As I add more automation, I’m finding a need to provide simple visual status of some things to non-techie family members, for example “the pump is running”. A single bit of status would be enough in many applications.
Are there inexpensive IoT devices to do this? A low drain battery operated device would be awesome!
Do you maybe have an old smart phone or tablet? If so, you could build a custom dashboard with just a few tiles showing that information, wall-mount the device and permanently keep it powered.
Very creative idea! I’d go for it but my wife wouldn’t 
Thanks
There are a hundred ways, let your creative mind go wild.
Set a Hue light to change colors, blink, fade, etc when something happens
A low cost option would be an ESP32 with led’s wired as a signal.poke them through a cork board, white board, wife approved sign to label the LEDs.
There are some nice frames to hold tablets now, my wife has come to depend on using it - even starts her Subaru with the tablet!
Announce the action through Alexa/Google if it’s in the room.
Send push notifications to your families phones.
Hide a screen behind a mirror, looks modest and futuristic.
Cut up a led light strip to length and control it with a cheap zigbee controller (lots on Amazon and Ali express). Or get a Quinled and program something in with WLED.
Personally, if you have basic soldering skills you can’t go wrong with an Esp32. You can get some with relay boards attached and control any lights you want to signal. I used this with 12v deck lighting powered through POE to light up my sauna when it was hot enough to enter.
OK - in my family this was a real game changer. We have 2 tablets in the living areas with access to the most important sensors and controls, and now everyone (including guests) have access to Home Assistant without even knowing it.
Using IoT devices whose primary purpose is something else is something I hadn’t thought of since I was merely looking for something an inch square with one LED in the center 
Leaving a tablet on a table or counter may have greater WAF than mounting it on a wall for us.
Could you share examples of your dashboard for tablets? Code fragments or pictures are fine.
Thanks
Sure, here is how that looks like:
This is a Fire 8 HD tablet running Fully Kiosk browser. The tablet nevers sleeps, but dims after a minute and goes back to full brightness as soon as the camera detects motion. I built a custom dashboard for the tablet using button-cards, sidebar-card and kiosk-mode to hide parts of the UI. And I am using browser-mod to display notifications, for example when someone presses the doorbell I show a full-size popup window with the doorbell’s camera view.
The main dashboard shows the most important sensors and controls.
And here without the tablet:
This is probably the best implementation I have seen to date. When I finish building my addition I plan on using this sort of design for my kitchen/living room tablet.
These are awesome!
Now to find time and energy to implement something like this
