The technical bit.

One screen, four buttons, no distractions.

A 5.79" four-color e-paper panel in a hand-finished case, sized to sit beside a laptop without competing with it. Always on. Refreshes every thirty minutes — the rest of the time, it draws zero current and stays exactly where it was.

What's inside.

A Raspberry Pi Zero 2 W behind the panel — quiet, low-power, and capable of running the dashboard for years on a USB-C cable. Aluminum bezel on the front, 3D-printed body in matte cream behind. A small steel plate in the base gives the device weight; it sits like a paperweight.

Display

5.79" GDEM075F52 e-paper · 792 × 272 px · 4-color (BWRY) — Hardback edition uses 7-color Inky Impression, see below

Refresh time

~18 seconds, every 30 minutes — between refreshes the panel draws zero current

Processor

Raspberry Pi Zero 2 W (1GHz quad-core, 512MB)

Wireless

2.4GHz Wi-Fi · WPA2 Personal & Enterprise (eduroam) · Bluetooth 4.2

Buttons

4 × Kailh Choc tactile switches — cycle module, switch view, mark complete, advance page

Indicator

Single red LED — blinks during refresh, solid for a second when complete

Power

USB-C, 5V · ~0.4W average · ~2W peak during refresh

Dimensions

190 × 135 × 35 mm — roughly the size of a small hardcover book

Weight

~280 g — most of which is steel ballast in the base

Materials

Anodized aluminum bezel, SLA-printed cream body, steel base plate

What arrives.

Hand-packed in kraft cardboard. No plastic clamshells. No "quick-start guide" with stock photos. Just the device, the cable, and a single folded sheet of cream paper that explains setup in fourteen lines.

Not in the box: no power adapter (most desks have a spare USB-C plug). No mounting hardware (it's a paperweight). No printed manual beyond the setup card — the rest of the documentation will live online once the first batch ships.

Schools that work.

Margin pulls assignments from the LMS your school already uses. We test against each platform on each campus before adding it to the supported list — what works in Canvas at one school sometimes breaks at another.

• University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign Canvas · Calendar
• Northern Illinois University Blackboard Ultra · beta
• Your school? Coming with batch one

Margin works with any school running Canvas, Blackboard Ultra, D2L Brightspace, or Moodle — but until we've confirmed it on your specific campus we list it as in-progress. Tell us your school → and we'll prioritize it for the next batch.

Plug in, pick a network, done.

First boot starts a small captive Wi-Fi network called margin-setup. Connect to it from your phone, pick your school's network from the list, enter your campus credentials, and the device reboots into its normal life. Total setup time is around ninety seconds.

Power input

USB-C, 5V · works with any phone or laptop charger

Idle draw

~0.4 W — roughly a tenth of a Wi-Fi router

Network

2.4GHz Wi-Fi · WPA2 Personal · WPA2 Enterprise (eduroam) — certificate-based campus auth supported

Setup

Captive portal on first boot · no app required — phone or laptop browser, ~90 seconds

Recovery

Hold all four buttons for 10 seconds to reset

Quietly updated. Quietly open.

Margin runs a small Linux-based dashboard built on a public theme protocol. Updates check once a day, around 4 AM local time, and apply only if the integrity check passes. You'll see nothing — the device just refreshes with the new version on the next regular cycle.

The five themes that ship in the box are the start, not the end. The theme protocol is open: anyone can write their own theme, and we're considering a small gallery for community themes after the first batch ships. If that's interesting to you, sign up for the developer list when it opens.

Operating system

Linux (Raspberry Pi OS Lite, headless)

Dashboard

Python · open theme protocol — five themes ship by default

Updates

Daily over-the-air, 4 AM local · signed manifests · automatic rollback on failure

Privacy

No analytics. No telemetry. Your assignment data passes through one private relay we control and is never sold or analyzed.

The boring trust bit.

We back every device with a one-year limited warranty against manufacturing defects. If something breaks in normal use within the first year, we repair or replace it — no rhetorical hoops, no proof-of-purchase scavenger hunt.

Warranty

1 year, limited — covers manufacturing & component defects

Returns

30 days, full refund — device must arrive in working condition; you cover return shipping

Repairs

We repair them ourselves, in small batches

Right to repair

Schematics and case STLs published after first batch ships