The Steam Machine's swappable front panel just got a very useful upgrade that Valve has put out for free under an MIT License. Called the Inkterface, the e-ink faceplate replaces the stock panel with a small Bluetooth-connected display.
NaKyle Wright is the person behind this project, who has published all the design, CAD, and documentation for this under Valve's SteamHardware group on GitLab.
Wright has been working on this since at least October last year, with the repository covering everything you'd need to actually build the thing.
What's included?
You get a full bill of materials which includes an Adafruit ESP32 Feather, an eInk Breakout Friend, a 5.83 inch monochrome panel, plus assorted screws and magnets. The repo also includes STEP and STL files for 3D printing, a pin by pin wiring guide, and both a video and PDF walkthrough for assembly.
Finish the build and you get a panel that clips onto the Steam Machine's chassis with magnets, the same way the stock faceplates do, then pairs with the system over Bluetooth once you've installed the companion service.
The mockups for Inkterface's companion app.
That last bit is still under development, but once it's live on Steam (listing redirects to homepage), it will let you find Inkterface faceplates over Bluetooth and choose what shows up on its display. Whether that's live hardware stats or anything else the panel supports.
Related to that, the Inkterface comes with a handful of system statistics collectors, so you are not stuck with a dumb display with no metrics to show. If there's something else you'd rather track instead, the code is open enough that you can add it yourself.
Start building
The Inkterface repository has the actual build guide, which is backed up by a full assembly PDF and a video walkthrough for anyone who'd rather watch than read.
And, thanks to this being open source, any third-party accessory vendor can theoretically build new faceplates based on this. This only makes the case for open hardware that much stronger.
There's also news of JSAUX teasing a similar accessory since late last year. A swappable e-ink faceplate alongside a LCD and dot matrix version, with the launch happening sometime in 2026.
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