Is anyone using a tablet as a permanent interface for HE?

I also watched an interesting YouTube clip recently that talked about some of those products.

Also has some good general advice I think.

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Folks who have wall mounted tablets - how practical do you find their use over time? I'm thinking about doing one, but question if I'm just looking for a new project vs. truly improving my home automation. With phones always in reach, and HE Dashboard a few taps away, how often do you find yourselves using the tablet?

I find it extremely practical. My wife and I probably consider it to be one of the best parts of our Hubitat experience. I believe Hubitat should be about improving one's experience in their own home. For some people this will mean never having a dashboard and automating everything, for others the dashboard will be an indispensable interface. Each to their own. Some of the reasons why we find our dashboard so great:

  • It completely replaced our alarm panel, it is way easier to use especially when it comes to setting the alarm and is equally as easy to use for guests to set the alarm.

  • It provides a complete an detailed weather forecast, including precipitation maps and storm tracking. The weather page has all the details I need on a large screen, way bigger than my phone. (I could get some of this on my phone, but then I need to pull my phone out of my pocket and find the appropriate app, with the dashboard it is right there at eye level, one simple click away, way more automation that using a phone to do the same thing)

  • It shows reminders of things I will need to change and possibly purchase (furnace filters, water filters). You can obviously set-up notifications for this on your phone, but I get so many notifications already that it would probably just get swiped and forgotten. The daily countdown tile showing when I need to replace the furnace filter and water filter are great.

  • It displays my Blue Iris camera feeds. Its a quick and easy to way to confirm the cameras are working as they should.

  • It allows me and my guests to press one tile to start a specific Internet Radio Station or Pandora station to start playing on my stereo.

This is not the most recent iteration of my dashboard, but give you an idea:

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Very cool stuff. As a Blue Iris user myself, I can see the value in just having the cameras showing on a tablet. Not sure if this is possible with the current offerings out there, but what would be really cool is if a BI camera triggers, the tablet goes fullscreen from Dashboard to Camera view. If anyone tells me thats possible I'm buying a tablet right away :slight_smile:

Thinking, you would probably be able to do it by running fully kiosk browser (that's the browser I use along with many other users) along with this app:

It's easy enough to get Blue Iris motion into a trigger in RM, so I am thinking based on this trigger, I could simply tell Fully Kiosk Browser to load the appropriate webpage (dashboard) that shows my Camera View full screen. I will try it later this week and post back.

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Yes, it is most definitely possible and not that hard to set-up. I just tested with my doorbell. Worked perfect, when the doorbell was pressed the tablet turned on (I use a blank screensaver) and the cameras feeds were loaded. Happened in under a second. Here is my rule: (I use a zooz multirelay to integrate my doorbells into hubitat)

I will also make a rule for when my front doorbell is pressed, my back Blue Iris camera senses motion, my front Blue Iris camera senses motion, and I will automatically load a weather dashboard when hubitat is notified of a weather alert for my location.

Awesome, so much more you can do with a dashboard, compared to just a bunch of switches, motion sensors and automations.

i run a smaller smarttiles (my own copy) dashboard just for alarm and disarming .. on wall when entering the house. This is on an older fire tablet. mounted on wall with velcro with a wireless charger in the wall

Very cool indeed, and looks like a pretty basic call to the Tablet to get things displayed as expected. Looks like reverting back to the main dashboard screen after motion has ended would be pretty simple.

smart tiles is just a web page but you can click and control devices ie change mode, lock/unlock on.off etc. It is light as the app in the background updates data as stuff comes in so when the page comes up it is not heavy and querying all devices at once.

it is not officially out for Hubitat. I had my own version of the smartapp (before actiontiles became pay) that i ported from smartthings. But the caveats in the code prevent me from sharing it.

here are pics of the tablet and mounting

There is as u can see a modification to the tablet that requires a lock code to unlock it.

old unused alarm panel underneath (now hookup up through konnected). Didnt remove it as would be big hole in wall.

Yep, you need to be using Fully Kiosk Browser Plus (FKB), this app has a one-time fee of around $5-7 dollars. Once you have the FKB installed on your tablet, and you have this custom app installed on Hubitat:

You can then put all these commands into Rule Machine:

Im a bit new to using rule machine. How do i go about using the above commands in rule machine.

Say if i wanted a motion sensor to turn the screen on.

Trigger would be my motion sensor but what is the action to allow me to use the above commands?

Thanks

@jim273
Actions:
Select Action Type to add: "Set Mode, Variables or Files, Run Custom Actions"
Select Which Action: "Run Custom Action"
Select capability of action device: "Actuator"
Select Actuators to act on: At this point you need to select the device shown in my earlier screenshot, it will be named whatever you named it.
Select custom command: At this point you will see a list of all the commands of the device, these are the commands shown in the above screen shot.

Before doing any of this in rule machine, I would try sending various commands from the device page, just to make sure it is all set up properly. If you can't send a command from the device page to the device, it will never work from rule machine.

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Thankyou very much

You don't have to use RM , the full kiosk drirecto app does it

Yeah but in the dark it doesn't work

The app allows you to connect motion, contact sensors and trigger FK actions without using rule machine

Ah I see, I didn't realise that, Thanks

Do you mean in the kiosk app settings

This

Thanks, installed and works well :grinning: