Battery Backup for Skylight Calendar

The Skylight family calendar is wonderful for organizing your family's plans, but when mounted to the wall or tethered to one outlet it can sometimes be a pain to easily enter information. With a few simple additions it is possible to turn this into a portable (in the home) device. I, unfortunately, did not get many pictures of the build process but thought I would share the final result. There are not too many steps.

- Skylight calendar (you probably already have this if you are here)
Skylight

- Raspberry Pi UPS (I actually found the older one to work better, my newer V3 was making a lot of noise) - the Amazon link is to the older version. It also comes with a nice enclosure/mount
Raspberry Pi UPS

- Micro USB to USB A cable - you probably have an old one somewhere... But here's a link if you need it.
Micro USB to USB A

- Double sided sticky foam or Velcro
3M Adhesive Foam

- Some sort of cable management - I used what I had lying around but there are more elegant solutions. Alternatively, you could try and find a short power cable for the skylight.
Cable Tie Mounts
New Power Cord

- Small screw driver

Unpack your Raspberry Pi UPS and plug in battery if it's not already plugged in. Depending on the UPS there may be more than one spot for the battery. It just plugs in with a little JST connector. If you would like, secure the battery to the bottom of the UPS with adhesive foam.

I don't have any pictures of this because I made an enclosure out of an old plastic box. The UPS should come with all the hardware required for the mount. Follow the instructions provided with the UPS. (If yours didn't come with a mount then fell free to use any sort of enclosure you like. I think my box used to hold thumb tacks. I just drilled holes in the bottom, cut away part of the side to allow for the cables and placed my mounting pegs inside.)

Using either Velcro or adhesive foam, sick the mount to the back of the Skylight. Try to not cover any vent holes.

Plug in all the cables. Secure the Skylight power cable to the calendar. Cable management can be done many ways. I used a screw in cable holder because that's what I could find. There are plenty of more elegant solutions. The cleanest of which would be purchasing a shorter power cable (I think I linked the correct one above, but the barrel connector size didn't perfectly match what I measured with my calipers).
If I could have found some, I would have used zip tie cable mounts like those linked above.

You now have the ability to unplug the USB cable from the wall or from the UPS and carry your portable Skylight calendar to your favorite spot.