Whenever guests or friends comes and stays at my home for some days, i feel the need for some simpler way to manage room controls for their bedroom for thes visitors. I do not want to make them install HA mobile or use password guest access. What i am looking for is a very simple web page with no logins (Only available on LAN Wifi, closed to outer access) and only will have the controls in their bedroom, like lights and roller shutters of that room.
Is there a way to accomplish this, what do you guys think?
Get a cheap tablet for the guest bedroom and create a special user and lovelace view just for that tablet. Use Custom Header to limit that user to just that view. You could also use an old smartphone if you donât want to buy a tablet and happen to have an old phone lying about.
I agree the buying of a tablet as suggested above is the cleanest solution⌠google home assistant tablet kiosk mode to find the best solution.
One tip though. It might be tempting to buy a generic Chinese tablet, however be sure to check it runs a recent version of android⌠if its a few versions behind the built in webview component of android will NOT work with the ha web interface, you wonât even be able to log in
Very good idea, thanks. However iam still looking a way to solve it with their smartphones, like gonna tell them connect to 192.68.1.10 and do whatever they want. This might give me a better solution for changing rooms or putting common controls inside this page. Maybe writing an html with api calls, with hardcoded password, i still donât know. âŚ
Guest Account
Create accounts for each individual room; i assume bedroom or guesthouse. so UserName âguestroomâ and password âbemyguestâ. you can provide different view for the individual user.
Specific View for each Room
if you only want control for the one room and maybe some additional things just provide user view to that. Again, you may have multiplie users
Since they must be on your local guest network this illiminates use once that leave.
you may change password when they leave. If this is Airbnb type thing you can print connection deatils and put in frame or even provide link with details in email or txt message.
EDIT
I forget but lovelace already allow different view per user
you may also run a seperate docker instance or RasPi instance and just connect that to main instance to control objects in main using HA API or MQTT
Why not use mDNS and tell them to go to guestroom.house? Would make it even more convenient than an IP address. (You could just use âguestroomâ but so many expect a TLD at end it would be better to have a .home or .house or something like that to avoid confusion).
More food for thought, Iâve got a google mini in most rooms in my house so guests are free to use that to control lights etc⌠Also in the guest bedroom Iâve placed an ikea remote so if someone is unsure of using the google speaker then they can just press the button on the remote.
All of the light switches in my house have switch guards on them so noone can manually turn a light off or on
Alternatively, having Shellies behind the switches would be a nicer setup than smart bulbs in this case. Then they can control lights the dumb way and the smart way.
Just an idea as I donât know what your network setup looks likeâŚIf you have a separate guest SSID (and therefore a separate subnet) then what you could do (and what I plan to do) is set up Trusted Networks, more specifically the âtrusted usersâ aspect of that.
So create a user called âGuestsâ to control a wider area of the house or to be more specific (allowing them to choose) create users like âBedroom 2â, âBedroom 3â etc. and then with trusted networks set that subnetâs trusted users to be your guest subnet only. Then you build a specific dashboard just for your guests to see and (the only way I can see around this at the moment) make all other dashboards âadmin onlyâ so that those users will only see the guest dashboard.
So to build on what @Skye has said about mDNS, you ask them to connect to your guest SSID. You then say go to guestroom.house where itâll ask them which user theyâd like to log in as - They select âguestâ and thatâll present them with a Lovelace dashboard that youâve setup that only the âguestâ user can see!
I havenât put this in to practice yet so cannot fully attest to it working but (I think) the theory is soundâŚSomeone is of course free to tell me how wrong I am!
Thanks guys for all the help. mDNS name like âguest.homeâ and guest SSID 's are actually very nice ideas. I am using Unifi products all over, i am sure i can handle that.
Stilll looking for ways to use a non-password page; i can use a different web server on LAN for that other than HA server. So the guest will enter guest.home and see the limited controls right away. I wonder if an html/aspx page using REST API commands will help?
You donât need passwords for the trusted users, they just need to select one
Iâm pretty sure that if you use allow_bypass_login then they wonât even need to select a user if you only create one âguestâ account. Thatâd save having to spin up another server etc.?
Thanks @ZuluWhiskey, I am yet ashamed to say that so far i have never used âAuthentication Providersâ of HA nor i ever needed it⌠But since you pointed out me to the right direction; that looks like it is gonna solve my problem.
My DHCP allows my guests to be in the 192.xx.xx.100 to 192.xx.xx.180 range. Before setting up a guest SSID, i will try to handle that (I am just curious if it is possible). As you told, the theory seems rock solid. I will let you guys know of the outcome once i try this approach. Btw, the addon @apop suggested seems also just the thing i needed with some minor caveats. I am in touch with the developer about these issues.
I do have âguestsâ that regularly visit my house. although I have set HA up in such a way that interaction with the system is not necessary. Every once in a while they like to be able to control things themselves.
Hence it makes sense to give them access to HA. At the same time I want HA to know when people are in my house so giving them access via the HA App makes most sence to me. One could indeed also use the presence of their device on the DHCP server, but I somehow find that less elegant.
I created a lovelace interface with several tabs that depending on who enters my house get access to basic or some more advanced controls. In all cases I just want to provide a simple kiosk mode type of interface with controls and no sidebars or whatsoever that either confuses them or provides irrelevant information.
In the HA App you can enter the URL of the HA system, but I could not enter the URL of the lovelace interface so that they directly land on the correct page. Is there a possibility to do so using the HA App or how should one implement this?
Iâm interested to see whatâs been done here. Creating limited guest controls in Lovelace is easy enough; Iâm interested in figuring out how to limit access to LAN users only, and making the login process easy. I have a QR code for visitors to access my guest WiFi. My vision involves a second QR code to either 1) download the HA app and then login (preferably bypassing the username/password requirement) or 2) to call up a URL with limited HA controls.
This is one way to expand the HA user base⌠I canât see anyone not wanting HA after using it for awhile on their ownâŚ!
