For years, I’ve had this nagging itch to put a digital calendar on our wall. Nothing wildly complex; just a clean display that actually shows what is going on in our lives.
Having ADHD makes standard calendar apps a complete nightmare for me. I’ll discover a shiny new scheduling tool, obsess over setting it up for three days, use it religiously for a week, and then completely forget it exists. The only thing that consistently works for my brain is having information right in my physical space where I see it multiple times every single day.
The Problem with the Fridge Chalkboard
Our household routine revolves around Saturdays. My partner and I sit down (mostly my partner) and plan out the entire week’s menu. We gather ingredients, place a grocery order, and write our dinner menu on a magnetic chalkboard stuck to the fridge.
It gets the job done, but it gets annoying fast:
- Decided to swap Tuesday and Thursday’s dinners? Time to grab a wet paper towel, wipe down half the board, and rewrite everything.
- Trying to plan ahead or remember a favorite recipe from last month is basically impossible.
- It lives in total isolation from the rest of our digital calendars and smart home setup.
The $300 “Walled Garden” Solution
About a month and a half ago, my partner sent me a link to a commercial smart family calendar display (one of those Skylight-style boards). Conceptually, it looked great.
Then I saw the price tag: $300. Paying that much for a locked-down Android tablet running closed-source software you can’t modify felt crazy. If we were going to dedicate permanent wall space to a home dashboard, it needed to play nice with our existing setup. I wanted it controlling lights, checking irrigation status, and showing sensor data through Home Assistant.
I went hunting for existing Skylight-inspired integrations in the Home Assistant community. I found plenty of slick calendar cards, but none of them solved our biggest headache: interactive meal planning that is displayed on the calendar right alongside our daily events.
Building Draft One (And Down the Rabbit Hole)
I figured I would just build it myself.
I wrote a custom Lovelace calendar card with a dedicated meal planner sitting right across the top. It was flexible, allowing one, two, or three meal slots a day, or dedicated weekend breakfast slots. I tweaked the styling to fit our theme, loaded it onto our wall display, and called it a day.
Then a friend saw it and asked if it could tie into Grocy so he could track ingredients and recipes.
I decided to add Grocy support and posted the project on the Home Assistant Discord. One thing led to another, feature creep completely took over, and a month later, here we are. Welcome to HA Family Hub: an 11-card ecosystem built from the ground up for Home Assistant.
How We Personally Use It
Hardware-wise, we actually upgraded our setup as the project grew. We originally ran the dashboard on a Samsung Galaxy Tab A9+, which worked brilliantly and is a fantastic budget-friendly option. But because we loved having this central command center so much, we decided to go even bigger: we currently have a 22-inch monitor mounted directly to our fridge, powered by a Mini PC. Both hardware setups worked great.
Beyond the main kitchen display, I also run Family Hub on a Lenovo Smart Display sitting on my desk.
That brings me to one of my favorite parts of the whole system: the Screensaver card. When my desk display goes idle, it switches over to a digital photo frame. I don’t always need my displays to look like an active dashboard. Sometimes I just want to glance over, see memories, and be reminded of fun times we’ve had. The screensaver bridges that gap between utility and warmth.
My Favorite Feature: The Daily Digest
Before I break down the rest of the cards, I have to talk about the Daily Digest. Hands down, this is my partner’s and my absolute favorite thing we built, and we rely on it every single day.
In the settings menu, you can set up custom automated push notifications sent to household members at a specific time each day. You get to customize exactly what goes into your digest:
- Today’s calendar events and appointments.
- Assigned chores, reminders, and pending tasks.
- A heads-up on fridge/pantry items expiring soon.
Getting a notification every morning telling us what’s for dinner before we even leave the house has been a total life-changer. No more forgetting to thaw chicken, popping dinner into the Crock-Pot at the last second, or staring blankly into the fridge at 6:00 PM.
The 11 Modular Cards
Rather than forcing a single rigid view, Family Hub breaks down into 11 modular, highly configurable cards that scale across wall tablets, desktops, or phones. Interaction across most cards is handled through a Floating Action Button (FAB) that you can anchor either to the bottom right of your overall dashboard or dock to individual cards:
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Main Calendar: The flagship display handling events, interactive meal planning, and daily schedules. It scales dynamically across horizontal, vertical, and small screens (works great as a full-page panel).
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Family Today: A compact, single-day mini card built to drop into existing room-by-room dashboards.
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Chores Board: Shows household tasks, routines, pending approvals, and an interactive “chore bin” where family members can drag and drop items to claim them.
- Reward Box: Where accumulated stars/points from completed chores and routines can be redeemed for custom rewards or allowances.
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My Chores: A lightweight, mobile-friendly card for personal phones showing only your assigned tasks.
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My Goals: Built for long-term achievements (like getting straight A’s or running a sub-12 minute mile). Reaching goals awards stars just like chores, but frames achievements in a positive way.
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Active Timers: Live countdowns triggered by chores, timed rewards (like gaming allowances), or custom timers (currently in Beta while we fine-tune completion alerts).
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To-Do List: Built-in list management featuring native cross-list drag and drop between HA to-do lists and Grocy lists, plus wishlists with claiming features that hide claimed status from the wishlist owner so surprises aren’t spoiled.
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Recipe Box: A centralized reader to browse recipes, heart favorites, and review family meal suggestions when building out the calendar menu (in Beta as UI polish continues).
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Pantry Board: A visual UI for Grocy inventory that lets you filter items, track expiration dates, and put groceries away into specific fridges, freezers, or cabinets.
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Standalone Screensaver: Drop this onto any non-Family Hub Lovelace view to turn idle wall displays into ambient camera streams or photo frames.
Deep Smart Home & Kitchen Power
We didn’t just want a fancy digital whiteboard; we wanted deep integration into Home Assistant and Grocy:
Sensor-Driven Chores, Routines & Gamified Rewards (For Everyone!)
Let’s be honest: adults are just a bunch of big kids too. Staying on top of chores and daily routines isn’t just a battle for children; I need gamified chore tracking just as much as anyone! Turning household responsibilities into an interactive system with earnable stars, rewards, and live timers makes checking off daily tasks genuinely enjoyable, whether you’re 8 or 38.
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Smart Home Automations: Because this lives inside Home Assistant, chores react to your real world. When the washing machine finishes its cycle, HA can automatically generate a “Do Laundry” chore. When the dishwasher’s power drawer or weight sensor confirms it has been emptied, the chore marks itself complete without you touching a button.
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Dynamic Routines: You can enable Routines right in the settings menu to sit directly on the Chores Board. Routines adapt based on the day or time, letting you configure specific morning or bedtime sequences, tie star rewards to completed routine tasks, and help the whole family stay on track effortlessly.
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Kiosk Elevation Login: A login button at the top of the central kiosk lets any user quickly sign in to gain their elevated permissions right on the shared display. Kids (and adults!) can sign in to mark their completed chores at the central board, while elevated users can approve pending tasks or tweak board settings without leaving the kiosk.
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Reward Suggestions: If a user without elevated permissions opens the menu on the kiosk via the Floating Action Button (FAB) to add a reward, the interface transitions to a “Suggest a Reward” prompt. Elevated users can log in later, review suggested rewards, set the star price, and officially approve them onto the board.
Native To-Do Integration & Daily Rollover Reminders
Standard HA calendars show events well, but handling tasks that slip through the cracks used to be frustrating. We built a dedicated Reminders system with a daily rollover feature: if a reminder isn’t finished today, it automatically rolls over to tomorrow, reminding you daily until it’s checked off.
These reminders are backed directly by native Home Assistant To-Do entities, making it straightforward to hook custom HA automations, scripts, or notifications straight into your reminders.
Recipe Scraping & Automatic Unit Conversions
Our built-in recipe scraper parses web recipes and matches ingredients directly against your Grocy database (or suggests matches using an internal lookup table). It even handles automatic unit conversions (like converting cups to tablespoons) so inventory deducts accurately when meals are prepped. You can read recipes right on the board with tabbed navigation or click direct web links.
Active Beta & What’s Next
This project has been a labor of love. The integration is currently in active beta—I am constantly pushing updates, polishing UIs, fixing minor annoyances, and adding new features to make it as smooth and useful as possible.
Check it out on Github: GitHub - JVarhol/HA-Family-Hub: A Family hub and meal planning dashboard for home assistant like skylight tablets · GitHub
Join the Discord Discussion: Discord
I really hope you give HA Family Hub a try! Jump into the discussion on the Home Assistant Discord, share feature ideas, report any bugs you encounter, and show off your wall dashboard setups.
Thank you for reading! Please feel free to DM me with questions, features you’d like to see or just general questions!