I don’t want to make some advertising just getting some feedback of the community.
In general these are Tuya wall panels based on Android. They offer a 8 inch display and an external knob with a dedicated display. It can be used as control and display some information. It also offers an built in amplifier which can drive passive speaker and also include 2 relays for lights and much more.
They come with a lot of disadvantages:
Tuya Cloud only
Privacy Concerns
Not compatible with homeassistant
The knob + Display is not useable
I want to build an app which is sold exclusively with such a panel:
Control all Homeassistant entities via the knob
Selectable Entities which are controllable via the knob
No Tuya cloud
Pre-Installed Homeassistant companion app
Fair price point
Would you buy one?
Yes
No
0voters
What is the max price you would pay
99$
199$
249$
299$
0voters
Please share your thoughts and questions / ideas in this thread.
My one is not cloud only. This is the big thing. Do you have some other criteria?
The main goal is:
Nice looking panel
Hardware knob for controlling lights with a physical feedback
Builtin Amplifier for TTS and multimedia streaming
Good Homeassistant Integration
The price is a really big thing. The hardware on AliExpress is around 300$ I want to achieve a much lower price. But I think it’s not clear for the community what the device offer. Because 6 votes doesn’t seems a lot for me
No if is not unclear. But the tech you listed. (Tuya) does NOT (notoriously) play well with Homeassistant, which is one of your own goals.
And why I listed it. If you aren’t already aware of how difficult Tuya makes this issue then you aren’t aware of massive issues behind the plan.
The device is sexy I won’t lie but sexy that won’t work or gives me a massive admin headache or things I need to work around or root to have full control is not at all interesting.
Get rid of the builtin firmware and do all those things with a basic android tab running kiosk browser software like Fully Kiosk for $250.00 or less and now you have my interest.
Understand in his space you’re competing against a rooted fire 10 tab which is ~$100 bucks and another $35 for Amazon to clear the login ads and about $10 for the Fully license. (less than 150 total). No it does not have the fancy dial but that’s just nice to have.
This is the PLAN! Exactly what I want:
The Companion app of HomeAssistant + a little helper App for the knob (which gets the entities from HomeAssistant and send the inputs back to HomeAssistant) . NO Tuya, NO Cloud. 100% Local. Fully debloat the firmware.
Just Android including HomeAssistant + App for the knob. No Tuya Software.
But it can’t be done for just 1pcs …. I am thinking about kickstarter or something else… But before I do it I need a understanding if this has a market / potential
Current concept is that the device connects to the HA-Server, get all entities and the user select which he wants to control via the knob.
If the user spins or presses the knob it will send the changes to home-assistant. Via the API.
EDIT: If you have any other questions/ ideas just let me know and discuss it here in the thread.
EDIT2: Multiroom Audio another great use case. It has an 2ch amplifier included so using snap cast (opensource multiroom auidio) was never that nice
None of this was clear. Can’t wait for a Kickstarter description
Really, you will need to be clear on what you want to build. After several responses, I can look back and see what you ‘might’ want to provide. But, not based on your initial post.
What was not clear? I mentioned it several times. But the feedback is not really good enough to start. I will try to do it myself and post again if I am done I think a picture / videos of the result are more interesting as only text…
If you want it to compete with a NS Panel, then you need to provide some kind of mounting too and you need to handle the power connection, so it does not increase the size on the wall too much,
The feedback is not looking in the right direction. Could anybody who voted for “No” explain their decision? This would be great to see why you don’t want to buy such a panel?
I have a Lenovo Tablet hanging on my wall, acting as a display for Home Assistant and would definitely buy a dedicated device from you. It took me hours to mount it and still I’m not satisfied as i keep having problems with supply, restarts and so on. Simply, tablet isn’t a device dedicated to be hanging on a wall. At least that particular model. We all need a device powered from Ethernet, without a battery, with at most optional wifi, being able to sense if someone is looking at it and controllable from Home Assistant as any other device. If that thing would do that than I’m in.
After my experience with the Tuya device and especially the cloud, I would definitely not buy it. Today I’m glad I don’t have any Tuya devices.
I only use the Lenovo tablet as an HA monitor and I am satisfied.
Some basic ones, probably room brightness, some sort of motion sensor, preferably with the ability to discern between someone being near/engaging with the device versus just in the same room, temperature if it’s not off due to the heat from the unit, and the ability to act as a BT proxy for HA like ESPHome can do with ESP32s.
Regarding audio, if it had speakers, probably AirPlay2, DLNA and squeezelite support as options. A microphone with a hardware cutoff would be nice for voice, etc support.
I think a hard requirement would be that all configuration can be done remotely, off device, preferably in HA.
This is HA specific code and I do not think there is an android code available.
This is Apple specific code and don’t expect it to be available on Android.
The code in HA and on all non-Apple products are hacks and reverse-engineered, so they may have missing features, errors and may break when Apple deploy updates.
Apple is not known for playing nicely with third parties, so avoid their products if you are any interoperability.
