I’m looking for advice on setting up kiosks for a smart home.
I’d like to have 2-3 touch screens setup to control devices from.
I’ve decided on the following:
- preferably plug in devices/screens (with no battery)
- e-ink screens would be preferable but not a must
- cost is a factor
Anyone had success in setting up something similar?
I personally use retired devices around the home, they are put on my IoT vLAN and wam bam thank you man I have a kiosk.
Generally speaking, I use the app.
I do, however, have miscellaneous tablets that are in rooms to show information and have a designated account just for that room’s controls. I also have a wall-mounted touch panel that was from a pro control system that I picked up cheap that I rooted and set HA to open at boot, but I don’t recommend this route unless you happen to get/see one cheap and know exactly what can/can’t be done with it.
Yes, using cheap Amazon tablets about 5-7 years ago. They never got used. It’s just more convenient to use the home assistant app on your phone or Siri.
I really like the idea of an in-wall home control panel - the guy who converted his whole house to illustrations & animations was awesome - but when I try to imagine situations where I’d really use it, I struggle. Definitely not going to get up from the couch and walk over to a control panel when I can just use the phone app, so it’s got to be circumstances where I want to control something, while I’m in a specific place or can’t easily use the phone. Maybe walking out the door, just to see if lights or whatnot are on (if I didn’t have an automation linked to presence). Maybe in the kitchen, to fix music when my hands are too dirty for the phone, but voice control seems like a better solution there.
World is full of gadgets that seem cool, but then you get them home and it’s just easier to do things the old way, and the gadget ends up being a techy Hummel figurine.
I have a RPi that I got back when they were cheap paired with a 7in touch screen mounted in a 3d printed cage on the wall. It’s used multiple times daily by the family for light controls mainly, but there’s definitely more that I could be doing with it
I have tablets in my home, with batteries (as fallback in case of power loss - my HA instance and router/APs are on UPS).
I’m using older (thus cheaper) Samsung tablets. Fully Kiosk works well, but recently I’ve started adding kiosk features to the HA Android app (no public PRs yet so it’s a few months away) to add some features (mostly sleep/wake via audio/camera motion, sleep screens, default pages for the specific instances etc.), so I can ditch FK.
Battery bloat is an issue - my Tab S6 is on its third battery (though admittedly it is nearly 7 years old now, got it January 2020), and my Tab S5e lasted 3.5 years until its battery started getting spicy. I’ve switched both to LineageOS to reduce heating + have more control over charging/discharging, and that so far seems to have helped. Unfortunately Samsung tablets don’t support running off of USB without a battery (they bootloop if no cell is detected), so pulling the battery and running them off a wall outlet isn’t really an option.
To me, a Pi or similar SBC with a touchscreen just seemed like a very hacky solution. I rent so I can’t add a box in the wall for the board and PSU, and tablets are just more elegant. Throw in a 3D printed enclosure/mount, and you’re golden.
I use mine regularly, especially since they wake whenever I walk past them.
E-ink, unless you’re writing your own frontend, I’d recommend against. There isn’t really a good eink theme for HA at the moment, and most panels that are good sized (10-13-16") cost a fortune (£250-300 just for the display, and you’d still need the brains). Meanwhile older tablets in good condition go for £70-150, and you get the full kit for that price, plus generally, brilliant displays (just limit your search to AMOLED tablets).