Morning fellas, in need of some help. il start off by telling you what i want. Im looking to have a touch screen panel in entrance to the house with temp reading, lights, alarms etc. i have installed HASS IO on Pi2, and can log into it via laptop/phone. but i have a aftermarket touch screen i would like to use. how would i go about launching a browser or panel app on the touch screen? at the moment it just displays text from bootup. thanks in advance
Hassio runs headless (no GUI). You point a web browser to <ip_address>:8123
Thanks, so am I best installing home assistant on to raspbian OS?
Yes. Or get an Android tablet.
Basically any web browser can act as a screen for Home Assistant.
You should not be attaching a screen to the Raspberry Pi that you run HASSIO on. I would probably suggest move from a Pi2 to at least a 3B+ though as you will find the Pi2 sluggish when you add a few automations.
A good option for a wall touch panel is, as @nickrout said, an Android Tablet. Run Fully Kiosk Browser or something similar on it and lock it to a particular Lovelace view. These are cheap and it won’t put additional load on your Pi2, which will already struggle with Home Assistant once you get a few automations happening.
If you want to use a touch screen you already have, unless it can interface directly with another Raspberry Pi or similar device and run a browser on it, then you likely won’t be able to utilise your existing touch screen.
For the sake of reliability, it is always best to keep your device (your Raspberry Pi2 in this case) that runs Home Assistant separate and out of the way. It is the brain of your home so to speak and if it crashes or glitches for any reason, you have issues. Especially if you are trying to make something that is highly acceptable to a partner or visitors.