I just wanted a desk clock I accidentally built a Home Assistant dashboard

1. The Unexpected Device I wasn’t trying to build anything. I just wanted a desk clock. Something small, clean, and with Wi-Fi so it would always have the correct time. No tinkering, no integrations, no dashboards. Just something I could plug in, place on my desk, and forget about. What I ended up buying was the GeekMagic Ultra on Amazon. The ad marketed it as a generic “smart weather clock,” which sounded close enough to what I needed. The design is nice, the screen is sharp, and on paper it looks like a slightly more capable version of a normal digital clock. Out of the box, that’s exactly what it feels like. You connect to it using its own Wi-Fi network, then it provides you with a web interface so you can configure it to connect to your Wi-Fi. It shows time, weather, and a few widgets, and generally behaves like a polished consumer device. But after a few minutes of using it, something feels off. The customization is limited. You can change what’s displayed, but not how it works. I