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?

  • FoxAlive@lemmy.zipEnglish
    2·
    2 days ago

    I don’t have a real screen but I just updated my esp8266 to a xiao esp32c6 for my home assistant box. I wanted zigbe and matter access but half the things I wanted to interact with are proprietary, so I need a new hub and to rebuy a few things.

    Just use esp home its stupid easy don’t really have to do anything besides point it at your pin outs and label them. You can probably buy everything you want and add on more stuff. The largest cost will be a eink display probably starting at 50usd for a tiny one, you can get esp boards in 5 packs for maybe 10 USD. But I recommend xiao just because I recently bought from them and am blown away with what feels like a premium board compared to the older ones I have. They all kind of have their own use cases and quirks, I wanted the c5 for better WiFi but the c6 came in a 3 pack for much cheaper.

    I use a 16x2 LCD display you get in starter kits made for kids and just simple buttons and splurged on a decent temp sensor. Its also controls a led strip under the counter that used to be controlled with a remote but I hated using the remote. Just be careful you pretty much need a separate power source for that and to make sure the pins don’t get fried by 5v. I’ll stay awake at night thinking over if I wired it correctly even though I know I did so it feels weird trusting that because I’m an idiot.

    I plan on buying a 5 pack of 1 inch oled screens and upgrading it, I just have so many other little things to buy on my list I haven’t gotten back around to finishing it.

    Edit* you can also just use an old android phone the home assistant apk has a setting for it. You can also buy a pi or use a old computer, but esphome is cheaper, gives you more flexibility, and is smaller so you can design and make a smaller product and choose if you want to power it via USB or just directly wire it into something. The Xiao’s I got have battery terminals and handle charging very slowly so ive been excited to try that out.

    • oneser@lemmy.zipOPEnglish
      1·
      1 day ago

      Thanks for the comment! I did not have ESP32 on my radar at all until now.

      I’m seeing a lot of AI slop articles on the HA forums, can you recommend any resources on the protocol, it’s control and anything to watch out for?

      • FoxAlive@lemmy.zipEnglish
        2·
        17 hours ago

        What I did was flash my esp on the esp home website. You might have to give your USB permission and use a chromium based browser for the web installer to see it. Once its flashed you download esphome builder and that’s where you actually make your esp home script.

        You can use the templets on the side, or download a templet and then you lable what pins do what and what’s on each pin. Esphome handles the rest, its not like working with arudino ide where you need the resources for each sensor, and the right board selected.

        I know its shameful but wire up your screen, sensors and whatever else like buttons to it, and tell google ai to generates you a script, I promise it will work. Its really low stakes, everything is a templet anyways. Just make sure to note what screen/sensor/model it is.

        Then all you have to do is add your ssid and password and you have it up and going, should be really easy to find in home assistant and you can then flash it over air which is nice.

        I havent gotten into what making a proper home assistant graphical display looks like so I can’t help you there. But making it display text values to the 16x2 display is just pointing it at home assistant values and referencing the services you have in there.

        You can also add automations inside of home assistant that chain or work with your esp home so you get a lot of flexibility in what your stuff does. One of the pages on me 16x2 display acts as a message board, where you can change the text input in home assistwnt and it will send a little message to the display, or on garbage day it sends a notification to the display and then switches to that screen page instead of time/date page it defaults to.

      • FoxAlive@lemmy.zipEnglish
        2·
        18 hours ago

        It kind of depends on which manufacturer you go with, each esp kind of has its own quirks and features. Some pins you can only use in high/low mode to avoid turning on some other feature or changing boot functions. Some of the olderboards pins have very specific usecases.

        So I’m not sure where to point you honestly. I would start with the official documentation that the manufacturers provide you.

        I also think you mistake me for someone that knows what I am doing. I want to express how simple esp home is. You can just download or use the temples in esp home builder and its literally just filling out text boxes. I’m not a read the documentation guy, my spelling and reading comprehension are horrible. I’ll follow guides off YouTube and throw errors at google and try to find a video/post about it or get googles ai to summarize it if I can’t access the site like reddit.

        But like I said there are quirks for each model which you should read. My esp8266 wouldn’t boot properly if I had something in one of the pins. Some boards have specific pin outs, the xiao I have can turn any pin into anything, analog, pwm, etc. Boards have high and low states on the pins which have some secret functionality. My espc6 I can adjust the antenna range by changing the high/low state of one of the pins. Its weird stuff like that you really want to look over the manufacturers docs for.

        • oneser@lemmy.zipOPEnglish
          1·
          10 hours ago

          Really appreciate both responses, thank you and have a great day! :)

          • FoxAlive@lemmy.zipEnglish
            2·
            10 hours ago

            No problem. It would of been one response but I miss understood what you where asking for, figured it was useful information still and left it up.

  • tyler@programming.devEnglish
    9·
    3 days ago

    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.

    • tburkhol@slrpnk.netEnglish
      7·
      3 days ago

      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.

  • Reannlegge@lemmy.caEnglish
    4·
    3 days ago

    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.

  • curbstickle@anarchist.nexusMEnglish
    3·
    3 days ago

    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.

      • curbstickle@anarchist.nexusMEnglish
        2·
        22 hours ago

        With my particular unit? Its not going to get any updates ever, the only way to install is over ADB, and changing the running app requires script changes and a reboot (or changing things to allow the on-screen navigation buttons, but that comes with other annoyances).

        So sdk version isn’t changing, which is a potential compatibility issue going forward.

  • fonix232@fedia.io
    41·
    3 days ago

    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).

    • oneser@lemmy.zipOPEnglish
      2·
      22 hours ago

      Thanks for the write up, really appreciate it :) Looking further I agree e-ink was a misplaced idea…

      I’d like to reduce the number of potential fire points for this, so I’d look too spend $30 extra to have non battery powered devices if possible, but we’ll see.

  • Ember@pie.eyeofthestorm.placeEnglish
    2·
    3 days ago

    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