, packaged it nicely, and offered it to the world. I want to support that, encourage more of it
I’m not sure if I’ll get one but it’s definitely tempting
For a clock or ticker, the 1:2 aspect ratio and 64x128 resolution are way suboptimal. You want something like 16x64 or 16x128 with bigger leds. I got crap free LED clock with 2" tall digits a while back if that is of any interest. Not that configurable though.
Cool stuff but with a price of 279$ upward its hard to do the jump if i have to configure everything myself.