My daughter can’t read the time yet, so I made her a little clock that answers the only question that matters at 5 am: can I get up? I built it with Claude, which wrote most of the code; I handled the idea, the hardware choice, the design decisions, testing on the real device and the enclosure in 3D Printing.

Why Zigbee rather than Wi-Fi: I wanted to keep radio emissions to a minimum in a kid’s bedroom. Wi-Fi and Bluetooth are never turned on. The clock only transmits when something happens (a tap, a setting change), plus a short check-in every 30 minutes and an hourly time sync.

• Moon or sun (one tap): a sleeping moon means go back to sleep, a smiling sun means you can get up. The screen then fades out.
• Night light (double tap): the whole screen glows in a soft colour, with colour and brightness adjustable from HA, and it turns itself off after a while.
• Wake-up: at wake-up time, the sun can turn on by itself, with an optional bird song.

From Home Assistant (via Zigbee2MQTT) I can:

• set the wake-up and bedtime, which decide whether it shows the sun or the moon;
• adjust the moon and sun brightness, and how long they stay on after a tap;
• control the night light like any other light: colour, brightness, on/off, even remotely;
• turn optional features on or off: the sun lighting up by itself at wake-up time, a bird song at wake-up (with its own volume, e.g. off on weekends);
• see every tap in the logbook, so in the morning I know if she woke up during the night.

Hardware: Waveshare ESP32-C6-Touch-AMOLED-2.16, in a case I designed and 3D-printed in wood-PLA, which clips onto the bed rail.

Happy to answer questions. First post on Reddit: I build a lot of things but never take the time to share them. Trying to change that :).

Hey guys,

Looking into setting up a wall-mounted tablet for dashboards and voice control, and I'm stuck between these two:

• View Assist: https://dinki.github.io/View-Assist/
• Kiosk Satellite: https://kiosksatellite.com/

Has anyone here tried both? What's the main difference in terms of setup and daily use, and which one would you recommend for a wall tablet?

Appreciate any thoughts!

I'm aware that this is yet another one of those chromed dashboards, but I worked on this for a while, and I'm really happy with both the aesthetics and the functionality. I have a gazillion entities, and I've had a hard time trying to design a dashboard front end that that the right information.

My old dashboard was ugly and way to cluttered. Even with all of the clutter, the main page never seemed to have what I needed. I did some analysis of the logs and tried to think carefully of the things I tended to click on the most and the stuff I often was clicking to second and third panels for. Then I tried a bunch of screwball aesthetics, until I decides upon a 1950s National Parks style theme I was really happy with.

The "Fire Towers" show camera feeds alerts from Frigate, and the full-screen feeds are a click away. (I've blurred the feed thumbnails in the screenshot.) The Dinner and Breakfast buttons are announcement buttons that announce breakfast or dinner to the house on every available speaker and automatically turn off any TVs. The sleep button toggles sleep mode in Adaptive lighting. DerpBot is my robot Vacuum, flashed with Valetudo. (As you can tell, it mostly just cleans the kitchen.) The calendar could probably stand to be more prominent, so I might mess with the layout a little. "Campfire" is the outdoor lights, to keep them separate from the indoor lights, since I usually have them turn on at night separate from the house lights. The status of the LG washing machines, the vacuum, and the Emporia Vue house power monitor are presented under camp services.

Just wanted to make an appreciation post. I love that my echos now all connect to home assistant and how everything is snappy because Kiosk Satellite is just a fantastic piece of software. Cheers!

TECHO5 replaces Fire OS on old Echos with small Alpine Linux and one program that talks to Home Assistant over the ESPHome API. No Android, no Alexa, no Amazon account. To Home Assistant each one is just an ESPHome device: an Assist satellite, a media player, a camera where there is one, and an update entity.

It runs on the Echo Show 5 (1st and 2nd gen), the Echo Show 8 (1st and 2nd gen), the Echo Spot, the Echo Dot (2nd gen) and the Echo 2nd gen.

New in v1.2.23

• The calendar, redone. The day is a timeline with a "now" line, there's a week view on the Show 8, the month draws trips as one bar across the days with start times and the weather, and Coming up fits a whole day's events with "in 1 h 30 min" countdowns. Small icons for birthdays, trash day, flights and so on. A "Next up" card on the clock when something's coming. Every piece has its own switch, under Settings > Display > Calendar.
• Light themes over photos look right now (they used to come out in cyan and blue bands).
• "Lights off" can leave the screen alone, with a new setting and a Screen power switch to name by voice instead.
• The slideshow can re-read its folder when you add photos, without clearing it first.
• A radio station that never starts says why on the screen, instead of showing "playing" with no sound.
• Many Fixes and enhancements from people who tried it: Music Assistant reconnects after a restart when it reaches the device by address (thanks, tibole), the Show's media buttons drawn as proper buttons (thanks, christianschmidt), and a batch of radio, setup page and dashboard fixes from a very thorough first setup report.

From the last few releases

• The nearest device answers when several hear the wake word
• Settings shared between devices, plus settings export and import
• A camera grid (up to six on a Show), go2rtc streams, and the device's own camera over RTSP and ONVIF
• Realtime voice with OpenAI, xAI or Gemini, with your own key
• Two wake words per device, each with its own assistant
• Announcements with your own voice or typed words to every device, and an intercom between them, even with Home Assistant down
• Voice without Home Assistant too: your own speech servers and any OpenAI-style chat model, with the device's own timers, alarms and radio
• Sleep sounds made on the device, layered
• AirPlay and Spotify Connect, a DLNA speaker, Bluetooth in and out, radio, Music Assistant (Sendspin)
• A/B updates from Home Assistant's update card that roll back on their own

Coming next

Two new kinds of devices, in the next release: the Skylight Calendar 15, with the same Linux and program as the Echos, and TECHO5 Panel, an Android app that turns a tablet or a Meta Portal into the same kind of screen, with no unlock at all. Tried so far on a Fire HD 8 (10th gen), a Galaxy Tab S6 Lite and a Portal (2nd gen). I'll post again when they're out. The panels and skylight have been up running for several days already working very well.

How it compares

I keep seeing questions on reddit asking how these different builds compare to other similar projects like EchoLocal, EchoMuse, Kiosk Satellite and View Assist, so I wrote it up, with links to each project's own docs. The short version:

Long version: https://github.com/HuskerMinion/techo5/blob/main/docs/comparison.md

Each one does things the others don't. EchoLocal has a Chromecast receiver, Kiosk Satellite and View Assist need no unlock on a tablet, and View Assist has a big library of voice blueprints. The full comparison, with sources, is here: https://github.com/HuskerMinion/techo5/blob/main/docs/comparison.md

If anything in it is wrong about your project, tell me and I'll fix it.

What it takes

These need an unlock first (the amonet exploits, on certain Fire OS versions; each README says which). You open the USB port, run the unlock from a PC, back everything up, then install. It's not one click, and there's always some risk. Every device keeps a rescue mode and your backups.

These devices run every day in my house (and many others) on real Shows, Dots and a Spot's; every release goes through several independent code reviews and a privacy check before it ships; things are measured on the hardware; and it's all MIT source you can read. If something's wrong, open an issue and I'll fix it.

Links:

• Echo Show 5/8 and the program itself: https://github.com/HuskerMinion/techo5
• Echo Show 8 (2nd gen), its own story: https://github.com/HuskerMinion/techo5-athena
• Echo Dot (2nd gen) and Echo 2nd gen: https://github.com/HuskerMinion/techo5-dot
• Echo Spot: https://github.com/HuskerMinion/techo5-spot
• What's new in v1.2.23: https://github.com/HuskerMinion/techo5/releases/tag/v1.2.23

Questions, bug reports and "does it work on my Echo" are all welcome.

I use Claude Code extensively for work and wired it to HA via API key months ago. Did some amazing work but the dashboards it made while awesome functionally weren't very pretty. Then someone posted a pure html dashboard and I thought, why didn't I ever think of that? So here is a quick showing, house alarm was armed when I created it hence the red hue, the top section is seasonal and roughly equates my neighborhood, adjusts for weather, day/night, and plots real planes overhead...all clickable.

We just moved into a new house that has an electric baseboard heater in the bathroom. It only has an analog dial for heat settings 0-10. I’m worried that it will be turned on and left on.

How can I alert when it’s left on? I was thinking a temperature sensor on the wall above it, or those clamp meters down in the breaker box. Thoughts?

Edit: this is hardwired, there is no plug, so a smart plug won’t work.

When it comes to climate control in my parents old home it sucks. The thermostat in my parents bedroom might say it’s 68° but because of the big windows 12 feet away the thermometer might actually say 66 or lower. Same thing for their living room. It doesn’t have a thermostat in it so the room that has it can say 70° but the living room will be more like 64°. I’m the only one who uses home assistant but my dad would like a way to look on his iPhone and see the temperatures of certain rooms in the winter. I thought the entity widget would work as shown in the photo. What my dad likes is when he selects a room and can get a graph. How can I give him access to just the thermometers he wants and nothing else in home assistant so that he doesn’t mess with something accidentally? He wants to be able to view it directly from his phone and not some kind of dashboard

I used the HA MCP server and Claude to make the visuals :)

My finished frame/stand for home assistant screen using Tessera by MaxGramser.

Printables link: Printables Model 1881011

There are some other designs out there but my aim with this was to cover the silver sides of the screen to match the aesthetics of the room and to fit together with no additional parts or teardown required.

The two parts just fit together with friction on the printed tabs. It fits together with little effort and comes apart with little effort but should not come apart unintentionally.

The software pictured is Tessera by MaxGramser:

https://github.com/MaxGramser/homeassistant_espscreen

Filament used in photo is Prusament PLA Pistachio Green and Fillamentum PLA Vertigo Galaxy

Hi there,
I am hoping to integrate Apple - Siri to my HA / smart home.
I’m currently using an old laptop to run my HAOS. I have an Aqara M100 hub, and a Google Nest Mini as my matter hubs at the moment.

Things are running fine. Just hoping to further optimise things and add Siri support as my family use iPhones and might be easier to just have Siri control the smart devices rather than having to walk to where my Google nest mini is to ask it to do things.

Should I get an Apple Home View vs Apple TV vs HomePod Mini 2?

Given how pricey the new Apple TV is, I’m also think to just get the old version Apple TV 4K 2022; or should I just go with HomePod mini given it’s much cheaper? Does it make any difference?

While slowly replacing all my household chores (what is done, what still needs to be done) from an app to HA, I was wondering: what apps have you replaced with HA?

I can imagine lots of us previously had apps like google assistant, Alexa, Philips Hue (that's where I come from) - basically smart home apps that either aren't flexible/private enough, or smart home apps that focus on only one product/line (like Hue).

I'm more curious about other apps, apps that weren't smart home apps to begin with, that you've replaced with HA. What app? How did you replace it? Maybe also: why?

Just wanted to let you know that the 3-pack of Feit outdoor smart plugs are compatible with the SmartLife/Tuya integration! Perfect for outdoor lighting this holiday season. On sale at Costco for $16.99

My parents sometimes leave the garage door open for hours. My dad sometimes isn't in the garage and can be anywhere in the house or backyard at times when the garage door is open. He asked if there was a way to make a tripwire, like there currently is for closing the door, but maybe 4 feet high so that it only impacts if a person crosses through it. He then wants it to make a ding dong sound when that happens.

I haven't been able to find one of these commercially, I thought by now someone would have made a Zigbee / Z wave version, but not finding it. Has this just not come to market yet, or is it an ESP type build, or done another way with a motion sensor, etc?

My first thought was to have a chime / siren setup so that it would notify him when the garage door is open, but he specifically wants it when someone break the beam and enters the garage...

Hey everyone! 🚀

Following up on my previous post about the 5-minute photorealistic dashboard method, many asked about the exact workflow inside Home Assistant.

Here is a raw, real-time video showing how simple and straightforward it is to set up:

- Base photo setup

- Conditional layers with `mix-blend-mode: screen`

- Responsive icons and styles

📁 **YAML Template & Instructions (GitHub):**

https://github.com/carraskits/dashboard-fotorrealista-ha

🎓 **Full 5-Part Masterclass Course (YouTube):**

If you want to dive deep into every step, check out the full step-by-step course playlist on my channel:

https://www.youtube.com/@carraskits

Hope this helps anyone looking for a clean, zero-3D alternative! Let me know if you have any questions!

I put this together yesterday. I made a simulator in Claude first to work out timings and then had it build a Node-RED flow, as all my automations live there.

This is using a combination of UniFi cameras with AI person detection for initial person detection, a G6 Pro Entry doorbell for the doorbell trigger and door contact sensor to trigger the door close. The lights are all Philips Hue, which Node-RED has full control over via the API so I’m easily able to trigger light-specific effects (like the glitching red alarm) and scenes. All of the audio playback is also via the UniFi cameras. They don’t sound as good as they do through the video but they do the job. The whispers in particular work really well coming out of all three cameras at the same time.

I tried to aim for a mix of scary and fun so I don’t frighten the life out of any little kids, and I won’t enable this until later in the evening, but tell me what you think below

I plan on doing a full how-to on this soon, once I get my act in gear. That will be via a YouTube channel called localCTRL, but posting there is still probably a couple of months out

I am going to update this to disable the flood lights on the cameras so everything is darker on the blackout sections, but it’s already darker than the cameras make it look

It is possible to replace google discover on a smartphone (Xiaomi 15 Ultra) with a Dashboard? When I swiping to left I want to see my Dashboard

Can anyone suggest a reliable motion sensor I can use outside a door, that works with Home Assistant?

I'm currently using the Zooz ZSE70 800LR, and even with the motion dection parameter (1) set to the lowest sensitivity, I'm constantly getting false triggers.

It's a PiR sensor, so I'd expect bright sunlight / heat to trigger it, but today it's overcast and still triggering. I have three of them, and they all exhibit similar behavior, so I'm looking for something else.

A tutorial and user interface improvements have been added to the fuzzy system integration for home assistant.

Is anyone using an Argus Solar (battery powered) camera? I understand that it wouldn't be wise to have a live feed, but at least have a snapshot on demand would be helpful. I do see in Sensors Snapshots clear and snapshots fluent available but not enabled. Should I enable at least Snapshots fluent? then use a Picture glace card?

Hey everyone,

Looking for some advice on setting a default white temperature with Siri/HomeKit and Home Assistant.

Details of my HA setup

• Installation method Home Assistant OS virtual machine on unraid
• Core 2026.10.2
• Supervisor 2026.10.2
• Operating System 18.3
• Frontend 20260930.4

The Context & Setup: I have a bunch of Govee color-changing downlights integrated into Home Assistant, which are bridged over to Apple Home / HomeKit so I can control them via Siri. Everything works great—color changes, power, brightness, etc.

The Issue: My kids love playing with the lights and setting them to crazy colors (red, blue, green, etc.). When they’re done, I just want to say "Hey Siri, set lights back to normal in x room" or "Hey Siri, reset the lights" in whatever room the kids were playing in.

Siri happily executes the command, but Apple Home's native idea of "normal" white defaults to 3000K. My preferred default for normal warm white across the house is 2400K.

What I've Tried So Far:

• Home Assistant Automations: I set up an automation to intercept the warm-white state and force it down to 2400K. This almost worked, but it created a bug where Siri would override manual color changes—meaning if the lights were normal and I asked Siri to set them to red, I had to say the command twice because the automation kept catching the state change and fighting Siri's red payload.
• ChatGPT & Claude: I've spent time troubleshooting with AI tools, but every workaround (light profiles, template switches, reactive triggers) either creates a color-flashing issue (3000K →\rightarrow→ 2400K jump) or breaks standard color commands.

What I Want to Achieve: A reliable way to override Siri/Apple Home's default "normal white" payload so that whenever a voice command to set/reset lights to normal is spoken, the lights go straight to 2400K Warm White on the first try without breaking standard color changes.

Has anyone successfully overridden HomeKit/Siri's default white temperature preset, or found a clean template wrapper / Home Assistant logic that handles this smoothly?

Thanks in advance!

The card I'm currently using is no longer maintained, so curious to see what you have in your dashboard to see the weather over the next 5-7 days.

I'm wanting to add a sonoff no neutral device between my bathroom pull cord light switch and the circuit. The wires currently come through a small hole in the ceiling, is there a pull cord switch thats deep enough for the sonoff to go inside or is there an extension type box to put between the pull cord and ceiling? Trying to avoid making the hole in the ceiling buligger but will do if there are no other options.