Ident reads your airline roster and shows what actually matters: your next duty, your report time, the sector you're flying — and a live estimate of when you'll walk through the front door.
Everything is driven by your real duty schedule. Times are stored in UTC and shown in whichever zone you prefer.
Point it at your crew calendar (.ics) once. It re-checks every 30 minutes, so a roster change appears on the wall by itself. You can also upload a roster PDF.
Day off, standby, next duty, reported, airborne, turnaround, heading home — the screen changes to suit, instead of showing the same thing all day.
on-chocks → debrief → walk → commute
The bit your family actually asks about. Tunable, and it sharpens as the duty progresses.
While you're airborne it can follow the real sector — actual times and ETA — so the landing and home estimates follow reality, not the schedule.
A four-sector day shows every destination, not just the first — NTE/BOD — with report time and sector count on a button press.
Your roster lives on your device and is never sent to us. There's no account to create and no cloud service holding your schedule.
Ident drives Pimoroni's Inky Impression colour e-paper panels. E-paper holds its image with no power, has no backlight to glow at night, and is readable in direct sunlight. Every layout adapts to the panel you choose — nothing is stretched or cropped.
The sweet spot. Big enough to read across a kitchen, wide enough for route maps and the full duty timeline. Six colours, Spectra 6.
Recommended
Compact and the cheapest way in. Ideal on a desk or by the front door. Same software, same styles, less wall.
Budget pick
A genuine wall piece. Reads from anywhere in the room and makes the route maps worth looking at. The most expensive part by some way.
Statement
The original panel Ident was built on, with seven colours including orange. Pimoroni no longer sell it — still fully supported if you already own one.
DiscontinuedEvery style shows the same duty, and every one adapts to the panel you own. Swap between them from the control panel, or cycle them with a button on the side of the frame.
Split-flap departure board. Big route, landing time, home time, progress along the bottom.
Six colour-headed tiles: flight, route, landing, home, status with progress, and time to run.
One enormous destination code and the two times that matter. Nothing else.
The whole duty as a single bar — report, each sector, then home — with a NOW marker.
Mechanical flip-tile lettering, like an old station clock.
Dot-matrix lettering in the style of an airport gate sign.
Classic yellow-on-black departures grid. The most legible at distance.
Softer railway-platform palette for rooms where a black panel would shout.
White, gridded and restrained. Looks like a poster rather than a gadget.
Instrument-panel colours and layout. Familiar if you spend your day behind one.
Ident is software. You buy the parts yourself — no markup from us, and nothing proprietary — then follow the illustrated build guide.
It cannot see 5GHz networks at all. If your router only broadcasts 5GHz, or your network hides both bands behind a single name and steers devices to 5GHz, the Zero 2 W will fail to connect and there is no software fix. Check before you buy — and if in doubt, choose one of the dual-band boards below.
| Board | 2.4GHz | 5GHz | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Pi Zero 2 W | Yes | No | Cheapest and smallest, and fine on a dual-band router that still broadcasts 2.4GHz. Needs a 40-pin header soldered unless you buy the pre-soldered “WH” version. |
| Pi 3 Model B+ | Yes | Yes | Dual-band and has Ethernet. Bulkier behind the frame, but a safe choice on awkward networks. |
| Pi 4 Model B | Yes | Yes | Dual-band, Ethernet, plenty quick. Runs warmer and needs a USB-C supply. |
| Pi 5 | Yes | Yes | Overkill for this, but works. Needs a 5V/5A USB-C supply. |
| Zero 2 W + USB Wi-Fi | Yes | Yes | A dual-band USB adapter with Linux support, via a micro-USB OTG adapter. Cheapest 5GHz route, but the fiddliest. |
Things worth knowing before you spend money.
Colour e-paper takes around 30 seconds to redraw, so Ident updates when something changes — not every second. If you want a live ticking display, this isn't it.
Built and tested against easyJet eCrew calendar feeds. Other airlines' formats may need work — ask us before buying if you fly elsewhere.
No soldering if you buy the right parts, but you will flash an SD card and follow a guide. Budget an unhurried hour.