So, I’ve been beating around the bush now and have purchased 2 tablets which both turned out to be lemons. One was a Surface 3, awesome tablet but its ARM based.
So, my question is which is the best tablet to run as a wall mount touchscreen option for inhouse HA control.
Some cheap android tablet? Recommendations?
Thanks!
I’m using Lenovo Tab m10 in living and m7 in sleeping room. Also an m7 built inside the dashboard of my car.
All three are running HA great.
I have four Samsung, three Insignia’s, one apple, one Lenovo Tab and two google pixel phones. The Insignias are slow (mostly boot and restarts are slow) but still work fine for control. Insignias are about 10 years old. HA runs on all of them. The Samsung’s are the most powerful and as you would expect they perform the best.
I have 5 wall mounted.
I use fire hd 10 tablets. Got them on black sale for 80€ euros. Speed is good, price is unbeatable
I have an old Asus VivoTab Note 8 running windows 10. It works great!
I have lots of different stuff… The main “house control” that’s mounted to a wall is a fire 10. I also have another fire 10 and a fire 7 (his & hers) that move about the house, primarily to use plex to stream to the various audio zones. Then I also have two Samsung tablets (sorry don’t recall the models). In order of performance:
Samsung tablets
Fire 10
Fire 7
The fire 10 on the wall does a fine job with fully kiosk for basic home control. My portable 10 does an okay-ish job with plex, but images are a bit slow to load. The fire 7 has a bit of difficulty, but it does work.
I got the fire 10s and fire 7 from Amazon’s black Friday thing for CHEAP - so if you’re on a budget, they do work, and the price was impossible to beat. You’ll just have to wait for them to be on sale again…
For phones, we both have Samsung Galaxy s9+ phones, and no troubles with them at all - though I do find myself designing dashboards to be more geared toward the tablets, so the phones have really just become convenience devices, not primary use devices.
Thanks, I’m looking at one of these.
https://www.trademe.co.nz/3426133486
Question for those running Lenovo, how does the charging work. Would prefer to hardwire/solder on for charging. Is this possible? Just trying to avoid cables sticking out the side etc.
Thanks again!
That site gives no specs, but assuming it’s USB-c, you could always use something like this:
Or, depending on the wall mount you buy for it, it may come with a cable. The mount for my Amazon fire tablets came with a ribbon cable with a very small plug, and is totally hidden inside the enclosure. Not sure if something similar is available for that tablet.
I do use this kind of cable and a self made frame around my Lenovo’s.
I like a DIY style so went with a 10 inch touchscreen with HDMI input and an Odroid C4 in the workshop and an Odroid N2+ in the kitchen.
Hmmm seems like it could be quite a bit of ongoing maintenance as far as reliability goes.
I have two lenovo tab m10 and one m7, all mounted on the walls, and they work pefect. The one thing i like one them is the function to charge only to 60%, which saves battery life. It’s never good for lithium battery to be fully charged all the time.
Just don’t buy any of those cheap ~60€ chinese 7 inch tablets. They are not worthed, not even those 60€…
I don’t charge my android tablets fully. Once you install the app, you can monitor the battery life. Since I had to wire the outlet for the tablet, I wired a switch into the circuit to control that outlet. This allows me to turn the switch on and off based on the battery level of the tablet. Works great!
Hey. If I may ask how do you power the screen off when not in use? More precicely how do you wake it up when IN use? (so it doesnt burn out) A motion sensor or something?
External proximity sensor with Tasker on the Android OS triggering the screen to come on.
Heap of threads on Odroid forums and tasker sub Reddit on different ways to do it.
I know this is old but how did you mount your Lenovo. I have two of them I want to mount and Makes by Mike does not do Lenovo. Also, what models are your Samsungs?
Thanks.
I used a plug in from an A/V website. I can’t find the site as it was years ago. Here is the A/V Plugin
Notice the Command Strips—that is what is holding the tablet. I have also used Velcro strips to hold the tablet, with the hook end attached to the A/V center.
Here is a photo showing the tablet mounted to the A/V plugin.
Notice the light switch below the A/V plugin. This is where I took power from.
S3 & S6 lite. I also had a battery fail on one of the Samsung and replaced with a firetab
I have two Fire HD 10’’ (Gen9) for almost 5 years.
Most of the years they worked without problems.
Never rooted, or custom ROM.
The last year am facing many problem with FKB as it keeps crashing and this is causing by the webview version. Reset them and fall back a couple of versions didn’t help either. They still crash / freeze / the brightness is not dimmed properly and all these problems you 'll find when you start looking around on the internet.
I had to keep trying to fix them and solve my problem because I had paid for expensive slim mounts from vidabox.
But I got tired. -
I’ve created many automations and many of them are TTS so I can’t even think …without them.
But what are the options?
I don’t mind buying a Samsung Tab A.
But is the FKB going to work ???
Maybe is better to get an older version ??? e.g. SM-T500 (2020) ??
I have done quiet a few of research.
Another option would be just to get a DSI Capacitive Touchscreen 10’’ monitor and plug it directly to a new PI4. This is the best solution.
Is a solution that will have no problems, no bugs, no webview crashes. no bezos
But there are two cons
If you really consider this solution, it becomes very complicated …very easy …
So I think I will stick to new tablets - and I will try to find a nice, elegant mount.
It’s the easiest solution - the TTS plays without a problem and with FKB you have all the sensors, an extra camera and a media player!!!
I would like to listen some different thoughts …
I have one Samsung SM-T220 (A7 lite) and one old Samsung Tab S2 (SM-T810). On first one fully kiosk works well when “working” with HA (turn lights, covers, climates…), while for HA programming tablet is too small and too slow.
S2 also works fine with fully kiosk, but i’ve had initial problems with WebView. In order for HA Lovelace to display you must install WebView addon and enable it in developer settings, otherwise you only get white screen - the reason is old Android, as you already concluded on your tablet… I can’t exactly remember exact procedure anymore, but i found all necessary info on the internet. The plus side of S2 is oled screen, consequently i can have it in my bedroom, since i can lower “backlight” to a veeery low level, so it doesn’t disturb while sleeping (i use minimum backlight and very dark grey color for letters with black background).
But, as my main HA screen i rather bought a used X360 series laptop (these models have touch screens). It was cheaper than any decent tablet and bigger screen (15 inch). With (although old) i7 CPU and Win11 it still runs HA lovelace like a charm, and i can do some quick corrections in programming when needed.
For wall mounts it’s nice to have a 3D printer (or know someone who has it) - then you can draw it by yourself (in a program like fusion360) according to your needs and print it. And it’s cheap, too…
