Using a Pi with browser and HDMI screen as a notification device/dashboard

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Probably this is standard stuff that has been asked repeatedly, but I did not find too much useful postings with my generic search terms:

I want to put a Raspberry Pi 4 somewhere, set it to autologin on boot, make a browser start by itself, and use it like many people use tablets: For notifications and as a dashboard. There are two things I am not sure how to do most elegantly:

  1. When the screen is idle I want to switch it off, with xset -display :0 dpms force off or similar so the display goes to sleep. But I want the screen to wake up, when there is an important state change on Home Assistant, or a notification. I suppose the easiest way to do this is to wrap this xset -display :0 dpms force off with a script that can be triggered remotely, by presenting HA eg. with a REST interface to this script or some way to execute it via SSH.

  2. I want to have some kind of dashboard, that the browser on the raspberry pi is switched to when idle. To do this I need some kind of browser remote control to switch the URL, or maybe to kill the browser each time idle is detected, and restart it with my dashboard URL. Kind of like a kiosk mode, only that I don’t want to prohibit chaning the URL manually.

Does anybody do similar things, are there maybe setups I could copy, so I don’t have to reinvent the wheel? Anything I am overlooking? Are there more specific search terms to describe a setup like this?

TIA, Ralph

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Any help?

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Thanks a lot! Yes, good Ideas i might steal, I am still not sure what the best way to change the displayed URL in the browser from a script or remotely is. I do not want to go full kiosk mode, because I do not need to lock out somebody, I just want the browser return to a default page for convenience (and so it can display notifications on next wakeup).

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Hello!
Any final solution to this?

I would like the Pi’s screen to turn on based on HA motion detection, but I’m not guided on how to do it.

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