I would like to use an Android Tab (Samsung A9+) as a wall tablet. The tablet is equipped with Android 14. Unfortunately, the tablet doesn’t stay awake in the sense that when you turn on the display it has already updated all the dashboards and maps in the background. The maps keep reloading even though all background settings are allowed. This occurs after about 2 minutes when the screen is turned off. This works without any problems on my older Samsung tabs, but they are too old to quickly control complex dashboards.
I tried:
all power settings turned off!
no battery optimization
Cache cleared
App pinned in the background
Doze mode disabled via app
per automation, notifications sent per min to keep the tab awake
Full kiosk app set up and tested
Sensors set to fast update
Persistent connection allowed in the HA app
What works:
Notifications are displayed and received even when the display is switched off
automations are carried out accordingly
Current solution:
keep the tablet awake with the Fully screensaver. Of course this works, but it uses a lot of power, so the tab has to be charged at least once a day.
It currently looks like the problem is caused by Android 14. On other tabs with Android 7, 10 and 13 the desired behavior is successful and runs without problems.
What stood out:
The amount of data used in the background is very small in Android 14 in the companion app and shows that there is no activity taking place in the background. Furthermore, in the older Android versions, more services are shown as active in the companion app under the active services in the developer settings!
Has anyone here had this problem and been able to solve it or do you practically always leave the screen on with a screen saver?
It’s android “thing”, as far as i know. I talked with fully developer back when i started to use it for the same reason: i have clock (among others) on my dashboard. When tablet woke from sleep the clock was showing time from when it went to sleep, and it took a second or two to refresh. Fully author tried number of things only to conclude that he can’t do nothing since it’s (newer) android feature.
I solved my problem with a black dashboard: when tablet “goes to sleep” in fact it doesn’t actually goes to sleep, but switches to black dashboard, to mimic “off” state. Additionally, i change screen brightness to minimum then. When i touch black dashboard tablet switches to “usable” dashboard again and pumps up brightness. I know, it’s not ideal solution, but it works.
On newer android’s it’s another “sleep” problem: when you take it to sleep you can’t wake it up from HA (with tap or whatever)… that’s another reason that i use above method.
After everything I tried, I thought that this behavior was somehow influenced by the device itself and that I had no way to bypass this as with all previous devices. In principle, it’s a shame if you buy a newer device especially for your dashboard and then have to take detours to get the dashboard to work well.
I am familiar with the Fully Kiosk Browser. The integrated screen saver is much better and, above all, darker than the solution with the “black dashboard”. In the background, the data on the Tab 9+ is always updated well. However, the battery life is very low. It’s a shame that it will no longer work properly in 2024, especially since manufacturers should be aware that wall tablets are an important criterion for Homeassistant users.
Hm… i don’t see how can “black” be more black than “black”
except if your HA theme is not set to have full black background - in that case it’s possible, sure.
I changed my theme to have full black (rgb 0,0,0) screen background and also full black card background.
BTW… fully also has screensaver option…
then, if you enable developer options on android you can enable “always on when on power”
