Hi,
I’ve been working on this dashboard for months, and I think it’s finally finished (well, as finished as any project like this can be, as in I’m likely to change or enhance something tomorrow).
It’s running on an Amazon Fire 8" tablet mounted on the wall with a 3D printed border to hide the charging cable and make it look a little smarter. I chose this tablet because it was cheap, and has built in Alexa functionality which I use extensively in my home. I have an Alexa device of some description in just about every room which Home Assistant and the Alexa Media Player component have made extremely useful! I’m using the Fully Kiosk Browser to show the HA dashboard. Fully Kiosk also turns the tablet off if it is dark, which is handy and prevents it from being on all night. The tablet sits over an old light switch hole which is where I’m getting power from and where the tablet charger is located.I hate wires, so it needed to look clean.
All the lights use overlays to indicate if they’re on or not, and are working really well. The TVs have overlays to show what is currently playing.
I have integrated a chore reminder for my boys to remind them who needs to do what on which day and this has reduced the level of debate about who’s day it is to clean up the back yard dramatically as it just switched the drinks and dog doo-doo icons each day.
The pool temperature and pH levels are obtained via a product called Pool Sense which is a South African product that works really well and has a native integration into Home Assistant. The Rain Tank level is obtained through an ultrasonic sensor on my rain tank connected to an ESP8266 running on ESPHome.
I have integrated my MacBook into HA so that when I’m in work meetings, a red light comes on outside my office door and shows if I’m in a meeting or not on my avatar on the dashboard. It certainly does reduced disturbances, but has not eradicated them completely! Kids!
Temperature icons indicate where there are air conditioners, and these are controlled via Sensibo devices which work well and integrate nicely into HA.
The upstairs level screen is similar, but simpler with only really lights and ACs currently displayed.
Tapping on the Alarm Status button takes you to the Alarm page, which can be used for arming or disarming the alarm. The alarm is a Paradox MG5050 and is using the PAI integration via MQTT and it works beautifully. Most of my alarm arming / disarming is automated or done via our phones through Homekit (which is much nicer for normal people) so we don’t use this tab often. The PAI integration is available here: Home · ParadoxAlarmInterface/pai Wiki · GitHub
The CCTV tab displays my 4 CCTV cameras which are Reolink RLC-410s and work well.
The Weather tab just displays the local weather and the temperature sensor data collected from around the house.
The Weather Map tab is rarely used, but looks impressive to guests. It’s just an embedded windy.com page for Cape Town.
Here is what is looks like mounted on the wall. It it used a lot and the family appreciate a simple and clear interface into the rather complicated backend HA system.
This has taken a long time to get right and I couldn’t have done it without the help of many others in the community. I am in IT and am very technical, but not a developer so much of this was a new learning experience for me. Simon from Home Sight helped a lot to get me started and I used many of his icons and ideas. They are available at :Create Lovelace interface with 3D Floorplan – Home Sight
Getting the button sizes right on the tablet his tricky and required a lot of trial and error. You have to build the entire thing in YAML for now, but maybe one day there will be an easier way to built cool UIs like this.
My lights are a mixture of Philips Hue bulbs, some Sonoff switches and Z-Wave in-wall switches I’ve had for years connected to a Vera Controller. Home Assistant is such a brilliant way to bring various technologies and protocols together. I’ve been using various solutions for Home Automation since 2012, but Home Assistant has solved so many problems for me since I’ve been using it (about 18 months) and is just getting better all the time.
I’m happy to share the code for any component of this dashboard or help where I can if anyone else wants to set top something similar.