Echo Show 15 hybrid Home Assistant Wall Panel

Such a shame - the product is a great package - just bad software for our purpose. I guess it wasn’t designed to be used like we want to but its very locked down to make it virtually impossible to be used for anything else.

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I’ve tried to apply your suggestion if i swipe the url bar didn’t disappear so I’ve to use the wallpanel component and set the full-screen to true but every time i select a button the silk browser show the banner “show the url bar” anyone have the same issue?

Yeh that never goes away, every touch makes it show.

In the end i replaced the keep silk open hidden script with a live video feed (i just chose a random web cam and made it small:

- type: iframe
  url: >-
    https://www.youtube.com/embed/UYCMrgERcyA?si=Vbw95WmnxsVhj2tJ&autoplay=1&mute=1
  aspect_ratio: 50%
  wp_style:
    scale: 1
    position: absolute
    bottom: 11px
    right: 10px
    height: 1px
    width: 1px

Its been 1 week now without crashing or reverting back.

3 Likes

Thats encouraging. Too bad no one has jailbroken this darn thing.

I know, I am suprised its still not been cracked, I guess its just not popular among the people who normally do the jailbreaking

1 Like

I don’t know if some have the same problem as me.

I do have a live camera, so most of the time HA stays on. But not all the time.

However my biggest problem is that sometimes, randomly, the touch stops working. Everything else seems to keep working as the dashboard keeps updating, or it returns to the home screen and this one keeps changing. But I can’t do anything else as the touch seems disabled.

Only way to recover is to reboot, either using the app on my phone, or the physical buttons. I haven’t tried my remote (virtual), but I guess it would work…

Anyone else with this problem, and maybe a solution ??

Mine when it dies (I have a live stream as well) it either goes back to the app selection screen or goes back to the home screen but like you said touch stops working. I can get back to the apps list with the controller though.

Hi there

I also using Silk with MyPage to temporary show the departures of my public transportation and so far its working except the annoying address bar. Its only an optical issue but it looks not nice.

I tried

window.onload = function() {
    setTimeout(function() {
        window.scrollBy(0, 100); 
    }, 1000); 
};

and

window.onload = function() {
    setTimeout(function() {
	window.scrollTo(0, 100); 
    }, 1000); 
};

but it doesnt work on the Show 15.

document.documentElement.scrollTop = 100;

scrolls the page but the address bar is still there

Is there any other code I can try ?

Did someone test external hardware like a Fire Remote or Bluethoth Mouse to emulate a scroll ?

scrolling in generell over an automation is working, however due to security reason the page scroll but the address bar will stay. Same for fullscreen solutions over browser mod or lovelace wallpanel, only physical interaction (touch) will hide the adressbar or enable full screen.

Unfortunately I have the same annoying issue as my silk browser freeze (not working on any touch) around every 24-36h. Doesnt matter if I use stay open silk link integration, loevelace wallpanel slide show or a loop of an youtube video.

The Show 15 has potential but it is crap since sideloading is impossible… so I kept my normal Android tablet.

coming to this add-on (browser control card) very late in the game, but has anyone figured a way to auto-call this (specifically full-screen button) using an automation rather than using the on-screen button itself…as this is the last thing that would make things perfect for me (for info I have live camera feeds on my dashboard running 24/7 which has always kept my browser alive and I use a Presence sense wake the screen (un-dim via browser mod)

If I can automate this full-screen option I’d be a happy bunny

I know I also get similar functionality using Wallpanel…which I am trying now.(but I know you need to touch the screen once)…but with both, it seems you get the annoying little on-screen UI telling you to “show URL bar”

I know it’s not the end of the world…but if I just scroll up at the initial load as I always have done before today, I never got this when touching the screen so it feels like a bigger issue than it actually is and something that isn’t needed

To add to things as well…in case anyone had similar…for just two days last week…Silk seemed to disappear from my Show 15…at least when I tried to call it by voice…(I had an automation set to call it via the Alexa integration which auto-launched it normally and this also stopped working). My workaround was to use a screen mirroring app and there was an option on that to cast to the Show 15 which strangely was able to launch Silk… sadly there was no way to automate this so it was a once-a-day thing…but then somehow it came back a few days later and has been working ever since…so clearly something at Amazons end

I’ve also had an issue recently where my camera feeds (which are what’s keeping my dashboard live full-time) seem to have issues and show a spinning white circle from time to time. this was solved by refreshing the page and whilst this didn’t put the screen to sleep…it was annoying as it ONLY affected my Show 15… The browser on my computer and other FireHD wall tablets (albeit with FKB running) didn’t suffer from this issue. Was wondering if this was an issue with Silk Browser itself (and maybe some change made by Amazon) or a change that Eufy had made to their feeds somehow with an update…I added another workaround to just duplicate my main dashboard which rotates every 4 minutes and seemed to stop this issue…so its been fixed with a sticking plaster, but it was odd all the same

one last thing to add, I’ve never had any issues with Silk freezing BUT my Show 15 is turned off every night when the last person goes to bed and gets turned on again when the first person wakes up…so maybe my Show never being awake for more than 24 hours negates this issue

So my Echo 15 updated yesterday and I was hoping the update would fix the bug where the touchscreen stops responding after a while but nope, its now even worse.

Before the update (with a live stream on the dash) I could get a few days to a week out of it but now SILK will close after 30mins and the touchscreen doesnt work. It happens every 30 mins no matter what I do. I have to reboot to get touchscreen back.

What the hell are amazon doing?

it’s weird as I’m getting zero touchscreen issues on mine…I even noticed it doing yet another tonight but still no issues…yet…touch wood.

One thing I did notice is the price these things are changing hands for on eBay…one sold for almost £500 last week

I blocked Amazon updates using pihole a long time ago but I had noticed silk kept closing after a few hours/days recently.

I use Wallpanel to display photos, temps and a calendar. I ended up creating a blank view on my dashboard for the Echo show that only has the KeepSilkOpen card on. So when the screensaver kicks in (after 10s) it isn’t loading anything in the background. I think some cards I had were causing issues with silk and it ended up closing.

It’s been open for weeks now. If I need to interact with my original dashboard, I tap the screen and click the original view (I could probablly automate this using browsermod but haven’t got around to it yet).

@jouster I checked on ebay after you said that and wow those are some crazy prices… i feel bad for anyone who buys one at that price.

@darleschixon I use wallpanel as well with a 2 week calendar, clock, temp and forcast. I had a hidden youtube live cam feed from my local city at 1px x 1px so it was hard to see it was there and it was working fine. Then it updated last week and went to sh*t. Yesterday i tried unsintalling the silk app and reinstalling but once reinstalled it becomes a remote (or virtual remote) only app ??? So i factory reset and it updated again and now silk is touch enabled again.

Same crap happened on my first launch of ha 30 mins and it closed to the home screen touch stopped. Rebooted and just for the fun i directed the silk app to youtube.com and left it running, it worked for a day before i stopped it. Wonder what the difference it between playing a youtube vid on youtube and playing one in an iframe.

After that i relaunched ha and its been running with touch still working for 12 hours now… Super random.

I think the point is might be a good time to get out!

@heffneil Yeh it should be time but the thing is that it is really good at everything else , we have our local tv app on there, netflix, prime and can play things while cooking (its wall mounted in the kitchen)… When we have parties we can have music playing on there etc… Only thing missing is a decent browser that can stay open. I am determined to find a way :slight_smile:

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i see today they’ve just re-released the 15 and a new 21…399 would be a great price for what it is if it weren’t so locked down but I really do feel bad for anyone who has paid those crazy eBay prices now

On the current Show 15 front…still haven’t had any issues with the browser staying open…and never had any touch issues…the only odd thing we get is when I use an automation to launch it each day, sometimes it open in a higher res (so all the screen elements are smaller) but if I ever launch it by voice, it never does this…its odd…and may be a timing issue (might need to start the automation a few minutes later for some odd reason)

Has anyone seen this before?

I assume it’s just launching the browser again as there’s no way it would install anything else…but am I wrong?

Now I’m just wondering if I should chance listing mine for £350 and upgrading to the 21 inch…hmmm

I saw that they released an updated 15" and the 21" inch as well, lets hope someone with hacking skills buys one :slight_smile: or at least it makes them fix their crappy software.
I just tried the alexa skill you linked to, while it does work all it does is open up the silk browser. I tested it without any live streams and it closed after 30 mins and touch stopped working as usual :frowning: