homeassistant

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Home Assistant is open source home automation that puts local control and privacy first. Powered by a worldwide community of tinkerers and DIY enthusiasts. Perfect to run on a Raspberry Pi or a local server. Available for free at home-assistant.io

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Wall control panels (midwest.social)

submitted 1 year ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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On Amzn, there are nicely framed, wall-mounted control panels for proprietary home automation systems. What are people using for HA? I'm leaning toward trying to wall mount tablets, but I'd need 3, and cost starts to factor in. Mounts are a problem; I want it to look as built in as possible, but most mounts aren't picture-frame style. The ones that I've found that are, are designed for specific tablets, and not the low end cheap ones. I don't have a 3D printer, so I'm limited to mounts I can buy.

I like some projects here I've seen using eInk - that's the ideal solution! Is there a source for pre-fab Android eInk wall mounted control panels, or are what I've seen bespoke projects?

I'm not opposed to gross wiring, and am not afraid of cutting holes in dry-wall... it's really the mounting that I'm stuck at. Android 7-10" tablets sufficient to run the UI would probably work, and I can probably even figure out wiring the charger, if I could just get some nice picture-frame style mounts.

What are your solutions that you think is pretty neat? Or products that I may have missed?

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[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Personally I purchased some cheap 10" Lenovo tabs for my new place. Haven't moved in quite yet, but some PoE to USB-C adapters and 3D printed wall mount cases outta get me out for ~$150/unit. Not the cheapest, but far from the most expensive. Should work well enough for what I need.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (2 children)

What's your plan on tablet going to sleep? Just force it to stay on 24/7 or is there some kiosk-manager or something which actually works and doesn't break the whole experience every now and then?

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago

Some devices just sleep the screen and wake on either a movement or proximity sensor. The latter might work for a wall-mounted tablet

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

Not the one you replied to, but I installed lineageos on a old Samsung tab I had laying around and there's the android native option to 'pin apps' which puts the app before the lockscreen basically until you exit the mode manually, meaning you only need to turn on the screen and it's still protected by password so can't be used for anything else.

For waking, it's in the hallway where I have a hue motion sensor. Whenever the sensor notices movement, it'll send a notification to the tablet with the command to wake the screen and the screen turns on. Pretty easy and straightforward

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

This is the direction I am moving; you must have a 3D printer at your disposal? That's the blocking component, for me.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Those can be had for pretty cheap these days, or you can order custom printed parts from some online services. Plus, some libraries have them now, free or cheap to use.