Lightweight IOS version (for IOS 9.3.5

nila · March 17, 2020, 11:46am

I have some old iPad mini’s running IOS 9.3.5 - It would be great if they could be used as a wall-mounted HA interface. There are a ton of devices like mine, and at a reasonable price.

Would it be possible to make a “lightweight version” (scrape off “advanced” features)?
No need for device tracking and other fancy stuff, just bare minimum like status, and turning on/off devices.
I know: Everything is easy, if you not going to do it yourselves

Also related to the topic:
It would also be GREAT to be able to post a serious use of old ipads in various forums with topics “Repurpose of old ipads” and also be able to say The HA community is helping the environment, by converting “bricked” devices into fully functional up-to date user interfaces for home automation

Burningstone · March 17, 2020, 1:42pm

Couldn’t you just use your browser on the iPad mini’s an access HA through the browser instead of the app?

nila · March 17, 2020, 6:08pm

Nope, that does not work… Tried different browsers…

Burningstone · March 17, 2020, 6:35pm

Whatvfo you mean it doesn’t work? Doesn’t work at all or slow/unresponsive?

themitchell · March 18, 2020, 4:26pm

I believe its an issue with lovelace. Loading the authentication page in browser (which you have to do both from the ios app to authenticate or from just going to the HA instance in the browser) just shows a blank page in my case. I believe ther are other posts on the forum about exacty this issue. Sadly it seems there isnt a good solution to this. OThers appear to instead use something like HADashboard and appdaemon or tileboard instead (presumably to get aroudn the issues with lovelace.

nila · March 19, 2020, 7:28am

Sorry
The login prompt never appears - a endless initializing.
Probarbly caused by old browser…

nagubal · March 19, 2020, 2:00pm

Yep, same problem on an iPad 3, stuck on 9.3.5.
This problem is regularly popping on the frontend github issues.
My guess is that it is too much of a hassle to deal with these old devices.

nagubal · March 19, 2020, 2:27pm

AFAIK, the problem lies with the Polymer framework used to build the HA lovelace frontend…
https://polymer-library.polymer-project.org/3.0/docs/browsers

Polymer 3.x works in the latest two versions of all major browsers: Safari 10+, IE 11+, and the evergreen Chrome, Firefox, and Edge.

rswennen · April 13, 2020, 6:48am

is there anything at all that can be done or just throwing away the ipad ?

craciunbogdan.m · May 1, 2020, 10:55am

did you found a workaround? same problem on my side with an Ipad mini 1 running ios 9.3.5. I’m looking now if jailbraking might allow me to update the browser

David.a · May 8, 2020, 2:23pm

Same problem: I have iPad 3 only able to run iOS 9.3.6 currently.

It would be great if the app could run somehow on these perfectly working devices.

Good luck!

Elisa9180 · May 11, 2020, 3:16pm

Same problem: I have 5x iPad 3 only able to run iOS 9.3.5 currently.
some workaround

TensE · May 11, 2020, 4:08pm

Just decided to brush the dust off my old iPad and turns out it’s iPad 3 iOS 9.3.5. Was excited to get it going as I used it a long time ago and now it’s not supported any solution would be nice.

kenm · May 11, 2020, 7:58pm

I’m looking for a status only display for my kitchen and was thinking about running a standalone webserver and pushing HA data to it via MQTT. Haven’t worked out the details yet, but I think you could also control devices, or at the least, run automations with MQTT messages.

I’ll post back as I come up with more.

thoughton · May 17, 2020, 1:53am

You could expose HA entities back to Homekit and then use an old Homekit app. Hesperus should still work on iOS9. The Elgato Eve app might work as well.

crboffo · May 17, 2020, 2:05am

I have the same issue and instead of using Lovelace I use an Appdaemon dashboard. Not exactly the same but one can still do a lot on a iPad 3 with iOS 9.3.5.

C

madrian · May 17, 2020, 6:33pm

Same issue here.

JZhass · May 24, 2020, 7:17am

For an awesome workaround see this post: Options for Lovelace on older iPad (ios 9.3.5)

nagubal · October 29, 2020, 9:11am

Quick heads up on the problem: just saw this in the 0.117 announcement

We improved compatibility and Home Assistant is now usable on more, mostly older, devices.

I just updated and tried on my old iPad, and it works: Version 0.117 brings the iPad 3 compatbility back!
Many thanks to the HA team!

JZhass · October 29, 2020, 7:49pm

@nagubal thank you so much for posting this! I have RPI3b with latest HassOS that I’m playing with and I just tested it on my iPad 2 — worked flawlessly. Thank you HA Team, awesome job!