Faceman🇦🇺

Yea, we don’t really need first party native UIs (the community can do that themselves), just more control and configurability over what we currently have.

I’d like to see some better screen formatting options without having to use custom code or unofficial add-ons.

For example, I’d like to make a grid layout that auto stretches and flows for different display sizes like a modern website can, or lock to a screen width/height etc for a fixed wall mounted controller so I don’t get random scrollbars on some screens.

And more control over things like tap and hold actions. it’s almost impossible for me to use tap and hold on my main wall mounted display for example, if I move by a single pixel it doesn’t react, I’d like to set the deadzone and delay time for that for example.

it’s a standard cartoon bone shape, there are others in the meat lump.

Ah yes, the joys of automating everything to the extent that when someone does happen to be a guest in your house that you need to give them a ten minute lecture on how to turn on the lights because “it’s all automated” but “you’re still working on it”

I went with momentary push-button switches connected to zigbee dimmers behind the wallplates. Cost more but it’s much more sensible, particularly for double switch situations where you just parallel up the switches.

Hey, Jeff’s here! Neat.

good reliable motion sensing is hard, anything solely PIR based is going to be unreliable and give false positives when sensitive enough to “work” but if the sensitivity is turned down to avoid false positives they barely detect anything reliably, the middle ground is pointless to try to tune as it varies so much all the time. there are better ones out there that are a bit smarter or use multiple sensor types combined, but they usually cost 3-5x as much as the Sonoffs.

Look for microwave presence sensors for something actually useable. its a newer tech that has started to drop in price dramatically and works so much better as it doesnt rely on IR or temperature in any way.

I find some integrations much easier to implement in nodered then I’ve the hacs nodered plugin to connect them properly

I personally haven’t had any issue with the standard spotify integration when calling it from automations or scripts, so I suspect it can be made to work pretty well when just having a button call up a premade playlist or something. then one button could maybe be left free for a simple play/stop function.

Central Scrutinizer, play Joe’s Garage on the living room stereo

“Satan, Play Emperor on the living room stereo”

I don’t know what type of disabilities your little one has but I was looking into this for my grandma when she was struggling to use things due to physical and mental decline and ended up with the “Relish Simple Music Player” which is a dead simple desktop radio with limited controls and preconfigurable presets for FM/dab stations or playlists from a memory card, **but it had no smart features or streaming. ** not really kid optimised but it’s good to know there are devices out there that are specifically designed for various disabilities.

As for DIY smart HA based solutions, a compatible device like a google home mini or similar (or any active speaker with a compatable receiver plugged in, or a Sonos One SL or something if you are OK with that) and some simple control device like one of those zigbee scene controllers (like these), the standard spotify integration, plus a bit of automation/scripting or a tiny bit of nodered could become a simple and effective little jukebox.

I’m starting to replace some wifi devices with zigbee too, Yes many zigbee devices will act as a repeater or router for other devices to connect through, the only devices that tend not to have this functionality are battery powered devices like pushbuttons or remotes.

Just a word of warning, those S26 Zigbee outlets have quite poor range so you might still run into issues if you only have a couple of them.

As far as I know there is no alternative firmware for the Zigbee and Z-wave devices. nor is there any real need for one as they do tend to “just work” but that also means you are stuck with the features and functions they give you. There are some Zigbee bridges that can run ESPhome to add some customisability, but that is just for the wifi side of the device.

Was never even available as a service in my country so no loss to me.

Japanese company doing Japanese company things…

FF6, FF9 and Links Awakening

There are user accounts and you can restrict dashboards on a per user basis, but it’s clunky currently and could do with being expanded.

Just a heads up that the paid version of Fully Kiosk Browser has a wake-via-camera motion option built in, and with the HA integration you can also do wake via PIR or some other input, or use the motion detection of the camera as an input to HA for further automation.

Personally, I use a bit of abandoned android software (I forget the name at the moment) that lets me use a node based system to connect the proximity sensor with the screen wake based on whatever variables work, so that works for me, but my touch panel is running an older version of android so it might not work with everything.

I also run my HA on a nuc (beelink mini s12 with n95) proxmox with the subscription nags disabled, installed HA via the install script rather than from scratch, also have a Linux VM running a kiosk browser for a non-interactive dashboard feed (unifi cameras, power, weather, reminders etc) into my video distribution system that also runs a fileflows node in the background for quicksync video encoding tasks to be offloaded to it from my main server

I was having stability issues with the pi based setup I had before, as well as performance limitations I wasn’t expecting considering how simple my setup is, though i do have a complex nodered setup running all the logic as I prefer to do it in there rather than in HA directly.

NSPanel Pro is easy to unlock, debug mode is enabled by first setting it to a cloud account but you can just use a dummy account for it. it is just android so enable ADB then load a lightweight launcher, change some defaults, remove some fluff and go from there.

The regular NSPanel is not android but can still be modified as it is ESP32 based.

if you really want e-ink, an older e-reader with hackable firmware could be a good way to go, but without a printer you’d have to pay for a printing service to make the mount, which would likely take a few iterations to get right so it wouldn’t be particularly cheap. I want to see something about the size of the Boox Palma or Hisense A5 but with a wallmount, POE and some basic sensors.

You can jailbreak many older Kindle models, some require soldering to an internal serial port but then you can load a custom browser with a fullscreen mode, I even had a VNC client on mine to access a VM for a full PC interface.

I currently have an unlocked NSPanel Pro running Fully Kiosk browser for a HA dashboard in one room, but it’s not perfect and its a bit overpriced for what it is, also it;'s wifi only which is a bit of a let down for a permanent control device.

I did see on aliexpress today some new 7-8" android tablets with integrated wall mounts, POE power and data, a basic camera for presence detection etc but minimal sensors otherwise, for somewhat reasonable money, but they’re 3x to 4x what a basic equivalent tablet costs.

I’ve also dabbled with E-Ink displays but they are expensive and most of the hobbyist grade displays you can control with an ESP or PI don’t have any lighting so they cant be used in the dark. and they would require a lot more DIYing than an android tablet running a kiosk browser. I’ve not seen any off the shelf android e-paper devices designed for home control, look at the pricing of devices like the Onyx Boox tablets (I have an Onyx Boox note3 and love it, but it cost me more than an ipad at the time), you will see it’s a pricy tech to the begin with and low volume niche products also drive up prices a lot. the cheaper e-reader devices are less hackable for DIY.

I started with a bunch of cloud connected expensive wifi devices that would have all sorts of issues on the consumer crap wifi router I had at the time.

The amount of money I spent on those devices would have been much, much better spent on something non IP based like zigbee or zwave devices with a hardwired hub.

These days I finally have a more pro grade network setup that handles all the Wi-Fi IOT devices I have just fine, but it could have been so, so much simpler.