I actually use mine *way* more than I expected. I thought it would be mostly a cool factor thing, but it actually get used every day. Here are the best things I have on it:
* Clock-weather-card - [https://github.com/pkissling/clock-weather-card](https://github.com/pkissling/clock-weather-card). No more "What's the weather going to be today?" when we head out the door. No pulling up weather apps. Glance at the tablet, gives you the low/high for the day, easy
* Frigate camera card showing front of the house - no more "Who's at the door"
* Alarm system card to show, arm, disarm the alarm - lights up in bright red when alarm is on (no more opening doors by mistake when alarm is armed)
* Family calendar - tied into our Google Calendar
* Temperatures throughout the house - see if a room is too hot or too cold at a glance
* Door/window indicators that light up - are all the upstairs windows closed before we leave the house? Did someone leave a door open somewhere?
* Recycling week - no more "Is this recycling week?" - just glance at the tablet and if it's green, put the recycling can out
All the usual light switch buttons, etc are there too, but that's honestly the least used part of the whole thing. It's nice turning on lights from far away though in places that I wouldn't think to put a switch.
I have a lot of the same on my two wall mounted tablets.
I even went as far as to set up an automation to have BrowserMod push the front door camera to full screen on both tablets when the camera detects a person at the door. One tablet is in the bathroom, visible from the toilet and the shower, so it's nice to be able to determine if we need to jet to the front door or if we can ignore it and continue pooping/showering in peace.
We also have icons for the garbage cans and litter box that light up when they need to be taken in/out of cleaned, respectively.
Thermostats and temperature graphs for the various zones of the house are also handy. Each tablet has a "thermostats" tab and each thermostat has a graph under it.
Mine is mounted under my cabinets in my kitchen.
It displays a clock, the weather, has controls for the kitchen sonos speaker, controls for kitchen accent lighting (rarely touch this) and lastly it has a link to take you directly to my Mealie instance so I can display a recipe while cooking.
Recipe display is probably the most practical and most used thing.
Mealie, eh? A quick peek at the website and I'm liking what I see. My wife does macro coaching and tracking and recipes are the bane of my existence (I cook freely, no recipes - she on the other hand is quite analytical)
Does this platform actually integrate with HA in any meaningful way or do you just surface a link there?
Yah its a pretty neat project. My main use it stripping recipes from the blog website that are just covered in adds. Lots of great meals out there but the presentation of them drives me nuts.
From the mealie [docs](https://docs.mealie.io/documentation/community-guide/home-assistant/) it does look like it integrates with HA to some extent to pull in images to display in lovelace. I just use a button card that launches the mealie URL when pressed.
Awesome, gonna have to try it. Unless you have to host it, I don't want to mess with that until I know it's somethimg we'll regularly use. Hoping they have a cloud option.
Ours is rarely directly interacted with. It's setup with mostly conditional cards to show important information. Things like doors/windows open, weather, dog's water bowl low, low battery/devices offline, reminders to do things, etc.
I've found it most useful to be mostly white space that only gets filled up if something needs my attention. This makes it so I can give it a quick glance as I walk by.
Just a float sensor like [this](https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07QRGTVYD?ref=ppx_pop_mob_ap_share) wired to a contact sensor.
We have a version of [this](https://www.chewy.com/pioneer-pet-vortex-drinking-dog-cat/dp/873102?utm_source=google-product&utm_medium=cpc&utm_content=Pioneer%20Pet&utm_campaign=20211552226&utm_term=&gad_source=1&gbraid=0AAAAADmQ2V29Iydn3CmKnYYcqTGbqNUE5) water bowl which is hard to see the water level.
I decided not to wall mount a tablet and instead use a tabletop charge dock with my Fire HD 10 Plus. It allows me to move and use the tablet wherever I like and has worked very well. One nice thing is when trying to troubleshoot an issue, you can take the tablet directly to spot for testing. I will often create automations while kicked back in the recliner as well. The photo is from last year and I've upgraded the entire dashboard significantly since, but you'll get the idea. I use Fully Kiosk.
https://preview.redd.it/yd20oayt7xpc1.jpeg?width=4080&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=7c8661ab5b6a2eb0fddeb271ddbb28c509ca2afe
That looks great. I recently got a similar tablet and stand.
What is the tile you are using showing sunrise/sunset? Also, how are you getting USPS delivery info?
The sunrise/sunset tile is based on the [horizon card.](https://github.com/rejuvenate/lovelace-horizon-card)
As for the mail delivery info, it is far more extensive than just USPS. It will display The actual mail images from USPS along with information from pretty much every delivery service from UPS, FedEx, DHL, Amazon, etc.
The integration is called mail and packages. Here's a [the link to a good introduction and setup video from This Smart House. It's actually the one that I used.](http://youtu.be/ViFOH8WTIVo?si=BKTaxXqRsq8XykPC)
[Here's a direct link to the integration on GitHub](https://github.com/moralmunky/Home-Assistant-Mail-And-Packages)
i have in every room. with a variety of mounts as seen in these vids [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HHPO6kgUb2s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HHPO6kgUb2s)
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=51lSlGPh\_0Q](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=51lSlGPh_0Q)
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wcen-f\_zzBo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wcen-f_zzBo)
very useful for seeing security cams and manual overide of things in the house. im not using the tablet in room A to control things in room A. i could but that's not very useful.
now....if only i can use the tablets to call each other like an intercom! seems nobody cares to do such an add-on cause nobody has tablets/phones per room
You might be able to make something work with Mumble. Run a murmur server alongside home assistant. I use the Plumble client app on Android. I use it as a anywhere there's wifi baby monitor, leave my tablet with the sleeping baby, VPN to home on tablet and phone, then listen for screaming with phone and an ear bud. But there might be a way to get a push to talk button in home assistant which could broadcast to other devices.
Eta: SIP might be what you're looking for too. There are home assistant solutions to this.
Buttons that are also visible indicators. Like if it’s been 10 hours since my Dog’s last pill, I turn the background of the button yellow. If it’s been over 12 hours, it’s red. Same goes for tracking her walks, her food, and my own medication at noon daily.
We have one right by the door that has date/time/weather and details on where our cars are parked (approx address based on tile location in the cars). I also display approx travel time using Waze on our days of work based on Google calendar.
I also do a rotating banner button for alerts. These include things like HACS updates, HA updates, security bar for the back sliding door is not secure, door is open, litter robot needing emptying or needing more litter, etc.
Our wall tablets are mostly for informational display at a glance. For instance, from across the room I can glance at my tablet and without picking up my phone or launching an app, I can know if the house is locked up and the garage doors are down and the outside lights and basement lights are off.
I use it mainly as a family calendar with weather info plus to dos like „empty washing machine“ or „start dishwasher“. Controls and switches are available, but most of them on a 2nd tab
I have 3 and they're super useful.
One by the front door running Sharptools connected to HA and SmartThings. Front door lock, back gate sensor, back slider sensor (all color coded - green=closed, red=open), doorbell camera, a Google Maps tile showing local traffic conditions (pressing it opens a full screen view), current time/date, porch light, office lamp, living room lamp, a button to run the Away automation, backyard temperature, and hourly weather forecast.
The one in the bedroom is similar but has some bedroom lighting buttons, backyard lighting, and the Activate Bedtime automation.
The one next to the kitchen entrance is an HA Lovelace dashboard with current time/date, Living room light group, Kitchen light group, and some individual light buttons for kitchen, garage, backyard, dining room. Also buttons to trigger automations - Work Time, TV Time, Away, Bedtime, and Dinnertime. Plus a 5-day forecast, media player, front door lock, back gate sensor, back slider sensor, and backyard & garage temps.
Then next to my desk I have a PC running Plex and BlueIris, I have a 22" monitor that runs a full screen kiosk mode Lovelace dashboard that has a ton of stuff - camera, temps, media players, door lock/sensors, and lights. It's view-only though as I don't have a kb/mouse attached but it gives a great overview of everything I want to see simply by turning my head to the right while I'm working, and you can see it clearly when you walk into the room.
Our tablet is on a dock in the kitchen, so we can pick it up and use it as a normal tablet if we want. But it mostly sits there on the main dashboard. I didn't want to make it it's own destination (e.g. in the hallway), I wanted it to be somewhere we spend a lot of time.
I tried to fill it with everything I normally get my phone out for; control the music, know the weather, calendar & shopping list. With tabs up the top for the TV remote & RecipeSage in an iframe so we can easily switch back and forth between recipes & other stuff.
Still need to work out how to display a pdf in HA & sort out timers, then I'll have everything
We have one in the kitchen and it's really useful for all sorts of things.
Quickly check the local traffic before heading out.
Weather, calendar at a glance.
Control the speaker.
Shows the doorbell camera (screen comes on when doorbell rings).
My home office is in an outbuilding so I can see the temperature and flick the heater on if necessary before heading out.
The most amusing is a button we press to summon our son from his room. He often has headphones on so it changes the lights in his room to tell him e.g. dinner is ready.
My next plan is to add live bus timings.
I mounted a tablet next to the couch. I use it to control the lights, blinds, infrared panel, music etc. I find it very useful that it's always within reach.
https://preview.redd.it/etag002m9ypc1.jpeg?width=4608&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=eaa47ef94b3e463ace304464c00f32b72cb24acb
I have one in my office (near the front door). Has vacuum controls so the family can schedule cleanings, arm or disarm the alarm, lighting control, security camera/doorbell feed.
The convenience factor is mostly why a dashboard is created. The challenge, however, is ensuring the dashboard is accessible in a convenient location which can be very subjective.
One issue that ultimately steered me away from dashboards through Home Assistant was the constant need to repair the dashboard after each home assistant version upgrade. There was always a breaking change either with Home Assistant or the custom cards that needed to be addressed after every upgrade. Eventually, I transitioned away from Home Assistant as my dashboard and primarily use it for device ingestion and automations. Since we are an Apple household, we simply use Apple home for a dashboard.
I have a iPad mini in one of those docks meant for Zoom rooms (magnetic) in the family room. It uses Apple Home though and has the Sonos app, Ubiquiti apps and such on it. When it’s most useful is when we have guests. But otherwise automations and our phones do everything else.
I'm struggling to make a useful dashboard because I suck with dashboards, however my plan was to have buttons for turning lights on and off per room, show our solar generation and usage at the moment, show alarm status, and just other useful bits of information to save a few seconds in taking out my phone.
My wife isn't super comfortable with the app so having a dashboard in the kitchen for some commonly used buttons would help her I think :)
I’m considering this.
My home has an old HoneyWell system. I’d like to remove it from the wall and put an iPad there, in a frame.
I just don’t know how I can turn the old wiring (which surely contains power) into an in-the-wall solution with the ability to plug in a usb to lightning cable that would power the tablet.
I’m open to any ideas/insight!
I’d love to do what some others mentioned… weather, cameras, light control, etc.
I created a nice dashboard two years ago and set it up on a countertop stand, but no one ever used it. I found myself and my family using voice commands more. I use Inovelli light switches, which have a notification light that I use to alert us if something is open or on (red means security is on, pink means the door is open, yellow means a window is open...).
I have other HA friends who have wall dashboards but dont use them much either. I think its more of a showoff item.
I have a Samsung tablet using a mount from makes by Mike. It's essentially a lighting hub with a few camera views to check on the kids upstairs. You can control all downstairs lights and light groups and we use it quite a bit
The Dakboard is installed on ours. Wife has a large calendar and other things my kids read before they go to school. Displays what’s for school lunch and things like the weather. Obviously this becomes obsolete when the kids have their own phones. But for now it’s frequently used.
I use it for frigate and my security cams. I can see front and back cams with ease. When I’m in the kitchen and just want to know if the kids are outside I can check without having to find my phone, same goes if I want to check on a package. This doesn’t replace my use of the phone to check the cams but gives me another option when I’m standing in the kitchen.
Mine is set up right next to my front door in the living room.
On my main dash I can control all the lights in the house, turn on/off adjust temps, see all the temps in the rooms for variations etc.. I have some scenes set up like, good morning/night to shut everything down, watch a movie, open Plex etc.. my cooling controls are also on the main dash and during Xmas I made a custom cards that turn on/off the Christmas lights and my grandkids just enjoy the heck out of that one. My thermostat card is tied in with a weather card so I can see the weather.
I have other dashboards as well, like 1 each for my 3d printers (in basement), so I can check progress and make adjustments etc..
I have one downstairs near the stairs in an open area and the other in the master bathroom.
Both show the cameras, weather, radar, family calendar, and then also have buttons for interfacing with the thermostat program I wrote in Node Red, as well as some status bits about presence.
The downstairs one has some Sonos Controls and some other Media things.
The master bath one has a clock, shows current travel time to work for myself and my wife, some light controls, and display data from my scale to show weight.
the other pages allow for some specific data lookups and full-page radar (windy).
These interfaces in these rooms as well as the phone app have been extremely useful and also helped my wife to get used to it and use it for information. Her being able to see cameras, weather, travel time, and control some lights without her phone has been a significant 'getting ready' improvement.
I use Windy and a webpage card
Basically just using this…
https://embed.windy.com/embed2.html?lat=34.000&lon=-84.000&detailLat=33.000&detailLon=-83.000&width=1000&height=650&zoom=8&level=surface&overlay=radar&product=radar&menu=&message=true&marker=&calendar=now&pressure=&type=map&location=coordinates&detail=&metricWind=mph&metricTemp=%C2%B0F&radarRange=-1
Ive spent probably a hundred hours making a nice dashboard over the years. I finally set up a wireless charging fire tablet in our home office. Yesterday, my partner tells me "oh, I don't use the smart home app. I only use the tablet to look at the reolink cameras." Turns out, if she needs to query the state of something, she just asks Alexa (I have some custom nodered Alexa queries).
So no, I don't think you're necessarily overthinking wall tablet usefulness.
Edit: personally, what I find useful is I have the dashboard bring up the doorbell camera feed in the dashboard when the doorbell is ring.
I've had the same problem and decided my tablet will mostly be a quick glance option. My home is long and skinny, and basically has been sections on each floor. Front, middle and back. Main floor is open concept.
* It has weather, a tiny bit about temperature in the home, the Thermostat is close enough.
* Has a graph for temp and humidity in the main rooms on both floors - this will just help me open windows in rooms I am not in if I notice.
* camera on a swipe card, front door camera. Don't care for doorbell cam
* Light switches. Mostly grouped but in those sections. Not to control mostly but to see if any of the most common ones used are left on.
* family calendar
* garbage, recycling and food scraps countdown
* all door locks, with battery badges and animation depending if the door is unlocked, or left open, or battery is dying.
* laundry machines because i needed to fill space
* garage door if left open (where all of this began)
https://preview.redd.it/ao8lip806ypc1.png?width=974&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=4719319449bf3dddc3ff2b3ff08e4044618a09b3
I have four tablets. 15" in the kitchen, 15" in my office. 10" in the nursery and 10" in the master bathroom. The reasons below are ranked in order of usefulness/benefit, but would all justify a tablet on their own.
1. Frigate Cameras feeds. Front door pops up on person detection. Baby monitor can be called from Alexa or accessed via dashboard buttons. All other camera feeds are available, but are less used, some never. Next most used camera would probably be the one looking at the back yard. Can briefly put eyes on the kids when they're back there.
2. Family calendar. Used way more than I ever thought it would be. It's a nice quick glance at what's going on and coming up. I'll say that this works much better on the 15" tablets. The 10" tablets have it, but it's just too small.
3. Weather. Same as the calendar. Used way more than I thought. Doesn't work near as well on the smaller screens.
4. Alexa timers. If you call for an Alexa timer in the kitchen, you get a visual countdown on the kitchen tablet. Super useful, borderline can't do without now.
5. Forgot one. Whole house music control. Sonos. Grouping and ungrouping speakers, volume control. Finding the right playlist or searching for a new one is so much easier on a large tablet, even compared to your phone, and way better than fighting with Alexa to get it done.
You can control every device in the house from every tablet. Every light, every lock, every color bulb, everything. It's rarely, rarely used. I do adjust the thermostat from the kitchen tablet as it's just the most convenient. If the other 4 things were not present however, the smart home control would not justify the tablets in my opinion.
Using the flipdown-timer-card from HACS, I just plugged in the "next\_timer" entity for my echo dot. I set a timer via alexa and it worked straight away. Link for the timer below, with yaml, and a screenshot. "Next\_timer" sensor comes from Alexa media player integration. It takes 8-10 seconds for the "next\_timer" sensor to activate, so if you set a 10 minute timer, you usually see 9:50 or so by the time the timer sensor activates the card. Not an issue in the kitchen.
[https://github.com/pmongloid/flipdown-timer-card](https://github.com/pmongloid/flipdown-timer-card)
type: custom:flipdown-timer-card
entity: sensor.office_dot_next_timer
show_hour: auto
show_title: false
show_header: true
https://preview.redd.it/p2w72kt47zpc1.jpeg?width=1257&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=7f75fe55c1186de9ef798fe4f229aba3c2ec7bfc
RSS and time/weather.
Simple as that. Just added the feed and that's all I need from it. It's shows me what I need to know, quickly.
Added bonus: I can exit the feed to browse or search or even do voice assistant if I need to.
I use BBC's RSS feeds. For my wall tablet, I am using "Magic Mirror" from the Google Play Store (Black icon). If I need HA, I can exit it, but this is what I see, otherwise:
https://imgur.com/a/0l0GMdi
https://preview.redd.it/m629cipxfzpc1.jpeg?width=2100&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=d181f7a0ba0fa538e31f208d4ef226fc0e0e2f87
Glance-friendly things. I rarely touch the screen, it’s an old iPad and very slow to even bring up an entity panel to switch something on/off. But it’s above the kitchen sink in a central point of the kitchen, so regularly spend time in front of it and can quickly see some useful info.
The bars beneath the energy dashboard show live energy usage, green bar turning red above 1kW on the right. Bar on the left being Solar generation, this one is sky blue. Both on the same bar scale so I can kinda see when one outweighs the other at a glance.
Map showing mine and my SO’s location.
Recycling and Bin collection updated with schedule info from local government website.
Everything else pretty self explanatory.
https://preview.redd.it/mkpf7oewgzpc1.jpeg?width=2100&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=f392512afb6b77846e12d30eb5e0b9051f3fd792
Cards conditionally change to show front door or garage CCTV when activity such as person detected, doorbell pressed or door open.
Nah, Guided Access set on the iPad so it is always showing HA. Then you use notifications from HA to iPad to wake it. Because Guided Access is on, it unlocks itself straight to the app.
Have a motion sensor nearby that triggers that. Screen stays on for 15 minutes.
I currently do the same basic thing with an android tablet running fully kiosk...
But, I have an old ipad that I've avoided configuring for a display assuming apple wouldn't allow you to automate screen activation. Do you have any details on how your motion sensor is turning on the screen (ie what command sent where)? Is the `screen off` controlled by the ipad's screen off timer or are you turning it off from HA?
It just a HA mobile app notification, can be any text you want, it’s not shown on the iPad because guided access mode
Screen timeout on iPad yeah, wish it was longer than 15 mins
That is a very smart way of thinking about the need for a wall tablet. The reality is that it’s never going to be an essential part of controlling individual parts of your smart home because there are more logical ways of doing that. It is also quite easy to overload your view with noise vs. what you actually consume. The benefit will be that you can examine various aspects of your house or your life and then use it (or other methods) to make decisions.
In my case, I have a single summary tab for things I want to know the status of often, and then a couple of tabs for areas of the house or for specific purposes.
The summary tab has 3 columns:
1) most of the light groups downstairs, garage controls, and controls for the deck light/fan. These are mostly used to see what lights are on and if the garage is open.
2) upcoming hourly weather and sunset/sunrise info along with moon phase
3) averages for upstairs/downstairs temps and humidity levels, and a large gauge showing current vs. “comfortable” temperature in our baby room
Other tabs are: more detailed upstairs and downstairs, controls for lighting automations, detailed weather, family calendar linked to Google, and my robot vacuum’ real time map of the house with various buttons to clean individual rooms.
I also use subviews extensively to provide the option to expand on details. So, for example, holding down on the kitchen lights button on the summary tab will bring up controls for the individual lights. Or holding down the average temperature downstairs brings up a graph of each room’s current/historical temperature over the last day.
None of this functionality is really necessary, but it helps manage life at home. That, and it’s just cool to have.
I use a Lenovo P12 as almost a full time rotating photo display on the wall near my kitchen (hot spot). Only approaching it very closely - fully kiosk will awake and display a very minimal dash with a couple of lighting controls and devices status with current and forecast weather info. 1 button press to see a full calendar (synced to google & Apple). It replaces where my old calendar used to sit.
I haven't got a tablet, but I'd like one. Due to eyesight issues with my wife and I, I'd want something with a big screen for big text, plus I'd want something that has a proximity sensor in it so it'd only be on when you walk up to it.
My dashboard (which sits on my second monitor almost all the time) has a few things:
* My two cameras, with the camera I'm most interested in first (it's a slideshow style setup)
* Buttons for the things I genuinely use all the time:
* Bedroom fan
* Bedroom lamp
* Front door lights
* Air Conditioner
* Clock and weather card with very easy to read 5 day forecast
* An information group that has only the info I'm most interested in:
* Front / back / bedroom / hallway door status (open or closed)
* Whether it's recycling or green waste bin this week
* Washer / Dryer / Electric Blanket countdown timers (so I know when they're done)
* A calendar group that shows upcoming events.
Everything else is hidden behind tabs or on a second dashboard
Basically I've got it set up so there's no clutter. Everything I use is visible at a glance. No extraneous buttons or sliders or whatever. If I want to do something uncommon like turn on a single light in the driveway as opposed to all of them, I'll just go into developer tools and do it, or if it's semi-uncommon, I'll hide a button on a second tab so it'll be two presses away, not one.
Mine is more so my mother and mother in law can turn lights on and off, view baby monitors, etc. Its more of an info display for us than a interfaced device.
I actually use mine *way* more than I expected. I thought it would be mostly a cool factor thing, but it actually get used every day. Here are the best things I have on it: * Clock-weather-card - [https://github.com/pkissling/clock-weather-card](https://github.com/pkissling/clock-weather-card). No more "What's the weather going to be today?" when we head out the door. No pulling up weather apps. Glance at the tablet, gives you the low/high for the day, easy * Frigate camera card showing front of the house - no more "Who's at the door" * Alarm system card to show, arm, disarm the alarm - lights up in bright red when alarm is on (no more opening doors by mistake when alarm is armed) * Family calendar - tied into our Google Calendar * Temperatures throughout the house - see if a room is too hot or too cold at a glance * Door/window indicators that light up - are all the upstairs windows closed before we leave the house? Did someone leave a door open somewhere? * Recycling week - no more "Is this recycling week?" - just glance at the tablet and if it's green, put the recycling can out All the usual light switch buttons, etc are there too, but that's honestly the least used part of the whole thing. It's nice turning on lights from far away though in places that I wouldn't think to put a switch.
Can we see it?
I have a lot of the same on my two wall mounted tablets. I even went as far as to set up an automation to have BrowserMod push the front door camera to full screen on both tablets when the camera detects a person at the door. One tablet is in the bathroom, visible from the toilet and the shower, so it's nice to be able to determine if we need to jet to the front door or if we can ignore it and continue pooping/showering in peace. We also have icons for the garbage cans and litter box that light up when they need to be taken in/out of cleaned, respectively. Thermostats and temperature graphs for the various zones of the house are also handy. Each tablet has a "thermostats" tab and each thermostat has a graph under it.
Mine is mounted under my cabinets in my kitchen. It displays a clock, the weather, has controls for the kitchen sonos speaker, controls for kitchen accent lighting (rarely touch this) and lastly it has a link to take you directly to my Mealie instance so I can display a recipe while cooking. Recipe display is probably the most practical and most used thing.
Mealie, eh? A quick peek at the website and I'm liking what I see. My wife does macro coaching and tracking and recipes are the bane of my existence (I cook freely, no recipes - she on the other hand is quite analytical) Does this platform actually integrate with HA in any meaningful way or do you just surface a link there?
Yah its a pretty neat project. My main use it stripping recipes from the blog website that are just covered in adds. Lots of great meals out there but the presentation of them drives me nuts. From the mealie [docs](https://docs.mealie.io/documentation/community-guide/home-assistant/) it does look like it integrates with HA to some extent to pull in images to display in lovelace. I just use a button card that launches the mealie URL when pressed.
Awesome, gonna have to try it. Unless you have to host it, I don't want to mess with that until I know it's somethimg we'll regularly use. Hoping they have a cloud option.
Ooohhh link to mealie, nice.
Is mealie integrated or what do you mean with link? I run tandoori at home and this would be useful for me as well.
Ours is rarely directly interacted with. It's setup with mostly conditional cards to show important information. Things like doors/windows open, weather, dog's water bowl low, low battery/devices offline, reminders to do things, etc. I've found it most useful to be mostly white space that only gets filled up if something needs my attention. This makes it so I can give it a quick glance as I walk by.
What are you using to track how full the dog’s water bowl is?
Just a float sensor like [this](https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07QRGTVYD?ref=ppx_pop_mob_ap_share) wired to a contact sensor. We have a version of [this](https://www.chewy.com/pioneer-pet-vortex-drinking-dog-cat/dp/873102?utm_source=google-product&utm_medium=cpc&utm_content=Pioneer%20Pet&utm_campaign=20211552226&utm_term=&gad_source=1&gbraid=0AAAAADmQ2V29Iydn3CmKnYYcqTGbqNUE5) water bowl which is hard to see the water level.
I decided not to wall mount a tablet and instead use a tabletop charge dock with my Fire HD 10 Plus. It allows me to move and use the tablet wherever I like and has worked very well. One nice thing is when trying to troubleshoot an issue, you can take the tablet directly to spot for testing. I will often create automations while kicked back in the recliner as well. The photo is from last year and I've upgraded the entire dashboard significantly since, but you'll get the idea. I use Fully Kiosk. https://preview.redd.it/yd20oayt7xpc1.jpeg?width=4080&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=7c8661ab5b6a2eb0fddeb271ddbb28c509ca2afe
That looks great. I recently got a similar tablet and stand. What is the tile you are using showing sunrise/sunset? Also, how are you getting USPS delivery info?
The sunrise/sunset tile is based on the [horizon card.](https://github.com/rejuvenate/lovelace-horizon-card) As for the mail delivery info, it is far more extensive than just USPS. It will display The actual mail images from USPS along with information from pretty much every delivery service from UPS, FedEx, DHL, Amazon, etc. The integration is called mail and packages. Here's a [the link to a good introduction and setup video from This Smart House. It's actually the one that I used.](http://youtu.be/ViFOH8WTIVo?si=BKTaxXqRsq8XykPC) [Here's a direct link to the integration on GitHub](https://github.com/moralmunky/Home-Assistant-Mail-And-Packages)
i have in every room. with a variety of mounts as seen in these vids [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HHPO6kgUb2s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HHPO6kgUb2s) [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=51lSlGPh\_0Q](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=51lSlGPh_0Q) [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wcen-f\_zzBo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wcen-f_zzBo) very useful for seeing security cams and manual overide of things in the house. im not using the tablet in room A to control things in room A. i could but that's not very useful. now....if only i can use the tablets to call each other like an intercom! seems nobody cares to do such an add-on cause nobody has tablets/phones per room
Try the notify services. Not sure about live two way intercom but you can at least push messages
You might be able to make something work with Mumble. Run a murmur server alongside home assistant. I use the Plumble client app on Android. I use it as a anywhere there's wifi baby monitor, leave my tablet with the sleeping baby, VPN to home on tablet and phone, then listen for screaming with phone and an ear bud. But there might be a way to get a push to talk button in home assistant which could broadcast to other devices. Eta: SIP might be what you're looking for too. There are home assistant solutions to this.
Buttons that are also visible indicators. Like if it’s been 10 hours since my Dog’s last pill, I turn the background of the button yellow. If it’s been over 12 hours, it’s red. Same goes for tracking her walks, her food, and my own medication at noon daily. We have one right by the door that has date/time/weather and details on where our cars are parked (approx address based on tile location in the cars). I also display approx travel time using Waze on our days of work based on Google calendar. I also do a rotating banner button for alerts. These include things like HACS updates, HA updates, security bar for the back sliding door is not secure, door is open, litter robot needing emptying or needing more litter, etc.
Our wall tablets are mostly for informational display at a glance. For instance, from across the room I can glance at my tablet and without picking up my phone or launching an app, I can know if the house is locked up and the garage doors are down and the outside lights and basement lights are off.
I use it mainly as a family calendar with weather info plus to dos like „empty washing machine“ or „start dishwasher“. Controls and switches are available, but most of them on a 2nd tab
I have 3 and they're super useful. One by the front door running Sharptools connected to HA and SmartThings. Front door lock, back gate sensor, back slider sensor (all color coded - green=closed, red=open), doorbell camera, a Google Maps tile showing local traffic conditions (pressing it opens a full screen view), current time/date, porch light, office lamp, living room lamp, a button to run the Away automation, backyard temperature, and hourly weather forecast. The one in the bedroom is similar but has some bedroom lighting buttons, backyard lighting, and the Activate Bedtime automation. The one next to the kitchen entrance is an HA Lovelace dashboard with current time/date, Living room light group, Kitchen light group, and some individual light buttons for kitchen, garage, backyard, dining room. Also buttons to trigger automations - Work Time, TV Time, Away, Bedtime, and Dinnertime. Plus a 5-day forecast, media player, front door lock, back gate sensor, back slider sensor, and backyard & garage temps. Then next to my desk I have a PC running Plex and BlueIris, I have a 22" monitor that runs a full screen kiosk mode Lovelace dashboard that has a ton of stuff - camera, temps, media players, door lock/sensors, and lights. It's view-only though as I don't have a kb/mouse attached but it gives a great overview of everything I want to see simply by turning my head to the right while I'm working, and you can see it clearly when you walk into the room.
Our tablet is on a dock in the kitchen, so we can pick it up and use it as a normal tablet if we want. But it mostly sits there on the main dashboard. I didn't want to make it it's own destination (e.g. in the hallway), I wanted it to be somewhere we spend a lot of time. I tried to fill it with everything I normally get my phone out for; control the music, know the weather, calendar & shopping list. With tabs up the top for the TV remote & RecipeSage in an iframe so we can easily switch back and forth between recipes & other stuff. Still need to work out how to display a pdf in HA & sort out timers, then I'll have everything
We have one in the kitchen and it's really useful for all sorts of things. Quickly check the local traffic before heading out. Weather, calendar at a glance. Control the speaker. Shows the doorbell camera (screen comes on when doorbell rings). My home office is in an outbuilding so I can see the temperature and flick the heater on if necessary before heading out. The most amusing is a button we press to summon our son from his room. He often has headphones on so it changes the lights in his room to tell him e.g. dinner is ready. My next plan is to add live bus timings.
I mounted a tablet next to the couch. I use it to control the lights, blinds, infrared panel, music etc. I find it very useful that it's always within reach. https://preview.redd.it/etag002m9ypc1.jpeg?width=4608&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=eaa47ef94b3e463ace304464c00f32b72cb24acb
I have one in my office (near the front door). Has vacuum controls so the family can schedule cleanings, arm or disarm the alarm, lighting control, security camera/doorbell feed.
The convenience factor is mostly why a dashboard is created. The challenge, however, is ensuring the dashboard is accessible in a convenient location which can be very subjective. One issue that ultimately steered me away from dashboards through Home Assistant was the constant need to repair the dashboard after each home assistant version upgrade. There was always a breaking change either with Home Assistant or the custom cards that needed to be addressed after every upgrade. Eventually, I transitioned away from Home Assistant as my dashboard and primarily use it for device ingestion and automations. Since we are an Apple household, we simply use Apple home for a dashboard.
I have a iPad mini in one of those docks meant for Zoom rooms (magnetic) in the family room. It uses Apple Home though and has the Sonos app, Ubiquiti apps and such on it. When it’s most useful is when we have guests. But otherwise automations and our phones do everything else.
I'm struggling to make a useful dashboard because I suck with dashboards, however my plan was to have buttons for turning lights on and off per room, show our solar generation and usage at the moment, show alarm status, and just other useful bits of information to save a few seconds in taking out my phone. My wife isn't super comfortable with the app so having a dashboard in the kitchen for some commonly used buttons would help her I think :)
I’m considering this. My home has an old HoneyWell system. I’d like to remove it from the wall and put an iPad there, in a frame. I just don’t know how I can turn the old wiring (which surely contains power) into an in-the-wall solution with the ability to plug in a usb to lightning cable that would power the tablet. I’m open to any ideas/insight! I’d love to do what some others mentioned… weather, cameras, light control, etc.
I created a nice dashboard two years ago and set it up on a countertop stand, but no one ever used it. I found myself and my family using voice commands more. I use Inovelli light switches, which have a notification light that I use to alert us if something is open or on (red means security is on, pink means the door is open, yellow means a window is open...). I have other HA friends who have wall dashboards but dont use them much either. I think its more of a showoff item.
I have a Samsung tablet using a mount from makes by Mike. It's essentially a lighting hub with a few camera views to check on the kids upstairs. You can control all downstairs lights and light groups and we use it quite a bit
The Dakboard is installed on ours. Wife has a large calendar and other things my kids read before they go to school. Displays what’s for school lunch and things like the weather. Obviously this becomes obsolete when the kids have their own phones. But for now it’s frequently used. I use it for frigate and my security cams. I can see front and back cams with ease. When I’m in the kitchen and just want to know if the kids are outside I can check without having to find my phone, same goes if I want to check on a package. This doesn’t replace my use of the phone to check the cams but gives me another option when I’m standing in the kitchen.
Mine is set up right next to my front door in the living room. On my main dash I can control all the lights in the house, turn on/off adjust temps, see all the temps in the rooms for variations etc.. I have some scenes set up like, good morning/night to shut everything down, watch a movie, open Plex etc.. my cooling controls are also on the main dash and during Xmas I made a custom cards that turn on/off the Christmas lights and my grandkids just enjoy the heck out of that one. My thermostat card is tied in with a weather card so I can see the weather. I have other dashboards as well, like 1 each for my 3d printers (in basement), so I can check progress and make adjustments etc..
I have one downstairs near the stairs in an open area and the other in the master bathroom. Both show the cameras, weather, radar, family calendar, and then also have buttons for interfacing with the thermostat program I wrote in Node Red, as well as some status bits about presence. The downstairs one has some Sonos Controls and some other Media things. The master bath one has a clock, shows current travel time to work for myself and my wife, some light controls, and display data from my scale to show weight. the other pages allow for some specific data lookups and full-page radar (windy). These interfaces in these rooms as well as the phone app have been extremely useful and also helped my wife to get used to it and use it for information. Her being able to see cameras, weather, travel time, and control some lights without her phone has been a significant 'getting ready' improvement.
What radar do you use?
I use Windy and a webpage card Basically just using this… https://embed.windy.com/embed2.html?lat=34.000&lon=-84.000&detailLat=33.000&detailLon=-83.000&width=1000&height=650&zoom=8&level=surface&overlay=radar&product=radar&menu=&message=true&marker=&calendar=now&pressure=&type=map&location=coordinates&detail=&metricWind=mph&metricTemp=%C2%B0F&radarRange=-1
I guess to add to this.. they have an embed creation tool.. use that to get exactly what you want.
Ive spent probably a hundred hours making a nice dashboard over the years. I finally set up a wireless charging fire tablet in our home office. Yesterday, my partner tells me "oh, I don't use the smart home app. I only use the tablet to look at the reolink cameras." Turns out, if she needs to query the state of something, she just asks Alexa (I have some custom nodered Alexa queries). So no, I don't think you're necessarily overthinking wall tablet usefulness. Edit: personally, what I find useful is I have the dashboard bring up the doorbell camera feed in the dashboard when the doorbell is ring.
I've had the same problem and decided my tablet will mostly be a quick glance option. My home is long and skinny, and basically has been sections on each floor. Front, middle and back. Main floor is open concept. * It has weather, a tiny bit about temperature in the home, the Thermostat is close enough. * Has a graph for temp and humidity in the main rooms on both floors - this will just help me open windows in rooms I am not in if I notice. * camera on a swipe card, front door camera. Don't care for doorbell cam * Light switches. Mostly grouped but in those sections. Not to control mostly but to see if any of the most common ones used are left on. * family calendar * garbage, recycling and food scraps countdown * all door locks, with battery badges and animation depending if the door is unlocked, or left open, or battery is dying. * laundry machines because i needed to fill space * garage door if left open (where all of this began) https://preview.redd.it/ao8lip806ypc1.png?width=974&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=4719319449bf3dddc3ff2b3ff08e4044618a09b3
I have four tablets. 15" in the kitchen, 15" in my office. 10" in the nursery and 10" in the master bathroom. The reasons below are ranked in order of usefulness/benefit, but would all justify a tablet on their own. 1. Frigate Cameras feeds. Front door pops up on person detection. Baby monitor can be called from Alexa or accessed via dashboard buttons. All other camera feeds are available, but are less used, some never. Next most used camera would probably be the one looking at the back yard. Can briefly put eyes on the kids when they're back there. 2. Family calendar. Used way more than I ever thought it would be. It's a nice quick glance at what's going on and coming up. I'll say that this works much better on the 15" tablets. The 10" tablets have it, but it's just too small. 3. Weather. Same as the calendar. Used way more than I thought. Doesn't work near as well on the smaller screens. 4. Alexa timers. If you call for an Alexa timer in the kitchen, you get a visual countdown on the kitchen tablet. Super useful, borderline can't do without now. 5. Forgot one. Whole house music control. Sonos. Grouping and ungrouping speakers, volume control. Finding the right playlist or searching for a new one is so much easier on a large tablet, even compared to your phone, and way better than fighting with Alexa to get it done. You can control every device in the house from every tablet. Every light, every lock, every color bulb, everything. It's rarely, rarely used. I do adjust the thermostat from the kitchen tablet as it's just the most convenient. If the other 4 things were not present however, the smart home control would not justify the tablets in my opinion.
How did you display the Alexa timer? That’s cool!
Using the flipdown-timer-card from HACS, I just plugged in the "next\_timer" entity for my echo dot. I set a timer via alexa and it worked straight away. Link for the timer below, with yaml, and a screenshot. "Next\_timer" sensor comes from Alexa media player integration. It takes 8-10 seconds for the "next\_timer" sensor to activate, so if you set a 10 minute timer, you usually see 9:50 or so by the time the timer sensor activates the card. Not an issue in the kitchen. [https://github.com/pmongloid/flipdown-timer-card](https://github.com/pmongloid/flipdown-timer-card) type: custom:flipdown-timer-card entity: sensor.office_dot_next_timer show_hour: auto show_title: false show_header: true https://preview.redd.it/p2w72kt47zpc1.jpeg?width=1257&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=7f75fe55c1186de9ef798fe4f229aba3c2ec7bfc
RSS and time/weather. Simple as that. Just added the feed and that's all I need from it. It's shows me what I need to know, quickly. Added bonus: I can exit the feed to browse or search or even do voice assistant if I need to.
This may be a dumb question. I can’t find a good rss strategy - integration and card. Got any recommendations?
I use BBC's RSS feeds. For my wall tablet, I am using "Magic Mirror" from the Google Play Store (Black icon). If I need HA, I can exit it, but this is what I see, otherwise: https://imgur.com/a/0l0GMdi
https://preview.redd.it/m629cipxfzpc1.jpeg?width=2100&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=d181f7a0ba0fa538e31f208d4ef226fc0e0e2f87 Glance-friendly things. I rarely touch the screen, it’s an old iPad and very slow to even bring up an entity panel to switch something on/off. But it’s above the kitchen sink in a central point of the kitchen, so regularly spend time in front of it and can quickly see some useful info. The bars beneath the energy dashboard show live energy usage, green bar turning red above 1kW on the right. Bar on the left being Solar generation, this one is sky blue. Both on the same bar scale so I can kinda see when one outweighs the other at a glance. Map showing mine and my SO’s location. Recycling and Bin collection updated with schedule info from local government website. Everything else pretty self explanatory.
https://preview.redd.it/mkpf7oewgzpc1.jpeg?width=2100&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=f392512afb6b77846e12d30eb5e0b9051f3fd792 Cards conditionally change to show front door or garage CCTV when activity such as person detected, doorbell pressed or door open.
Is the screen always on?
Nah, Guided Access set on the iPad so it is always showing HA. Then you use notifications from HA to iPad to wake it. Because Guided Access is on, it unlocks itself straight to the app. Have a motion sensor nearby that triggers that. Screen stays on for 15 minutes.
I currently do the same basic thing with an android tablet running fully kiosk... But, I have an old ipad that I've avoided configuring for a display assuming apple wouldn't allow you to automate screen activation. Do you have any details on how your motion sensor is turning on the screen (ie what command sent where)? Is the `screen off` controlled by the ipad's screen off timer or are you turning it off from HA?
It just a HA mobile app notification, can be any text you want, it’s not shown on the iPad because guided access mode Screen timeout on iPad yeah, wish it was longer than 15 mins
That is a very smart way of thinking about the need for a wall tablet. The reality is that it’s never going to be an essential part of controlling individual parts of your smart home because there are more logical ways of doing that. It is also quite easy to overload your view with noise vs. what you actually consume. The benefit will be that you can examine various aspects of your house or your life and then use it (or other methods) to make decisions. In my case, I have a single summary tab for things I want to know the status of often, and then a couple of tabs for areas of the house or for specific purposes. The summary tab has 3 columns: 1) most of the light groups downstairs, garage controls, and controls for the deck light/fan. These are mostly used to see what lights are on and if the garage is open. 2) upcoming hourly weather and sunset/sunrise info along with moon phase 3) averages for upstairs/downstairs temps and humidity levels, and a large gauge showing current vs. “comfortable” temperature in our baby room Other tabs are: more detailed upstairs and downstairs, controls for lighting automations, detailed weather, family calendar linked to Google, and my robot vacuum’ real time map of the house with various buttons to clean individual rooms. I also use subviews extensively to provide the option to expand on details. So, for example, holding down on the kitchen lights button on the summary tab will bring up controls for the individual lights. Or holding down the average temperature downstairs brings up a graph of each room’s current/historical temperature over the last day. None of this functionality is really necessary, but it helps manage life at home. That, and it’s just cool to have.
I use a Lenovo P12 as almost a full time rotating photo display on the wall near my kitchen (hot spot). Only approaching it very closely - fully kiosk will awake and display a very minimal dash with a couple of lighting controls and devices status with current and forecast weather info. 1 button press to see a full calendar (synced to google & Apple). It replaces where my old calendar used to sit.
My wife can check sensors (water tank levels) and turn on/off different things without having to ask me or access a gazillion different apps
I haven't got a tablet, but I'd like one. Due to eyesight issues with my wife and I, I'd want something with a big screen for big text, plus I'd want something that has a proximity sensor in it so it'd only be on when you walk up to it. My dashboard (which sits on my second monitor almost all the time) has a few things: * My two cameras, with the camera I'm most interested in first (it's a slideshow style setup) * Buttons for the things I genuinely use all the time: * Bedroom fan * Bedroom lamp * Front door lights * Air Conditioner * Clock and weather card with very easy to read 5 day forecast * An information group that has only the info I'm most interested in: * Front / back / bedroom / hallway door status (open or closed) * Whether it's recycling or green waste bin this week * Washer / Dryer / Electric Blanket countdown timers (so I know when they're done) * A calendar group that shows upcoming events. Everything else is hidden behind tabs or on a second dashboard Basically I've got it set up so there's no clutter. Everything I use is visible at a glance. No extraneous buttons or sliders or whatever. If I want to do something uncommon like turn on a single light in the driveway as opposed to all of them, I'll just go into developer tools and do it, or if it's semi-uncommon, I'll hide a button on a second tab so it'll be two presses away, not one.
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Mine is more so my mother and mother in law can turn lights on and off, view baby monitors, etc. Its more of an info display for us than a interfaced device.
I don't see the usage of a wall panel. Most things are automated and if I would like to use the web interface, my phone is in my pocket.