So what tablet did I go with?

The choice was pretty easy, the Amazon Fire HD tablets come in 7″, 8″ and 10″. If you do go investigate your own Amazon Fire tablet, pay particular attention to the generation of the tablet. Amazon has been able to produce a tablet at a reduced cost. The caveat to this is that it runs its own Fire OS (Operating System) which has a fair bit of advertising throughout. However, we will be bypassing a lot of these adverts, you will not even notice it’s on Fire OS by the time we are done with it. Check out the wiki here for a list of generations and the specs on each one.

The price of the tablet varies, obviously the newer the more expensive, however, we decided on the Fire HD 10, 5th generation. The price seemed right for the specs. To be honest, the tablet running Home Assistant doesn’t need a whole lot of resources. (Found one locally for $99)

The Mount

I could have gone in a few directions for the mount. I did think about using an articulated arm so that it could swing out and face the kitchen, however that would make it stick out from the wall. I wanted a very seamless/minimalist look when mounted on the wall. I ended up going down the magnet path as I figured it could be taken off the wall easily enough if it was to be used elsewhere. I did look around for a suitable tablet magnet and gave this one a try. Turns out to be brilliant and very sturdy. (I suggest cleaning all surfaces with rubbing alcohol prior to installation.)

On the wall side, it mounts directly to a Clipsal electrical wall plate. I did make up a small acrylic spacer to also attach to the wall plate. This would give it just a bit extra clearance for the USB angled connector.

Depending on how you want to power your device, I ended up using an old phone wall port and converting it to a mains powered USB port. (Note: Electrician may be required for this connection!) Usually, these kinds of  USB ports are jumped from a 240v outlet, however, I did not want this and got its own line run in the wall cavity.

Fully Kiosk Browser App

This is the bees-knees of kiosk apps. It looks simple but is very powerful. To get it installed, check out the website here first. Have a bit of a read. Hopefully, if you had a good read you will notice that they do a different APK (That’s the app executable/install file) for different operating systems. Grab yourself a copy of the “Fully Kiosk Browser APK (For Fire OS)” Using this method means you will not have to install google play onto your tablet, it also has some additional features that work only with the Amazon tablet.

I’m not going to explain how to sideload an APK onto an android device, there are plenty of tutorials already on the net, either google it or try this one.

Now that you have the app on your tablet:

When you first open the Fully Kiosk browser app, you will be asked to put in a URL to the page you want it to load. Insert your Home Assistant IP including the port number.

The next two settings work hand-in-hand with each other to provide a couple of benefits. That is the camera motion detection and the screensaver. The screensaver is set so that the tablet is never locked, and the motion detection by the camera is used to turn the screen saver off.

Set up motion detection. To set the screensaver, swipe the left side of the screen to reveal the “Fully Kiosk App” settings.

I suggest setting the screensaver up and making it use a black background. This effectively turns the screen off (kind of.) it will also stop any burn-in on the screen. Having the screensaver become active eliminates the chances of the tablet from locking. This then allows the motion detection to work without a user having to swipe through a lock screen. Also, the added benefit is that it stops us from having to view any advertising on the lock screen.

These are the main settings I am using on my tablet thus far, feel free to have a play around. I did end up purchasing a pro copy of the app so that I could mess around with all the settings. Some may not be available on the free version.

What now?

Start working on the home assistant UI to get the layout that works for you. The 10″ version can hold a lot more cards and is a bit easier to work with. Have a good think about what you use the most and have this on the first screen.

I also ended up using a right-angled USB connector to power the tablet from the wall. It took me a while to find the correct one (It’s not pictured.) I ended up using these from amazon. You get two in a pack and they allow you to go either way, left or right.

If you got this far, you are now where I am at. Happy hacking, and feel free to show me your tablet/wall mount builds!

Gallery

So what were my first thoughts about Home Assistant? Well, the installation of HassOS on the hardware of choice is actually the easy part. The Learning Curve for configuration of the devices you want to add to Home Assistant was easily the most challenging. My aim for this post is to help you out a bit with the on-boarding. Here are my top tips for an easier onboarding experience to Home Assistant:

What are (Device) integrations?

Ok, so now that HassOS is installed we navigate around the software and easily start to get confused about what the heck we are meant to configure. If you head over to this webpage, you will be greeted by sheer volumes of possible devices and hardware that Home Assistant allows you to control. For example, your goal may be to use Home Assistant to Automate some lighting. Under the “Light” tab you will see 76 different integrations. Ranging from IKEA Tradfri smart bulbs through to the more common LifX and Phillips Hue integrations. These integrations pages are basically guides or configurations that you must follow to allow Home Assistant to control the devices.

What is YAML?

YAML stands for “Yet Another Markup Language”. It is a human-readable, data serialization language. It is commonly used for configuration files and yes, we use YAML for the configuration of our Integrations! In a nutshell, YAML is not a programming language, but a configuration language. It certainly is not hard to pick up and if I can manage to nut it out, then I’m sure you can too.YAML configuration exactly like above, be it a very simple example, the idea is the same throughout. Of note is the configuration.yaml document. The majority of all your integrations will end up inside this file, or similar .yaml files. YAML does follow a certain syntax, I would suggest having a read through the Home Assistant YAML page prior to diving in.

What are Entities?

Each individual device you add to Home Assistant via an Integration and Entity ID. (Yes, every single item, device, switch and automation, even non-physical items can have entities!) When you first install HassOS and run it, you may find that some devices are automatically found on your network are assigned an entity. As long as you remember that an entity represents a particular device then you cannot go wrong. For example, you may have 15 Phillips Hue Globes on the network, (Via a Bridge) each globe will have its own entity. It is this entity that defines the particular device. example “light.lounge” represents the Phillips Hue light in the lounge and you will need to reference that in your configuration integration.

Love Lace UI

You will hear the term ‘Love Lace UI” thrown around the forums and web a fair bit. This User Interface is somewhat newish to Home Assistant and is the main user interface that we see on the startup of Home Assistant. Everything we do generally speaking is via the Love Lace UI. A Demo of the Love Lace Ui can be found here.

The User Interface is made up of a few components:

• Cards – These are a bit like tiles that can be laid out in the UI to display different information. HA has 24 predefined cards. The HA community, however, has many more. I use cards to display switches which I can tap to turn lights on and off. I also use cards to show the current weather forecast and check the temperatures around the house. One card even lets me view the IP CCTV cameras I have around the house.
• Customization – The customization section allows you to change the layout of the cards to suit the view you want. You can add tabs and change the layout as you see fit. If you decide to run the Love Lace UI on a tablet, then you may need to customize the look and feel.

Well, I hope I have not scared you off or bored you to death, but these are the things I wish were explained to me a bit better before getting stuck into Home Assistant. Stay tuned for more on Home Assistant!