Dashboard Monitor

arlomiller · October 6, 2022, 8:00pm

i’d like to setup a few displays in the house with hubitat dashboards. i’m really looking for a durable touch screen display that would wake in touch and could be tidily mounted in the wall. it seems that ipads are probably the best bet for this? i have several old ones laying around that i could use. has anyone found other really good options?

are there excellent ways of using a touchscreen computer display if i wanted something larger than a tablet? one of the things i currently do is use dakboard on a RPi to show calendars, photos, and hubitat dashboard on a samsung TV. i have no idea if using a touchscreen instead would allow me to interact with the dashboard in that setup. anyone tried?

i looked at the threads about using fire tablets. gave up on that. i couldn’t stand the fire tablets. worst UI ever made as far as i’m concerned.

FriedCheese2006 · October 6, 2022, 8:15pm

These are the go-to just because they are pretty decent tablets, especially for the price when they go on sale. Of course, I use mine as one trick ponies for the most part. Use a tool called Fire Toolbox to uninstall pretty much every app and then I sideload the Hubitat Dashboard app and call it a day. Pretty much all of mine are stuck directly to the wall with Gorilla mounting putty. There's a hole behind it where I route the USB charging cable through the wall to an outlet below. Hard to beat for $75 for the 10" and $45 for the 8" (on sale).

cdallum · October 6, 2022, 8:55pm

As general use devices I'd agree Fire tablets have some serious drawbacks. However, as a single-use device mounted on my wall for Hubitat dashboards, they've worked pretty well at a relatively low cost. I loaded Fully Kiosk (https://www.fully-kiosk.com/) to control the interface (e.g., open a dashboard on motion detection) and connect to my Hubitat dashboards via local URL, as well as DAKboard (DAKboard - A customizable display for your photos, calendar, news, weather and more!) to provide a screen saver when not actively in use. The touch screen has worked fine for interactive controls too.

arlomiller · October 6, 2022, 9:16pm

ok! I will revisit the fire tablets

the last time I tried them was several years ago and the process to get the hubitat app onto them was VERY clunky, seemed to involve quite a bit of hacking. Looking at the process now, it seems quite a bit simpler

Sebastien · October 7, 2022, 12:20am

Since you have iPads available, in my opinion, that could be a very good option. That is what I have done and am very happy with the results. I just used Safari to create a link to the dashboard to my desktop, and running it from there brings it up in full screen mode. Works like a charm.