Hi,
Very new to all this, started out in the world of home assistant about a month ago. Its been a big learning curve as I don't have any 'coding' experience, but starting to get the hang of how to get things working now.
The brief: I was looking for a stylish, modern wall mounted 'control panel' for our apartment/house. Aiming for a 10" tablet in landscape mode, to be wall mounted (still to be purchased) in kiosk mode.
The Problem: Researching the HA dashboard designs out there, I personally found that a lot of the dashboard designs were way, way too cluttered, and engineered just for the techie who built it, but not at all user friendly for the rest of the household or occasional guests in the house.
So I designed the interface with the principle that 'anyone' can walk up to it and quickly either view key information or perform the required action. It should be 'super simple' not super frustrating.
I just wanted to share where I have got to so far with a few screenshots of the base interface.
The home dashboard....(each home controls button opens a view with simple controls for that topic)
Its not perfect, some of the interface detail/layout is not consistent across every view, but I've tried to keep the dashboards as stock as possible using either standard cards, or some custom button cards. Overall I think it is close to what I was hoping to achieve.
Let me know if anyone wants some more info on the design. Happy to share any info/code.
Thanks. Yeah, I ordered the raspberry pi parts at the start of April so probably more like 6-7 weeks now that I check on it, but once I got over the learning curve, it was full steam ahead.
The screen shots are from the HA app on a Samsung galaxy 8.1" Android tablet. The plan is to buy a 10.1" PoE Android tablet on AliExpress for permanent wall mounting with a PoE ethernet cable feeding into the back of the tablet from a backbox, rather than a battery powered tablet. I have used the Samsung as a test rig before committing to cutting holes in the wall and buying the new tablet. Cameron Grey has made an excellent video on YouTube about the Poe Android tablet options, and that's the direction on want to go too. I actually have a 2-3 min walkthrough video of my design which shows a lot more features/views, but I can't see a way to share it on this forum without creating my own YouTube channel, which seems a bit OTT.
Great! Let me know what you find on Aliexpress as I am looking for the same thing too. BTW I have also heard of "Fully Kiosk" browser which may help your use case too. Have fun!
This is the one Cameron Grey re ieviewed in significant detail:
2026 new 10.1 inch proximity sensing android POE tablet wall mount smart home control panel,MQTT,Google Play,LED lights,Wifi,BT
The review video is here https://youtu.be/lBU4yU9eD2U?si=3lDHzZlEACXgtHai
Its not a cheap tablet, but the key difference for a permanently connected device is using poe power rather than a battery that will introduce battery maintenance issues. Also by having a device with a proximity sensor instead of a camera it mitigates any privacy concerns in the house.
