Logan Fouts' Contrib Cal Puts Your GitHub Contributions — or Lack Thereof — On Your Desk

Developer and maker Logan Fouts has designed a way to put your GitHub contributions front and center — by visualizing them in a grid of lights on your desk, under the control of a Raspberry Pi Zero W single-board computer: the Contrib Cal.

"Contrib Cal v2 is a [GitHub] contribution tracker built around a Raspberry Pi Zero W," Fouts explains of the project. "It shows your GitHub activity using LEDs and includes a web interface for easy setup and control. The project is open, hackable, and designed for anyone interested in building their own contribution calendar."

As Fouts explains, the heart of the project is a Raspberry Pi Zero W single-board computer — by far from the most powerful device around, but well-suited to embedded projects like this thanks to the ability to run a full Linux operating system and its built-in Wi-Fi networking. This connects to a custom PCB housing a 4×7 matrix of 28 individually-addressable RGB LEDs.

Once connected to a network and synchronized to the user's GitHub account, the matrix lights up with a look at their current contribution history — though, Fouts notes, it's also capable of other visualizations, including low-resolution weather animations. The software includes a web interface and customizable scripts, running atop the Debian-based Raspberry Pi OS Lite.

Fouts is considering a production run of the device, and has opened registrations of interest with no commitment on the Contrib Cal website; for those who would like to build their own, instructions are available on Instructables with source code and hardware design files on GitHub under an unspecified license and 3D print files on Thingiverse under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike license.