Building my PERFECT Smart Home Control Panel!

building a wall panel for controlling my smart home has been on top of my to-do list for years they provide a convenient way of controlling your house useful information at a glance and most importantly there is something about them that just makes them look so cool and almost gives them that futuristic sort of vibe they also open up the possibility of doing some really useful new automations however when i set out to start building my smart home control panel i did have a couple of requirements in mind for my specific needs that i wasn't willing to compromise on in order to call this a success number one power whichever solution i was going to go for i didn't want any cables or chargers to be visible and i didn't want to have to plug in a power cable every day just to charge it because that would just get forgotten and then the whole thing would be useless i've seen other designs that have visible power cables but i wanted to have something that was a completely seamless design like it belonged as part of the house which leads me onto point number two it had to look good and part of the house without having to do anything crazy to the walls like cutting and framing a new hole specifically for the display which would have been really cool don't get me wrong but it's kind of limiting if you want to change displays in a couple of years time and it's not easily reversible finally it had to be a good size display since i wanted to use this as quick access to my camera feeds as well as to be able to fit lots of useful information and controls for the whole house on the screen and i didn't want to have to scroll all over the place to find what i'm looking for otherwise it becomes too slow and cumbersome and again it just wouldn't get used so with these requirements in mind i started planning the build and my first consideration was the display itself now there are a couple of options that you have when you're looking at these a wall mounted displays the first being off-the-shelf solutions like this one from knx which looks fantastic however these typically run on proprietary software that you have absolutely no control over and they usually only work with that specific vendor smart home platform which won't work for me since i will be using home assistant the second option i considered was building my own using a raspberry pi and a touch display which would give me complete control over the software but there were two other downsides that i could see with this approach firstly most of the 10 inch touch displays which is what i had settled on was a good size are either low resolution or the higher ones start costing over a hundred pounds just for the display itself and i would still have doubts as to how good the quality of that display was the second issue is thickness a raspberry pi 4 on its own with no display connected is already almost 20 millimeters thick add a display on there and you could be looking at at least 30 millimeters of thickness which i know doesn't sound like that much but that would stick out from the wall quite a bit and that goes against requirement number two so that led me onto the final choice which was an android tablet for me this was the best solution because there is a decent amount of control over the os to an extent the displays look great and they are incredibly slim an ipad could also be a great choice here too but i went with android since i wanted the ability to wake the display with motion and it's also just personal preference i settled on this tablet from samsung the galaxy tab a7 it features a 10 inch 1080p display nice build quality is just seven millimeters thick and at the time it was 169 pounds nice by the way i'll have links to this and all the other parts used for this in the video description if you want to follow along and build this for yourself whilst waiting for the tablet to arrive i set about figuring out how i was going to handle power for the charger i knew i'd be using a smart plug so that i could automate charging the tablet based on how much battery life it had left but the question was where i was going to get power from and how i was going to root the cable behind the wall and up to the tablet the location i had chosen for the tablet was going to be on this wall in our hallway which is quite a central location and i noticed that right underneath where i'm going to be placing the display i already have this socket but i didn't want to just plug the charger in there cut a hole into the wall and run the cable behind and out the top because that would ruin the effect however right on the other side of this wall is the kitchen where there is a kitchen worktop and also where our kitchen bin sits making it ideal for installing a new power socket where i'll plug the charger into and it'll be pretty much hidden from sight perfect after marking and cutting a new back box into the wall for my socket i then used a right angle drill bit through an existing light switch hole in order to drill a hole to make room for my usb cable so that i can pass it up from the bottom of the wall up to the top and where the tablet will be located then my dad kindly came and wired my new socket for me and i marked roughly where i wanted the tablet to be on the wall and made a tiny hole for the charger cable and then we passed the charger cable down through the wall and into the charger and into our new socket nice now we have power you'll notice that i'm using this right angled usb cable for my charger and that's to keep the profile for the case for the tablet as slim as possible speaking of the case for the tablet the tablet had now arrived and it was looking great now we should mention that there are other tablets out there that are cheaper than this one such as the amazon fire line of tablets but i was happy to pay a little bit more for something that i was hopeful would last a little bit longer i was quite surprised at this price point that how well this tablet is built i was expecting a really cheap plastic design so it's nice to find that this is made of metal and it feels really great in hand kind of irrelevant when it's going to be going on the wall but still nice nonetheless i then set about making the case for the galaxy tab and i knew from the start that i was going to have to 3d print a case but i was silently hopeful that someone had already done the legwork of creating a design for me however a quick search revealed how wrong i was this tablet is a fairly new model having not long been released so unfortunately there weren't many designs out there and the few that had been done all had one problem that would break requirements number one and two they all had a visible power cables so that meant one thing i was going to have to design it i won't bore you with the process of the design of it mostly because i'm not skilled enough to talk about 3d printing or modeling but after a number of failed attempts and tweak after tweak to my design i finally got a working prototype in my defense this would have been much easier had it not been for the fact that the width of this tablet is as near as makes no difference 250 millimeters and you know else is also 250 millimeters the max width that my prusa 3d printer can print so i had to figure out a way to split my design into multiple parts the design i came up with is this there's one main body that you slide the tablet into and then you attach these two end caps and one of the end caps has this groove in it that allows the usb cable to pass through and into the tablet i'm not quite happy with the design of this case yet there are a couple of minor things that need adjusting but soon as i am i will make the case available for you to download if you want to at first i was planning to just attach the case to the wall using command hook strips but then i just had visions of lying in bed at night and hearing a loud crash as my tablet fell off the wall and onto my wooden floor so i decided to mount it with screws instead just to be on the safe side using the included screw holes in the case after marking and drilling the screw holes and screwing the case onto the wall i can then poke the charger through the end cap slide the tablet into position and then attach the other end cap i'm actually really happy with how the final design came out i was a little bit worried that you would be able to see where the case splits but it's not really noticeable at all since everything is black now that everything was mounted it was now time to do the software now i'm using home assistant as my smart home platform of choice which can be accessed through the home assistant app or just a regular web browser i'm using an app called fully kiosk browser which is kind of made with wall tablets or other similar devices in mind and it is essentially just a web browser but with lots of extra features such as being able to wake the device on motion using the built-in camera mqtt support power configurations as well as so much more and also has an integration with home assistant so that you can wake the display from one of your other motion sensors it really is super customizable and it has tons of features upon loading up my home assistant dashboard i quickly realized that i had a problem the home assistant dashboard that i currently use had never been designed for a tablet i'd always designed it for mobile use so it was clear that a redesign was in order i looked through tons of community made designs already out there such as the really popular home kit inspired design from matthias but it wasn't really quite what i was looking for and so i decided to take a crack at designing my own one now this is far from the final design and there is still a lot to be added but this is what i have so far and it's working really well for me i also set up some automations that control the charging cycle of the tablet turn the display on when motion is detected from several motion sensors around the house as well as various other notifications but i have so many more automation ideas in my head that i want to get around to implementing a big one for me is to automatically switch views to a full screen view of the front door camera whenever someone presses the doorbell button which i think will be really handy but there are so many more ideas i have here in terms of automations but that is one for another video or perhaps in fact let me know in the comments what automations would you do if you had this set up in your house or perhaps you already have one of these if you do then let me know what automations you currently do with your wall panel i am super interested to get some more inspiration and there we go that is how i built my perfect wall panel for controlling my house and i have to say i am really happy with how this turned out for a first attempt and really pleased with the end result i may be a little biased but i think this looks great and i'm already finding it really nice to have i wouldn't call it essential since pretty much our entire house is fully automated and rarely has the need for controlling anything manually but it does open up the possibility for some really cool automations that weren't possible before but hey i'm guessing you are watching this video because you're like me and you love playing with smart home gadgets but have you ever wondered if there was a way to get even more out of your smart home products well with the sponsor of today's video hero now you can hero is a new type of home insurance that gives you a better price when you protect your home with smart technology and if you think about it that makes total sense right why shouldn't you be rewarded for proactively having tech that helps defend your property in comparison to say joe blogs down the street who doesn't have anything what's also really cool about hiro is that you don't need to dedicate hours of your life answering tons of questions just to get a quote with hiro you answer just a few simple questions select which smart home devices you have and you get a quote in under two minutes no seriously i actually timed it they will even show you how much of a discount you are getting with your smart home products and they make it really easy to add or remove devices at any time what's even better is that with hero you pay on a month by month basis and you can cancel whenever you want with no fees to pay and as a hero customer you get access to their members only store that has exclusive deals on the smart tech you know and love so if you want to switch to a policy as smart as your home head over to the hero website today using the link in the video description and you can get a 25 pound amazon voucher just for giving hero a try by using my code lewis x hero at checkout thank you again to hero for sponsoring this video but that is about going to do it from me hopefully you guys enjoyed this video make sure to drop this video a like and get subscribed for more smart home content and i will see you in the next video

Channel: Everything Smart Home

Views: 197,617

Rating: 4.9270387 out of 5

Keywords: home automation, dashboard, smart home, home assistant, home assistant wallpanel, home assistant wall panel, smart home control panel, wall mounted tablet, home assistant control panel, smart home wall panel, smart home automation, home automation ideas, home automation control panel, home assistant dashboard, home assistant wall mounted dashboard, smart home dashboard, cheap smart home

Id: _FktMQSD5LE

Length: 13min 23sec (803 seconds)

Published: Tue Aug 24 2021