Creating a wall-mounted dashboard with Home Assistant

Optimising Your Tablet Dashboard for Home Assistant

I mounted a tablet on the wall and turned it into a daily control panel. It cut out the faff of opening apps and let me check lights, temperatures and cameras in one place.

Getting Started

Choosing the Right Tablet

Pick a tablet with a decent display and reliable networking. I prefer IPS panels for the colour and viewing angles. Aim for 2–3 GB of RAM at minimum and a quad-core CPU if you want camera streams on screen. The trade-offs are fairly obvious:

• Cheap Android tablets, such as the Fire HD 8 or 10, cost less and are fine for basic control. They often need ADB for Play Store installs.
• Mid-range Android tablets, such as Samsung Tab A or Lenovo Tab models, tend to be faster and usually have better Wi-Fi and longer support.
• An iPad gives a smooth UI and long support life. Home Assistant works through a browser or the app, but some kiosk features differ.
• A small single-board computer with a cheap monitor takes more work, but can be a solid option.

Check the mounting side too. I used a thin VESA adapter and a flush wall case. Power matters as well. Put a permanent outlet near the mount, or plan for an in-wall USB supply.

Installing Home Assistant

I run Home Assistant on a Raspberry Pi 4 with 4 GB of RAM using the Home Assistant OS image. If you prefer a VM or Proxmox, use the recommended virtual appliance. I did it like this:

1. Download the Home Assistant image for your platform from home-assistant.io.
2. Flash the image to an SD card or SSD using balenaEtcher.
3. Boot and wait 10–20 minutes for the initial provisioning.
4. Complete the onboarding at http://homeassistant.local:8123 or the assigned IP.

If you use a supervised install on a machine that already runs other services, keep ports and resources free for add-ons like Node-RED or MariaDB if you want to use them.

Initial Configuration Steps

Do these early and you avoid faffing about later:

1. Add the integrations for your devices via Settings > Devices & Services.
2. Create secure long-lived access tokens if the tablet will run a kiosk browser.
3. Set a static IP or DHCP reservation for the tablet and the Home Assistant host.
4. Install and configure a reverse proxy or TLS if you want secure remote access.

Check that everything works by opening a Lovelace view on another device. If cameras do not appear, check the authentication type and stream URLs in the integration page. Trigger a manual action and confirm automations run from the UI.

Setting Up Your Dashboard

Customizing the User Interface

I used Lovelace with manual dashboards so I had full control. Start simple and add more only when you need it.

Practical steps:

1. Create a new dashboard in Settings > Dashboards, and set it to YAML mode if you want full control.
2. Keep live camera cards off the main page unless you really need them. Each RTSP or MJPEG stream adds CPU and network load.
3. Use icon and glance cards for the things you touch often: lights, heating and the front door.
4. Use a dark theme at night to cut glare and, on OLED screens, lower power draw.

My main page shows six quick controls, one security camera thumbnail and a temperature history graph. That keeps redraws low and the touch targets large enough to hit first time.

Integrating Smart Home Devices

Use native integrations where you can. They usually expose entities and services cleanly.

Checklist:

• Add Zigbee or Z-Wave through a USB stick or a bridge. Use the matching integration for the stick, such as ZHA or Z-Wave JS.
• Add IP cameras through the generic camera integration or the vendor integration. Prefer HLS or MJPEG if the tablet browser struggles with RTSP.
• For Hue and similar hubs, use the native integration rather than routing through third-party cloud services.

Test each integration by toggling a device from the dashboard and watching the state change in Developer Tools > States. If commands take longer than 1–2 seconds, look at the slow link: network, bridge or API rate limits.

Optimising Tablet Performance

Small tweaks make a noticeable difference. I keep the dashboard light and the tablet tuned.

Hardware and software tweaks I used:

• Disable background apps. On Android, use Settings > Apps to force stop heavy apps and revoke background activity.
• Lock the tablet to a single browser in kiosk mode. Chromium-based kiosks run faster than the full Home Assistant Android app in some setups.
• Cut refresh rates on charts. Set history and recorder retention sensibly so the database is not churning for no reason.
• Use local media proxies for camera thumbnails so the tablet does not have to transcode.
• Keep the tablet on a charger and watch the temperature. Heat will throttle it.

Open the browser developer tools on a desktop and watch the network requests to the Home Assistant host. Pages should load in under two seconds on a typical home Wi-Fi setup. If they do not, check whether the tablet CPU or the network is the bottleneck by looking at CPU use and Wi-Fi link speed.

Automating Dashboard Functions

Make the dashboard adapt without manual changes. I automated wake, dimming and sections that shift with time or presence.

Useful automations:

1. Auto-wake: turn the screen on when motion is detected, then off after a period of inactivity.
2. Night mode: switch the dashboard theme and reduce brightness between set times.
3. Presence-based pages: switch the default Lovelace view depending on who is home or the time of day.

Example automation for night mode:

• Trigger: time at 22:30.
• Action: call a service to change the Lovelace theme and set tablet brightness to 20%.

Keep a manual override on the dashboard itself. Test each automation with a short timeout so you can see the state change properly.

Finalizing Your Setup

Lock the tablet into its mount, hide the cables and label the power feed. Final checks I do:

• Reboot the tablet and confirm the kiosk browser opens the dashboard automatically.
• Simulate a Home Assistant restart and confirm the tablet reconnects automatically.
• Check that automations still run when the dashboard is on the default view.

A lean dashboard and one dedicated browser session beat a flashy setup with too many live streams. The result is a responsive Home Assistant wall panel that stays put and does its job.

If something slows down, isolate whether the problem is the tablet or the Home Assistant host, then change one thing at a time.