I’m looking to control a bunch of entities from one physical location. Some of these entities are switches, others are buttons, some are knobs, etc. I’m looking to control those digital entities with physical buttons/knobs/switches, like a car’s dashboard controls.
I’ve bought a bunch of Arduino buttons/knobs/etc but they’re individual pieces. How do you find/create the actual box/panel/container to hold them?
Failing that, is this something you can buy off the shelf? If so what is it called?
What you are looking for is to setup a tablet or panel in the spot you need for that one location to control all the entities through its dashboard.
Something like this: Creating a Wall-Mounted Dashboard for Home Assistant - James Ridgway
edit: found this post that may be of interest for your needs Reddit - Dive into anything
Hi Robert, yes, I know many people do tablet setups. However for this use case I’m trying to keep everything as analog as possible.
I have seen that Reddit post and was hoping that people on this forum would know a name for this type of device and where to find more information about how to execute this kind of thing.
Edit: apparently the term is “project box”. Finding out this name led to tons of examples for me to work from.
From reading the comments on the thread and some others they use an ESP kit to make custom setups for this, others with more experience with these should be able to help guide you on ideas to help you build out the setup you are looking for.
It’s just called a physical panel board. The other option is to use dedicated remotes that have the option to bind Single, Double, Triple or Hold actions to the buttons they have when not using single buttons for it and building out a custom case around the setup with labels etc.
In almost all cases when you see folks with something like this, they simply made it themselves. Outside of something pretty small, I can’t think of anything “off the shelf” that would work for more than a few switches/knobs (I’m thinking of like a small project box).
In my case, I have a 3D printer so I’ve always just designed and printed exactly what I want. For the electronics side, ESPHome (and ideally getting comfortable with basic soldering) is definitely your friend.
If you don’t have experience with any of these things, I’d highly suggest just focusing on one piece of your project at a time and getting comfortable with that. None of these things are rocket science, but they still take time to learn and you’ll quickly get frustrated if you try to learn them all simultaneously. I’d suggest getting comfortable with ESPHome first (and even get all your switches and knobs setup but just not in a nice box). Then move onto making a suitable enclosure.