Recommendation regarding small control panels

Hardware
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Hi all! This is my first post here and I’m new to Home Assistant, so please bear with me. :sweat_smile:

TLDR: I’m looking for some wall panels to control Home Assistant from multiple rooms in my house, requirements are listed in the second part of the post.

So in my new home I decided to go with full ABB free@home installation (at least for blinds and lightning), since I was unable to find any better alternative that controls lights and blinds locally using cable connection. I could build something myself using KNX hardware, but I’m new to home automation, so it seemed like a bit too much hassle. Hopefully free@home is going to integrate well with Home Assistant, like my research suggests.

When we created the wiring diagram for free@home and the whole electric, we assumed that (almost) every room will have a ABB room temperature sensor/controller, like ABB RTC-F-1 - RTC-F-1 | ABB, so in many places we have an electrical box with only a bus cable (24V DC).

During the construction/decoration we found out that those make actually little sense, since:

  • we have a heat pump and floor heating, so even if we control the floor heating valves, it would make little difference because of the inertia of the whole system (that’s what I was told, I’m not an expert)
  • the cost of the sensors/controllers and valves would be actually quite high

It seemed like a bad idea to spend so much money if we are not sure about the results. But we already have the electrical boxes.

Due to all of the above, I realised that it’s a perfect opportunity to have a small, wall mounted control panel in almost every room.

So I’m looking for a wall panel that (sorry for a long intro):

  • is designed to fit inside a standard (EU) electrical box
  • has a small screen (around 8x8 cm, but I’m flexible)
  • can display webpages or can be hacked to display Home Assistant dashboard
  • (preferably) connects via WiFi (saves me a lot of hassle)
  • (preferably) could be powered by 24V DC
  • (preferably) has a temperature sensor
  • (nice to have) has other sensors (humidity, proximity, light)
  • (nice to have) is not very expensive, since I need 5 of those

First I found the Tuya T6E, but this is expected to be powered by AC and requires some hacking to display the Home Assistant dashboard.

My next find - Rithum Switch Smart Home Touch Panel | Rithum Switch (rithumhome.com) - was very promising, since it can be powered by 12-30V DC and ticks all of the boxes. But the problem is that it’s quite expensive and it’s not available in Poland directly, so if I’d like to bring it here anyway, it could get really pricey. And the huge elephant in the room is that I’m not even sure if it’s doing the most important thing, since I cannot find any guide to hack it to display the HA dashboard.

So - does anyone have any better suggestions? I’m also open to DIY this if this is going to be significantly better/cheaper in the end, but I’d need to be pointed in some direction.

Also, in one place only I need a similar thing, but this one should be larger and could be powered by 230V AC with little modifications, so please share if you have any recommendations. So far I’m planning to put Amazon Fire HD 8 tablet there. Thank you very much in advance!

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Thats a mighty full list to also include the last bullet (you wont get all that and cheap)

But you missed a big one. Your country. EU standard box isn’t enough.

We need to know your geo because radio and power requirements vary wildly by country.

That said, based on your ask. The only possible device I can imagine is the Sonoff NSPanel Pro.

2 Likes
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Quick response, thanks! I acknowledge that expecting a low price with that list of requirements is optimistic at best. :wink: I’m willing to compromise for sure.

As for my location, I’m from Poland.

Thanks for the NSPanel Pro suggestion, it’s almost perfect. I should have mentioned it in the original post honestly. I remember that I found it in the past (researched this months ago), now I remember my thoughts. I love that it can just display webpages, it also connects via WiFi, price is really reasonable and overall it ticks the most important boxes. It has just two problems: it is powered by AC and it seems to lag a bit (watching YouTube reviews). It also lacks the temp sensor, but this is not a deal breaker.

At this point, best option seem to be the NSPanel Pro. I’d need to do something about the power (I wonder if it could be hacked to be powered by DC directly, since providing AC there would be significant work) and get a separate temp sensor though.

Edit: it can be hacked to 24V DC! NS Panel Pro - 24V Power Supply Mod running HA : r/homeassistant (reddit.com)

1 Like
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So are the ns pannels the only reasonable options as of today? Have you considered knx wall panels?

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Yup, so far I’m planning to go with the NSPanel Pro and mod it to accept 24V DC power for my use case. Thanks for the KNX wall panels suggestion, but my knowledge regarding KNX ecosystem is poor and I can’t see any reasonably priced options.