#dedicated tablet for smart home control?

20 messages · Page 1 of 1 (latest)

woeful bobcat
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Hello there. Can anybody recommend a tablet that will exclusively be used for controlling HA? Main requirement would be a big battery and wireless charging capability as I plan to not mount it to the wall and I am very sure my significant other will often just forget to charge the device. I was looking at a Fire HD 8 tablet with a wireless charging dock. Any other recommendation? Thx in advance

compact cosmos
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The thing about tablets for controlling HA is that they don't have much to do - all the processing happens elsewhere. You might consider whether it's really worth spending a lot of money. I have severeal refurbished Nexus 9 tablets on my walls, running Android 7. They have an excellent display and you can get them for about £20 on Ebay.

This doesn't meet your wireless charging requirement, but at that price you can have one in each room, permanently plugged in... and throw them away when they stop working.

woeful bobcat
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For that to work I’d have to set em up to be near power plugs though… connected with a cable… also, more devices means more power consumption. I’d rather have one device that works smoothly and can simply be placed onto a surface for charging instead of having to plug in a cable. It’s all bout ease of use as my significant other sees every bit of manual labor as something that diminishes the positives HA does offer. For her a always-on device that u can carry around (and that know which room it is in and displays info accordingly) would be the best option. Having to take put the smartphone from her pocket, having to open the app is already too much to ask ^^,

mighty citrus
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Kiosk screens that aren't on all the time don't get looked at. If your tablet is on all the time it will need to be charged so frequently it wont be used. Use powered a tablet.

winged saffron
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I use Fire HD tablets for mine. What I did is replace certain light switches with the tablet and put in an outlet with a USB port on it to keep it charged and then hook all of that up to something like a Shelly to allow it to cycle the battery regularly.

open bay
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Wireless charging tablets are extremely rare. There’s like 2 or 3 of them.

Unless you’re willing to have a separate charging coil stuck on the back with a cable running to the charging port.

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The current Google tablet with charging dock might be the best hardware for it, although that’s not wall mountable, and of course it’s waaaaay overkill for hardware.

Mine is a Bmax i10 pro stuck on the wall with a magnetic mount and a plugged in cable. I did experiment with separate wireless coils on the back but it’s almost always on the wall.

woeful bobcat
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Is there a way to let home Assistant wake a device? Like, I could place a motion sensor next to the devices docking station and the. Let HA wake the device (turn on screen) when motion is detected. Also, the docking station would use a smart plug and HA gets the devices battery state and turns the docking station on once battery is below a certain threshold and then turns it off again once the battery is at 80%.

woeful bobcat
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Well, that’s the idea anyway. But since the companion app is unable to wake the device I’ll probably have to install additional libraries and then perform a call to those library on the Android tablet to activate the screen

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A refurbished Fire HD 8 Plus is like 50€

winged saffron
woeful bobcat
winged saffron
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It works very well, I even am tied into the camera so I can see what woke it up, it will record for 10 seconds and I can see it, so it's also another security control

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And you CAN use an external sensor as well, because browser mod can wake and sleep it. Up to you.

woeful bobcat
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Okay, so, it seems I don't have to limit my choice to tablets that support wireless charging as it seems there are add-ons to easily add wireless charging to existing devices. With this out of the way: Can anybody recommend a reliable and cheap tablet which purpose would be only to use the home assistant app to control our home? Thanks again

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The tablet really is not meant to run games or movies or anything... its just a control panel for HA. But it should at least run the HA companion app smoothly

woeful bobcat
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So, I just took the Fire HD 8 Kids from our daughters and installed HA on that device. At first the app felt sluggish, but once every control was loaded at least once it was fine. Not buttery smooth, but totally acceptable

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Also, if I were to stay in the amazon eco-system I could add the tablet as an alexa device... though... I don't know I'd ever use it.

winged saffron
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My FireHD 10's that I use for tablets get sluggish from time to time, maybe once every couple of months, and I just reboot it. You don't have to install HA if you don't want to, I actually prefer using the Fully Kiosk browser because I can tie browser mod into it. You can really do all of this with any Android tablet, I just got a good deal on the Fire's - although you do have to hack them a bit to install the Google Play store so that you can install Fully Kiosk, and use the root tool to turn off the lock screen, but otherwise they work fine for my needs.

woeful bobcat
# winged saffron My FireHD 10's that I use for tablets get sluggish from time to time, maybe once...

What requirements does the hacking bring? Just some development environment and adb, or am I forced to buy additional hardware?
What is the browser mod about?

My requirements regarding the tablet are

  • need to be able to get the battery state (companion app would deliver on that aspect)
  • need to be able to wake device upon movement detection (could use an external sensor for that, but that would be a static installed sensor... would prefer to utilize the tables camera)
  • want to access the HA instance (don't mind if its by using the browser or by companion app)