Android Home Assistant Dashboards

[@Gecko2881]

This is my exact setup! 20% to 80% cycles, been running for 2 years now. no bloating and sometimes I unplug it to watch something in bed and haven't noticed a drop in battery life. Mine is a fire HD tab 10 running the HA app with a always-on display. looking at the charging data over the years it takes around 6 hours to discharge with the screen always on the same as it did 2 years ago so Im pretty certain no damage to the battery has happened. Another note on fire tablets at least when you connect them through MQTT you have a sensor for battery heath exposed to HA. if that ever shows bad heath and/ Or high temperature then it fully prevents the plug from working and notifies me on my phone and other displays I have. but that has never triggered. But if people still find this sketchy and you are handy with electronics then you can follow a guide online to remove the battery from your device. most devices still work when plugged in with no battery and removes all of these problems

[@alanjrobertson]

Yep I've got a Fire tablet too, they're amazing value - esp on Black Friday or other Amazon sale days!

[@HomeAutomationGuy]

Ooh. That's clever! Thanks for sharing!

[@RandomNoob]

I used to use a smart plug with android on the charger, you can get the battery state as a sensor in HA so just create a automation to turn on and off the charger at specified thresholds. So have it say turn on the charger once you hit 50% and turn if off again at 60% This wasn't for a HA panel though but more just a old phone that just sits on a wireless cradle at the side of the bed.

[@VEE727]

That's the perfect way to charge li-ion batteries. There should be no worries of explosions this way.

[@EsotericArctos]

I would set the chargign to be 50% to 80% as that will increase the safety as Lithium Ion batteries prefer to operatate in that range, rather than letting them go all the way down to 20%. If it is a wall device only there is no reason to let it go all the way to 20% :)

[@BenBrand]

I'm both an electrical engineer and do a lot with batteries but definitely still take this as an internet opinion :-). Something like 30% to 70% or even 40% to 70% is probably better for your situation. There's trade-offs all over the place but a lithium batteries happy place is anywhere from 20 to 80%, But there are two factors that make it better to lower to 30 to 70%. And that is that if you did ever need to take the tablet somewhere, it would have a little bit more charge if it happened to be at the lower end when you unplugged it. The battery is still slightly happier at 70 than 80, although it doesn't make too much of a difference. And the most important difference is something that affects battery life is not the number of cycles but the depth of each cycle so something like 50% to 70% would be better than 30% to 70%. But then you're putting more cycles on your Smart switch so at that point we're splitting hairs and something like 30 to 70 is probably the best of all worlds.

[@HomeAutomationGuy]

That makes sense. I just picked the 80% because that's what the Pixel did and I assumed Google had smart people decide that number. The 20% was a pure guess (80/20 rule - why not). Your math sounds right, and I totally get the trade off on the smart switch!

[@jonl4p]

Thanks Alan for the safety warnings at the start which is why i also purchased the NS Panel Pro as they are designed to be powered all day and perfectly fit a UK light switch socket. For tablets im about to do this too using a smart plug but i have had 4 Tapo P110M devices fail on me. Which is why i switched to another brand now. But when they failed the relay inside stayed "switched on" regardless of toggling it via the app or physically with the button on the device itself. As an extra saftey measure i plan to setup an automation to notify me if the battery does charge above 80%

[@HomeAutomationGuy]

One of my smart plugs failed in the same way after a couple of years. It was hard to figure out! Great idea with the notification!

[@grahamshaw5531]

Thanks for this. Now have my tablet in HS. with a blueprint phone charger in use.

[@bogorad]

yes, 20..80 charging makes even an old battery essentially immortal. my pixel-2xl is close to being a decade old, still works like a charm this way. I've recently changed to 30/70.

[@HomeAutomationGuy]

Great to hear!

[@OGKenG]

I do 80/30 for my Fire 8 tablet and a smart plug.

[@EdoDijkgraaf]

I’m no expert by any means, but I always hear that after four charge cycles to 80 percent you should charge to 100 percent. The reason for charging to 100 percent has something to do with memory effect? ​​Or so I’ve heard. I could be wrong. I can remember being wrong before. Once or twice. No, once. Definitely once.

[@bogorad]

@@EdoDijkgraaf li-on batteries have no memory effect.

[@xelemorf]

​ Only NiCd (Nickel Cadmium) batteries were affected by the memory effect. NiMh, Li-Ion and Li-poly (latter used in phones and tablets) and not affected by this.

[@alanjrobertson]

Ooh nice one with the battery/smart plug setup - that sounds ideal and probably better than continuous 80%! I'd looked at Fully Kiosk before and didn't realise it had the mqtt option, nice!

[@RocketBoom1966]

Thanks Alan, excellent as usual. I've been using a couple of Samsung Galaxy Tab A7 tablets for a few years, running FKB and controlling charging via a Sonoff USB plug. No issues with battery bloat. I found a HA blueprint called Charge Phone which creates a super simple automation to set charging levels. HOWEVER, since adding new features to my dashboard, the tablets are quite sluggish, FKB crashes frequently and the tablets are barely usable. My tip on tablets is to spend a bit more and get one with a faster processor. I've just ordered a Galaxy Tab A9+. I looked into prompting tablets with a wake word a while ago. No dice. An Assist button works well, even better with AI. Much better than a Google Home display.

[@HomeAutomationGuy]

Which features are causing the performance problems? I noticed camera streams slow them down, but nothing else really

[@youplaymenot]

I've never cared for dashboards. I think it's more work than it's worth. If your going to use home assistant, set up automations for everything so you don't need a dashboard, or set up buttons, for everything else use your phone.

[@HomeAutomationGuy]

I generally agree with that. But sometimes you need to glance at a camera or override an automation in case something different happens

[@ImTotallyTechy]

Ok

[@daveforrester61]

Like you, I like the fact that the NSPanelPro fits into a standard single switch box. My only issue with them is that they can be a bit slow to respond. The dashboard always has to reload when the display comes on so you have to wait for that before being able to do anything. I do have 2 tablets, a Samsung A7 Lite and a repurposed Kindle Fire 8, both of which are just plugged into smart plugs controlled by automation. Only issue with that is that it takes away the availability of a socket for other use. Horses for courses I guess. Love your videos and blog articles btw 👍.

[@HomeAutomationGuy]

Interesting! Mine doesn't need to reload each time, have you got a setting configured in Fully Kiosk to force a refresh? Thanks for the support 🙏

[@drumslapper]

Battery managemwnt as you described, works well. Using Wall Panel and Companion app.

[@mikegodin23]

Great! I also use Fusion instead of a new dashboard. Love it...

[@vegaswayne247]

The HA companion app reports the battery level. I use it with a smart plug to control the charging.

[@ianrhodes1071]

Noticed that you were at my regular swim spot in September 2020. Hope you enjoyed your time down this way.

[@HomeAutomationGuy]

Mevagissey? My partners father grew up down there! 😍

[@ianrhodes1071]

Porthpean. I have swam at Mavi a few times and there is an absolutely delicious Ice Cream shop in Mavi

[@sohail579]

Love your videos. My recommendation for your battery issue is to use a chargie

[@daspi]

Nice idea, still wanting to execute one like this myself too. Any insight in the power usage of your setup?

[@gregorymyres]

I really like the pixel tablet, I’m gonna replace all the Samsung tablets on my walls with more of these

[@czayna80]

I am still looking for PoE powered screen for my home assistant

[@Leroys_Stuff]

Setup a smart plug for charging or pull the batteries great dashboards

[@unimatrix726]

I really wish there was a US version of the Shelly wall display

[@mrxmry3264]

3:58 why not the companion app? i stopped using the fully kiosk browser because there was some feature i wanted to use but it wasn't available.

[@HomeAutomationGuy]

I like all the options that Fully Kiosk gives, especially the screensaver - which is the topic of a future video 😉

[@Vesssss]

I use the app as I can use the tablet to receive TTS messages as part of fire/smoke/flood/high room temperature alarms. I don't think you can do that via the web UI.

[@KeithWeston]

BTW, G didn't exactly shut down shopping lists. They moved them to Google Keep. You can still use them, as I do nearly daily, to say "Hey G, add eggs to Whole Foods Grocery List". I just have to have a note of type list in Keep and name it Whole Foods Grocery List. I can then share it with my "family" members and they can add items to the same list. Easy.

[@HomeAutomationGuy]

That's true. But it really annoyed me, so I wanted to throw some shade at Google 😉

[@OGKenG]

I'm using Amazon's shopping list, which I share with my wife.

[@allenbijo904]

I rooted the tablet and set the charging limit to 55%, this saves so much hassle

[@CamiloSperberg]

There are actually tablets that are sold without a battery and they are in fact patched inside android to ignore everything battery related. They are funnily enough more expensive than their battery counterparts but they are slimmer and most of the time built better since their intended use is actually for installations in malls and other commercial purposes.

[@HomeAutomationGuy]

Oh? Got any brand names or models you recommend?

[@faicalbel5892]

Also interested!

[@wscottfunk]

Hey Alan! I use a Thirdreality Zigbee smart plug to control the charging on one of my desktop mounted (Amazon Fire) tablets and my other (Samsung A9+) has battery charge management built in. I can't seem to get either to display locally without giving them cloud access. Any tips would be appreciated.

[@Conservator.]

You could remove the old battery from an old tablet and run it from the charger. That should prevent them from exploding. Just a thought though.

[@jstan5802]

Pretty sure many of the cheaper tablets don't work with the battery removed. I've tried on a Xiaomi phone and it doesn't boot without a battery.

[@Conservator.]

@ In that case a couple of (super) capacitors might help.

[@doubleu2170]

I am running fully kiosk on my tablets where the state of charge is monitored. At 20 or 90% an automation stops or starts the charging.

[@EsotericArctos]

Newer tablets and phones usually don't have the same issues as the older ones with charging and battery failure. The other thing you can do, if you have room, is have your tablet or phone connected to a smart outlet, have an automation setup that when the battery reaches 505% the charger turns on and then turns off again when it reaches 80%, and just have it running in that 50% to 80% range where Lithium Ion batteries are at their happiest. In a wall mounted situation, I would not use below 40% as lithium ion batteries are happiest in that mid charge range. I may even consider only charging to 75% and only go through a 25% cycle. Though 80% seems to be an agreed level on devices which are mobile, when mounted to the wall you don't need that compromise between time on battery if it is only at 80% and battery life for devices mostly on mains power. I do like the Pixel devices in general though. They have reasonable docks too. I believe Reed from Smart Home Solver has done a really sweet dashboard using a Pixel tablet too. I also find the Pixel Phones (at least 6 and up) make really nice small form factor displays, but new they would be way too expensive to hang on the wall. Anyway, I am commenting half way through the video, which I normally wouldn't do, so I will watch the rest now :)

[@HomeAutomationGuy]

Thanks for the comment! Reed has done some amazing dashboards which have helped me level mine up! I'm going to look into Raspberry Pi options too, I've seen a bunch of touch displays available for them now

[@HardyOh]

I thought you customized an older nest hub max. Now I gotta wait for another Black Friday sale to get the pixel tablet+stand.

[@HomeAutomationGuy]

I wish I could! The hardware of the old Nest Hub is nice but I'm not smart enough to hack it

[@pilotbum]

What version of Android is that tablet running? I recently purchased a couple of Samsung A9+ tablets running Android 14 for a wall tablet using FKB. When I attempted to use the motion detection feature, I got a message stating that as a new security feature, Android has disabled motion detection if the app is in the background or the screen is off. So far, I have found this to be true, and there is no way to disable this security feature nor can I find a setting to get around it.

[@HomeAutomationGuy]

Android 13 for the cheaper tablet and 15 for the Pixel tablet. Motion detection works on both of them for me

[@pilotbum]

@@HomeAutomationGuy Oh well... I was hoping for some wisdom! I use iOS for personal devices and Android only on my Shield TV boxes and now these panels. However, I have noticed that some devices run Android versions with odd numbers, and others run Android versions with even numbers. I have not been able to figure out what the differences are, however. So, I may have been better served by purchasing different devices, but I already have the wall mounts specifically for these tablets. I may get one of those pixels for my kitchen for the same use...

[@sbussinger]

If you can jail break the android tablet, there's software you can load that will control the charging cycles. I have mine set to keep the charge between 60% and 75%, entirely in software (it's always plugged in). Works great, but the root requirement is a pain in the ***

[@cristianradovici2668]

Welcome. 👍

[@davorzdralo8000]

How about a raspberry pi with a small LCD touch screen attached to it?

[@HomeAutomationGuy]

It's on my list to test!

[@davorzdralo8000]

@HomeAutomationGuy nice, I'll be waiting for it. My house is currently being constructed, I've got a few more months to plan before u start buying stuff 😀

[@HorCsa]

Much more expensive than a cheap tablet. But you can connect some sensor to the pi (DHT humidity/temperature for example).

[@AmazingOrange87]

@@HomeAutomationGuy Video please when you get round to it ;)

[@davorzdralo8000]

@@HorCsa how? Pi's are dirt cheap, and a simple display isn't much. Sure, it may be more expensive than the cheapest tablet, but much more? I doubt it.

[@mrxmry3264]

i use home assistant to cut off charging at 90%, except once a month my phone and tablet get charged to 100% before their chargers get switched off.

[@PersonXes]

Like another commenternherz, I'm also looking for a nice PoE panel for a home assistant dashboard... Meanwhile I just ordered my fifth Shelly wall display today. The bottom bar is gone in the latest beta ☺️ Found solutions on how ro install them in location where I'm using a three way switch. Really cool devices!

[@HomeAutomationGuy]

I'm glad they're working out for you! Great to hear about the firmware with the option to remove the bar!

[@rationalistinanev]

I'm seeing $400US for the pixel with the speaker base.

[@HomeAutomationGuy]

That seems a lot cheaper than I've seen here in the UK

[@wojtek-33]

You likely could just remove the battery and run it from the power cable only.

[@HomeAutomationGuy]

Have you tried that? I'm not sure it would work that way 🤔

[@wojtek-33]

@HomeAutomationGuy I have done it with other battery electronics. There are tutorials online for tablets. Samsung tablets even have a no battery mode.

[@cristianradovici2668]

Mulțumim!

[@HomeAutomationGuy]

Thank you so much for supporting me and the channel! You are amazing! 🙏

[@djLovelyTime]

£400 gets you an entire Homey Pro and use of their new Dashboard functionality.

[@HomeAutomationGuy]

And what do you display those dashboards on?

[@djLovelyTime]

@@HomeAutomationGuy Hahaha salty much

[@HomeAutomationGuy]

​@@djLovelyTime Not at all, I am genuinely curious. Isn't it just a smart hub that needs something else to display the dashboards?

[@msheep5869]

I am NOT an expert, but can't you just pull the batterie out?

[@HomeAutomationGuy]

Not without disassembling it, and voiding the warranty. Even then, I have no idea if the tablet would even work like that?

[@okezzeko]

@@HomeAutomationGuy can we get someone to answer this (or try this)? :) That would be the final destination for cheap but very smart and very responsive android dashboards!

[@CamiloSperberg]

No you can't since almost all tablets are hardwired to function from battery first: no battery, no power at all. The circuitry is different and there are commercial options out there which do cost a bit more but are made for installations in malls and alike

[@Lanser1964]

Sorry but thats not correct most reasonably modern tablets/phones since 2010 have had built in battery protection, unless the tablet is working hard and battery can never charge completely and/or is over heating you'll not get any issues except battery degradation after a few years

[@HomeAutomationGuy]

Not sure why it happened to my devices then. 🤷🏻‍♂️

[@Radhoo2k10]

Two of my tablets made after 2019 got broken. I have now automation to turn off the charger at 80% and on at 20%.

[@fasthowto]

Your intro was partly incorrect, and partly unnecessary fearmongering. Mounting a tablet to a wall via mains power takes 30 minutes at most, and properly controlling the charging power prevents battery damage. Hopefully people have watched the video I made where I show how to do this all correctly. *sigh*

[@HomeAutomationGuy]

30 minutes if you're great at DIY, which I'm definitely not 🤣

[@StevieFQ]

Bull shit. Connecting to mains power is not a trigger for puffing up batteries. Poorly designed charging circuits are so maybe stop buying temu slop and focus on something built by someone with a decent engineering background. I say this as someone who has his tablet constantly connected to mains because I usually use it from a dock. Video starts from a spurious premise.

[@okezzeko]

hmm.. can you recommend what tablets we should use? i hope those are not expensive.

[@HomeAutomationGuy]

If I'm buying more expensive tablets then the Shelly and Sonoff wall panels become even more attractive from a price point of view

[@Vesssss]

​@@okezzekoSamsung Galaxy Tab A9+ Plus 11” 64GB for $150 from Amazon. Has a great battery preserve feature. No need for smart plug. Just checked and is at 49% charge, always plugged.