I have been searching for a way to use an iPad I already have (Mini Gen 3) effectively as a standalone dashboard with HA. I was about to breakdown and purchase an Android tablet, but found a solution that works impressively well with motion or even face detection to determine when to have the screen on.
App: Kiosker ( https://kiosker.io )
Cost: Free 7 Day Trial, or $29 one time
My setup is inputing the local URL for HA into Kiosker with a dedicated HA user login for my tablets. This user does not have admin access and thus hides some of the behind the scenes settings/admin dashboards in HA.
Turning on the Face detection, the app works surprisingly quickly to flash from the screensaver (can be a floating clock, image, or blank screen) to the web dashboard I setup. Also lets you hide other navigation/etc.
If you want to lock the iPad into this Kiosk completely, you can use Guided Access on the iPad (built into iOS) to ensure people can’t leave your dashboard.
The only negative I have found is I have not figured out a way to completely turn off the display, just black it out.
My son just gave me back an iPad mini 4 he doesn’t use anymore and I want to use it for our first HA kiosk.
What’s the difference between the free version and the $30 pro version? The free version appears to do everythimg.
Can you also share your mount and power wiring solution?
The ‘free’ seems to be a trial and then a monthly subscription vs the pro is a one time purchase.
I have been playing with the iPort and Heckler mounts. Both metal and good quality, the iPort is definitely the slickest (made out of a solid piece of metal) and looks a bit better as you cant see in the sides like the heckler.
You can just switch between the apps like on a normal iPad (and home assistant does support making links on dashboards to launch another app on the iPad). But you would have to manually toggle back to the Kiosk app.
I was using Kiosker Pro, but recently it has lost the ability to load Homeassistant Lovelace dashboards on my iOS 12 devices. Has anyone else encountered this problem or had any luck?