Hoping for some inspiration here… I’d like a bedside table display that I can use to display some form of permanent HomeAssistant dashboard (big clock with some varying info), in a similar style to the Lenovo Smart Clock 2. It’s seemingly very difficult to find anything off the shelf so I think I’m left with two options: Buy a cheap android phone and install fully kiosk along with a smart plug to handle overcharging or to build my own device.
The phone seems to be the easier option and has the following benefits:
Battery backup - although this isn’t very useful without the server running
Self dimming screen - Reason why I can’t use something like a Google Nest display that casts at full brightness
Cheapest touchscreen phone should suffice to just run fully kiosk
Built in speakers for any form of announcement or voice replies
Easy enough to 3D print the enclosure
The DIY solution has a couple extra benefits but is obviously a lot more work:
No need to handle android updates
Potentially cheaper but I’m struggling to find a capable board to display the web page so by the time I’ve bought this and the screen it will probably equal a cheap phone.
Hopefully easy enough to eventually make use of the HA voice as I can just add the required hardware into the enclosure
I’d say slightly more control but I’m not too sure in reality
Just looking to hear any suggestions from anyone who’s got something working!
What I use for a bedside (and elsewhere in house) console is home built. I use a rpi (a 3A works fine and is cheapest) with a 5 inch capacitive touch screen that uses a dsi connection to the pi. The latter is available on aliexpress for about $28 including shipping. I mount them in a 3d printed case I designed. Nice looking overall (i.e. gets passing grades from my wife who loves the functions) I run a console software system I built initially years ago to work with an ISY Insteon hub that now interfaces with HA instead. That system has plusses and minuses relative to an HA dashboard but the hardware should also handle the dashboard stuff. Should you want to see what it all looks like take a look at the software github at GitHub - kevinkahn/softconsole: Soft Console for ISY and/or Home Assistant Home Automation based on Raspberry Pi although the pictures there are all of it running on an older hardware using a smaller Adafruit 3.5 inch display. Its all open source and I have had other folks use it over the years so you’re also welcome to play with the software I run should that interest you.
Unless you are a “no cloud” person, Amazon Echo Show … like $40 - $60 … and some wallpanel trickery and a few automations. All Echo’s have a browser, (Silk) you can link it to the internal HA address.
I am in the process of creating a series of dashboards now specifically for my Echo Shows. Here is one for Music.
Does this suffer the same problem as the Google Nest hubs where the auto dimming doesn’t work when casting or is it not an issue as it’s a webpage? Any known issues, can it display cameras etc?
I’ve got one in the living room which basically just shows a clock, I could try on that before buying another
@burg93 Which display are you using? Is it touch? @nickrout Does the display of the Sensecap goes into “sleep mode” when not used or at least does it dim?
Thanks!
He he…ops, sorry, I didn’t realized that you were the one who started the thread.
Let us know which way you go and how is it once you’re implemented it.
Yes, you can dim the backlight. If you turn the backlight off, it goes black. At night mine dims to about 25 and up to the max (255) during the day. I do this with an automation based on sunrise/sunset. But you could use a light sensor too. I don’t think it has one built in, but it has two grove connectors on the back.
Actually i probably put you wrong on the grove connectors. They are connected to a rp2040 which is attached to the esp32. They are not supported by openhasp. See
and
You may be able to hack something up, they seem quite open.
