Specs & specifics
The technical bit.
Numbers, dimensions, and what arrives in the box. For people who want to know exactly what they're putting on their desk.
One screen, four buttons, no distractions.
A 5.83" 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.
Drawings for now. Photographs of the real hardware go here as the first units come off the bench — no renders standing in.
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. Black anodized aluminum bezel on the front, black plastic back housing behind. A small steel plate in the base gives the device weight; it sits like a paperweight.
- Display
- 5.83" GDEY0583F41 e-paper · 648 × 480 px · 4-color (BWRY)
- 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
- ~150 × 125 × 35 mm (pre-prototype estimate, sized for the new 4:3 panel · final number lands once the first unit is on the bench)
- Weight
- ~280 g (most of which is steel ballast in the base)
- Materials
- Black anodized aluminum bezel, black plastic back housing, 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 fifty ship.
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 · beta
Compatible — pending campus verification as of May 2026
Canvas works automatically through the browser plugin. Blackboard, D2L Brightspace, and Moodle work once you add the iCal calendar feed your school publishes. We test each campus before promoting it to the confirmed list above; the more pre-orders we see from a campus, the sooner it gets verified.
Canvas
- University of Michigan
- The Ohio State University
- Penn State University
- University of Washington
- University of Texas at Austin
- University of Florida
- Indiana University
- University of California, Los Angeles
- University of California, Berkeley
- Northwestern University
- University of Pennsylvania
- New York University
- University of Maryland, College Park
Blackboard · Blackboard Ultra
- Drexel University
- Stony Brook University
- George Washington University
- University of South Carolina
D2L Brightspace
- Purdue University
- Michigan State University
- University of Nebraska–Lincoln
- University of Minnesota Twin Cities
Moodle
- California State University campuses
- City University of New York (select campuses)
Margin works with any school running Canvas, Blackboard, D2L Brightspace, or Moodle. Calendar events sync from anything that publishes an iCal feed — Apple, Google, Outlook, Proton, Notion, and most schools' official academic calendars. Don't see yours? Tell us →
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) (username/password authentication)
- 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 fifty ship. 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)
- Data path
- Browser plugin writes to Todoist; device reads from Todoist (no Margin server in the path · we never see your task titles)
- Requirements
- Free Todoist account (why we picked Todoist)
- Updates
- Daily over-the-air, 4 AM local · signed manifests · automatic rollback on failure
- Privacy
- No analytics. No telemetry. No assignment data on any server we run.
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.
- Price
- Expected $189 (final number set at the Kickstarter launch)
- 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 the first fifty ship
Tested before it ships. Numbered on the back.
Join the waitlist