Need some suggestions on selecting a control panel

Hello experts in community, my first topic here, greetings!

I am building up my smart home configurations and it’s getting more and more complicated. At some point I start to feel that the automation is not sufficient for all kinds of situation I’m facing everyday, so like once per week I still need to take out my phone to adjust my lights or thermostats, which is not so smart. Plus, I’m not fully utilizing the notifications feature HA is providing - sometimes I’m just not looking at my phone.

So I’ve been thinking about adding a touchable screen on my bedroom wall which will be displaying the dashboard I configured with HA. I would like to control everything from the control panel, and I want it to show notifications when my automation sends me one. So far I’ve compared a few options:

  • Use a tablet with a mount This is the first option that pops to my mind, simple because I have seen a lot of configurations like that and I have seen those fancy tablets in some resteraunts. Using a tablet as smart home control panel is easy to setup (there’s even apps used for that!), but there’re a lot of limitations too. It’s a total waste to just use the powerful tablet as a control panel, some tablet systems are difficult to integrate with (like auto unlock and light up when I got home), and most tablets comes with a battery, which is dangerous to just left charging in my wall. Also the tablet docks are highly customized. I think I will need to 3d print one. Also the tablets are expensive, I feel guilty just mount them on the wall.
  • Use a monitor with a Raspberry PI This is the current winning option I’m planning to go with now. I will just mount a monitor to my wall and connect a raspberry pi box to it. The pi doesn’t need to run HA, it just displays the dashboard in a Chrominum. I can program the pi to show the control panel on startup. With same budget, I can get a 27" screen instead of just a 11" tablet. It’s also easier to mount the monitor than to mount a tablet - Monitors today have the VESA interface and there are a ton of mounts to hang a monitor to a wall.
  • Use a monitor with a remote PC I have a spare PC that I can use as a screen-controller. All I need to do is to figure out how to display the content I want to the remote panel. I do found a few solutions that can connect the display wirelessly, but none of them can transmit the touch signal to the server remotely. The pro side of this solution is that I can (relatively) easily add new monitors, so maybe I can add one monitor to my living room? I’m open to any suggestions on this option.

What do you use (or plan to use) as your control panel? I would like to hear from more experts before I put my dollers into the hardware and put holes into my wall :smiley: Please share your device configurations with me!

Thank you for reading!

You are looking at this the wrong way.

You dont need a better remote control, you need better automations so that you don’t need a remote control.

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