How My New Smart Home Dashboard is GENIUS

[@SmartHomeSolver]

This took WEEKS and I put a lot of thought into the dashboard 🙌 I tried to show more about "how" I created this, like you've been requesting in the comments. But if you want to dive even deeper, here is the article with YAML code: smarthomesolver.com/reviews/how-i-built-my-automated-dashboard/

[@elisjohansson4932]

nice that you commented before the video was unprivated

[@vespineyt]

@@elisjohansson4932good point lol

[@SmartHomeSolver]

@@elisjohansson4932 haha good eye. Yes I usually comment right before hitting publish so I don't forget.

[@JevVan]

Reed this is fantastic! It's so blatantly obvious but easily overlooked. Thanks for the great video and wonderful automation ideas. Keep them coming!

[@lukebrunning4725]

This is fantastic, I have been thinking along similar lines now for a few weeks. You've done a great job of thinking this through and executing it in a simple and clear manner. I will certainly be starting this now with your helpful guide.

[@gravelrhoads]

I was skeptical of the conditional items until you got to the garage door open condition. That's genius! And helped me understand better what you're trying teaching us.

[@SmartHomeSolver]

That's great to hear!

[@gedgicat2063]

I've been using conditional dashboards for some time now, for managing all settings for everything in my house from pihole, home networking and ESP-home utilities and resources. It's amazing for decluttering these menus. But what you have done has taken this to the next level and applied to the whole house. I need to start working on this now 👏

[@s80keys]

Now I’ve got to rebuild all my dashboards and install esp modules in all my rooms, because this is a great idea.

[@steve_ockey]

This inspired me to redo my mobile dashboard. I’ve got a long way to go but have made a great start. Thanks for your inspirational and educational videos!! Please keep them coming.

[@chrisgrimes5045]

Thank you!!!!! I have been trying to get a dashboard I like for 3 years now and I just couldn't do it. It never felt correct and felt like it was always lacking. You are a GENIUS!!!!!!

[@makeitworktech]

LOVE it! Now I need to rebuild my entire dashboard. Again. Haha. Awesome video

[@killerx4307]

When technology gets Advanced, Indeed we need a teacher like you to teach us those things ... Great job!

[@thebrickwagon5873]

I'm a fan. I did something similar to my dashboard under a "quick view" tab, to check lights, TV, and fans that are still on.

[@xsky134]

I've done the conditional cards for awhile however never thought about the presence detection. That's really cool and something that I can try working on. Thanks man

[@fmatus16]

It also works with BSSID if you have multiple access points, in case you don’t have room presence set up yet

[@SmartHomeSolver]

Oh that's a good idea! I'll have to look into that as an alternate. Thanks for the suggestion!

[@simonknight2973]

That’s a really interesting idea. Any idea why BSSID sensor would not be updating for my iPhone. Is there a companion app setting to have this sensor update?

[@fmatus16]

@@simonknight2973 Do you have location enabled for the app?

[@fmatus16]

@@simonknight2973 Do you have location services enabled for the app?

[@fmatus16]

@@simonknight2973 Do you have location services enabled for the app?

[@dougtoombs9195]

This is pretty brilliant! I've used conditional cards on my main dashboard to draw attention to sets of conditions which don't normally make sense - home vacant, alarm armed, but HVAC in normal comfort mode - and display a markdown card with colored text to draw attention. But I love this idea, even without room presence sensors - lots of the PIRs have an occupancy value they present as well and I can just use that to create a dynamically adapting dashboard based on where people are in our home at any given time. Of course, now I'm going to have to play with the ESP sensors too :)

[@timderks5960]

These are seriously great ideas. Hide the clutter, show what's important. Make it easy to use, make it idiot proof. That's how you create something you're actually gonna use and like to use.

[@TechySpeaking]

And here I am, having just finished setting up ESPresense beacons (after finding your video about it months ago), sitting here thinking "okay, so what do I do with this now?". And Reed comes in and gives the perfect answer.

[@Runeqm]

This is my dashboard now just need the rest of my esp32s to come (I also created two dashboard versions ibe being the default and one being the new sections) sections is great if you also use the screen conditions allows you to show stuff in slightly different places.

[@traskth]

And now im suddenly looking into seting up room assistant. Thanks Reed

[@ProjectsbyBrian]

Reed, I just wanted to say that I love seeing your journey into Home Assistant. It seems like you're getting more and more fancy with it by the week. Keep up the great work!

[@SmartHomeSolver]

Thanks! I love Home Assistant and it feels like I'm just scratching the surface on what it's capable of!

[@lifth13]

I was sceptical until you mentioned the manual room select. So you're eating the cake AND you're keeping it! Great Ideas, i'll look further into this.

[@vilhalmer]

I've been doing the conditional cards for things that are in their non-default state for a while and it's super useful, but the room context switching has been a thing I wanted to try eventually. So cool to see it in action, I definitely need to finally get it set up. I also want to figure out a way to use the new labels feature to configure the hidden cards instead of having to do each one manually, maybe with the auto-entities card from HACS.

[@DutchFoxify]

This is actually a really cool idea! Went ahead and implemented this into my own dashboard straight away! By the way, since version 2024.6, every card is now a conditional card! So you can just add a normal card, and then control when it should be visible on the new Visibility tab. :)

[@Opisek]

There's a scalability issue mith copying dashboards for multiple users. Every time you change something, you have to change it separately for each user.

[@TatortWeb]

Nice idea, directly did the same with one difference. I only have one dashboard but different conditional cards for my wife and me. In the conditional card I check for the active user and then show the related cards. So I save in dashboards and do not need to update two if I add something. Only the cards. And for the cards I can show thing that are more important for the related person.

[@jakkesselring3504]

Recently upgraded to the HA Green and it's been a solid choice for my dashboards and quick controls!!

[@jakkesselring3504]

@SmartHomeSolver I wish you were still touring!! Come to NC!

[@technologetic]

Hey Reed, I think this is a great idea and I wanted to take it a step further, so I used the auto entities card to automatically grab every light entity for the room I am in. Works pretty well, just needs your room names from ESPresence to match the area names in home assistant (I have to replace underscores with spaces and capitalize the words) Card code: type: custom:auto-entities card: type: entities filter: template: > {% set location = states('sensor.sam_s_apple_watch').replace('_', ' ') | capitalize %} {{ states.light | selectattr('entity_id', 'in', area_entities(location)) | map(attribute='entity_id') | list }} exclude: []

[@wouterdr]

Nice! But this does not work with the room dropdown.

[@Alex1611AD]

I think the best smart home config would allow you to never have to go to a dashboard (at least for the vast majority of day to day activities).

[@MrDingleberry31]

Nice! Really easy way to get a very intuitive dashboard going.

[@mrwest99]

Great Video as always. What Theme are you using? I like the dark mode look.

[@robertdalga128]

That is pretty darn cool Reed! However, I must say you know how people all over the world are walking around looking at their cell phones all the time and not necessarily taking advantage of their surroundings (e.g. park, beach, spouse ha, ha, etc.) well personally I think home automations should be just that...automated. In other words (and I think you know what I am about to say), I think automations should be taking place behind the scenes w/o user input from a cell phone dashboard. Guess I'm more impressed with Jarvis, but hey AI is here and hopefully it will be so much more helpful for us automation nerds/geeks in the future. P.S. Always enjoy seeing a new vid coming out from you. Thanks again, Rob

[@PetrKlus]

Great idea! However, the question in the beginning "I forgot to turn off the back patio lights" makes me think that there can be another view possible - hierarchical grouping. This is essential for houses with multiple floors with bathrooms and bedrooms on each floor and multiple outdoor ideas. Say I want to check that the 2nd floor hallway smoke detector is working - I should be able to either: - Navigate to the indoor->second floor->hallway->smoke detector. At the same time, it would be great to also have a more "functional" view available, where I could just: - Navigate to Devices->Smoke detectors->Faults and see if there are any faults visible The above does not replace the dashboards - the dashboard are still the best solution for a room tablet or to represent favourite function and states (dynamic states you mention are perfect to highlight what may need attention etc.). I think it is essential for those tasks where you have a lot of entities and need to navigate to a specific one.

[@Techlifeandmore]

I have two suggestions. 1: Your dropdown menu should automatically change the room that is selected versus having an auto mode, this way you don't forget to set it back to auto. 2: you should have a more button which would show the controls for the rooms surrounding the current room, this would be a good workaround to Alie's complaint.

[@SmartHomeSolver]

That's a good idea about the surrounding rooms! With the drop down automatically switching could make it more complicated. Since it could be difficult for the system to know if the manually changed dropdown is still valid or if it should change when the bluetooth changes.

[@iGageit]

Awesome video! I need to set this up for my smart home! right now I'm working on getting all the assistants talking to HA so it does'n't matter which smart assistant I talk to. :)

[@SmartHomeKit-ts4vm]

Hi, Please create a video of how you made the conditional card, especially the dropdown? Thank you.

[@ryanmurphydesign]

How do you achieve the "Resume schedule" button with Ecobee (after someone has manually changed the temp? I can't seem to figure this one out!

[@nateut4866]

I access my ecobee via the HomeKit integration so it might be a little different, but I was able to accomplish it via "Call Service -> Button: Press -> Living Room Thermostat Clear Hold".

[@ALaModePi]

This sounds like a good idea, but I already know there are times when I want to switch devices that aren't in the room I'm in. (e.g.: turn the water spigot on to water the gardens without going outside.) I've found another solution that works for me (admitting that I have a small house so there are only 12 areas.) I have all the basic functionality onscreen in a non-scrolling set of buttons. Additional functionality can be done with pressing and holding certain buttons (such as turning on or off the motion sensor on/off on the patio or turning on/off the auto-shut-off on the hose.) It works for me and my spouse and daughter both use it too. (My wife even suggested the auto-shut-off functionality.)

[@gandhiarpit]

This is cool if you have big single level house with big rooms. Having a multi storey house with some small rooms next to each other kind of defeats the purpose of having ble in each one. I am pretty certain ble would be connected to the previous room or adjacent room when walking into a pantry or laundry room let's say. Good idea of having drop down list of rooms for manual selection.

[@Q365GA]

I have the most barebone HA setup just to use some Zigbee humidity sensors and have Google & Hue in one app, but damn, this really scratches a techie itch! 😄

[@nazishrafi6273]

Simply amazing mate.

[@jetpac7890]

Tying room presence detection to conditional dashboard cards is a great idea! Is there anyway to avoid duplicating all of those cards across the multiple dashboards, though? I’d imagine if you ever have to make a change it’d be a pain to make that change in all those different places.

[@OGKenG]

Since I live in a small apartment and what separates my living room from the bedroom is one wall and my living room from the kitchen is one wall, having Bluetooth presence detection is not gonna work. The nice thing about having a small apartment is that I can basically walk anywhere in the apartment and have my one Bluetooth speaker play music without losing connection.

[@bradlylevitt2000]

I've been able to do a pretty good job with managing the room selection / dynamic tiles etc... any advice on how to mimic the "Views" section of the dashboard with all the different categories?

[@genaroantoniorondongarcia634]

nice Idea for the dashboard, I would like to do it, i have already an ESP32 to control Switchbot finger but I do not know if can load something else for this ESP32. Would be nice if you can make an example video to understand how you setup the ESP32 devices in your home and also how did you do it when you have users are in different Zones of the house.

[@zolartan4442]

I've had two conditionals for quite awhile. Battery Low and Offline IoT devices. Battery low shows any battery that is under 30%, Offline shows any Wifi based IoT device that isn't shown as connected in Unifi. if there is nothing to show they vanish from the screen.

[@merkury28]

I'm officially impressed 🤩😁

[@TaseenK]

Great video showcassing the power of the conditional card! Maybe I missed it but additionally you can also set the condition based on who is currently logged in. For me setting up Bluetooth presence was a pain with Multiple floors so I can't do this. But my biggest problem is that not everyone in my house has their phone or a device with them wherever they go. Which made me setup principles for my smart home. For example to not be dependent on someone having their phone with them or knowing exactly where they are.

[@wapphigh5250]

Are we heading to everyone being tagged with a chip? What other way can specific personal presence be detected (other than each persons bluetooth/phone presence)? Curious....

[@SmartHomeSolver]

Thanks! Oh yeah I saw that as an option to have the condition based on who is logged in. That could make it so I only need one dashboard. I'll have to try that out.

[@wapphigh5250]

@@SmartHomeSolver Cool. Even a "button" to turn your new "smart"smart home dashboard "on" and "off"? to toggle between - making it a full dashboard (then this new one you have designed). Would that work? Ally's dashboard button. (Sorry if I miss pronounced or misspelt her name) ..that sort of thing...

[@michelrail]

I love your channel. Thank you for the inspiration. I just have one problem with carrying my cell with me. I don't want to be the slave of my phone and have to carry it all over the place.

[@maxreichardt1589]

Nice Dashboard, i am already trying to copy some of your ideas and concepts into mine :) may I ask which Theme you are using? I like the sharp edges. Keep up the good work!

[@G4M1NG]

How did you manage to put 2 mushroom cards in a single row in the vertical stack?

[@chrisperrywv]

Looking sharp Reed!

[@JamesMyatt1]

I've been thinking about conditional cards for a while. But they don't work nicely with the new sections layout yet (they're always full width). But they are essential for good dashboards as you say!

[@Weeem]

Have you had a look at HACS: layout-card? It can format pages as you like and may get you on the way to how you want it to look

[@eberger02]

How much control over the Bluetooth Proxy do you have? If in just binary present/absent I can see problems with being in neighbouring rooms or it’s analogue and you get an signal strength to adjust I can see how it works. Not that I have enough sockets to power those chips: maybe when the newer ESP chips with Zigbee rather than Wifi are supported they could be battery powered… for example I would not have power in my closet, if I had a closet. Not sure I’ve ever had a closet.

[@SmartHomeSolver]

There is a lot of control with the Bluetooth ESPresence. You can set the distance for each Bluetooth controller for detecting beacons (phones). So I put all the controllers strategically in the corner of the room away from the other controllers. Then I sat in each room and if one room was reaching too far I would turn it down. Doing all that makes it super accurate. I spent probably 20 minutes fine tuning the distance about a year ago and I haven’t touched it since.

[@TEverlith]

Sweet! I'm gonna use this!

[@dankelley9361]

Great ideas, dashboards finally evolving to use ability. I think HA might be the way to go. Any way to figure how best to get started and grow into what you’re doing with it. Now I’m using SmartThings and just thinking it might be time to jump.

[@darknessblades]

Nice, might look into this. Do you have a suggestion to FORCE a wall-dashboard. to be zoomed out to like 70% instead of being at 100% when the app restarts? can't find where to do this

[@DaleThomasNYC]

Genius and possibly the highest wife satisfaction rating! Well done!

[@theindieway9191]

I’m about to start the floor plans and planning to build my first home, and I want it to be smart. Nothing fancy, but yes daily useful (like cameras, motion sensors, door/windows sensors, temperature sensors, leak sensors, home security system, light switches, garage door, etc) The question is; if you could do all from scratch, what brands/systems would you look into? (I do have various Google Assistants) I’m looking into go fully Wyze products, combined with Sonoff’s light switches. Nowadays I have (but wouldn’t mind starting from scratch); google Nest cameras (like 8 of them), google nest hub, google nest wifi router and extenders/speakers, wyze doorlock, a few OG wyze cameras, chromecasts in all tv’s…

[@johnhubbard3879]

Well done Reed. The bluetooth sensors are still a little in front of me, but now you have inspired me 🙂. . . my wife will probably kill me but oh well.

[@fibergran9]

I only use one little screen with my dashboard, so conditional cards have been a must since day one 😅.

[@Mr.C0ffee]

But what app are u using for the dashboard? Could u do a step by step? 🙏🏼

[@designbuild7128]

My first thought was "what if you are used to seeing entities in a certain area of a dash and now you have to scan and confirm whether for example the garage isn't in the list and therefore open?" That can be overcome by not overfilling a dash, but that would probably be my issue with conditional visibility.

[@dishboy007]

Any difference in functionality between the smaller ESP32 and the normal one?

[@michaelsleen]

Very cool, Reed. Been thinking about the same since your video with Dan. I recently spruced up my mobile and tablet dashboard, but opted for a simple, static layout that allows me to see everything important and frequently used in one view with no scrolling required. What’s it been like maintaining/updating multiple dashboards (yours + Aly’s) as your smart home evolves?

[@asarhanbuyukgenc]

Dude how did you add 2 color bulb in that lamp?

[@bigchuy]

Love your videos. Could you recommend a beginner's video for someone who wants to setup and use Home Assistant

[@TheMattwilson85]

@SmartHomeSolver I've been trying to duplicate your "Tap to resume thermostat schedule" button and I cant figure it out what you are using for the condition to show/hide the button. I got the button to clear the hold, just missing this last piece. Also can't wait to see your tutorial videos. I'm fairly new to HA and definitely inspired by what you've done with yours.

[@alondinbar6193]

can you do conditional also with specific day time? ;show this state after 18:30;

[@limp15000]

Amazing ideas. Love it 🎉

[@rickcovarrubias352]

I am starting out with making my own smart home. I just bought the Google Pixel. I am stuck on setting it up. What do I need next? Do I need Home Assistant Green or a Raspberry Pi? Thanks in advance

[@nickelz45]

I felt this because I don’t know what to put on my work dashboards. 😢😂

[@draco_storm_1]

If you have used the drop down to manual change the room, this means that it will no longer be in Auto 'mode' and the conditional card being displayed won't change when moving between rooms. Do you have to change the drop down back to Auto after the manual section of a room to make this work again, or is there an automatic way of getting back to auto?

[@ronm6585]

Nice! Thanks Reed.

[@jvitorsouzaa]

What color theme are you using?

[@StefanDingemanse]

So what’s the best way to accomplish those tasks butting from the video you are referring to?

[@timboe1848]

Love your videos, can you do a more In depth video on how to setup esprense . I got the irk numbers by enrolling but setting up on home assistant on certain devices work while others just state not_home

[@SmartHomeSolver]

Interesting. Are they all Apple devices or what are the devices that aren't working?

[@timboe1848]

@@SmartHomeSolver yes all Apple devices. They are seen in the esprense site . Like my watch works and my wife phone works but her watch and tablet doesn’t. Its head scratching

[@SmartHomeSolver]

That's strange. I'll have to try it on some more devices and see if I run into any similar issues. So far I have only set it up on my iPhone, my Apple watch and my wife's iPhone. And all those worked well.

[@timboe1848]

@@SmartHomeSolver I’ve had to keep writing the code in yaml, deleting and rewriting, got em all to work now except my wife’s phone. Kid has a fire tablet I want to use, it showed up for a day and now esprense won’t show it for some strange reason

[@dabbiwilli]

this is genius and inspiring

[@wwolfram33]

Fantastic!!

[@DoctorVadarWho]

Can you do a video on how to set up home assistant for new users. For your smart home why don't you also have away for you to use your voice to also control the action. Can you add if someone doesn't want to use home assistant they want to use Apple Home or Google Home or Alexa how they look with your current set up

[@lpubecker]

very excited to try it out! nice video thx

[@roykranz3276]

very nice build. I wonder if it will work with the Aqara Presence Sensor FP2 instead of the $5.00 sensors

[@Ninetou69]

How reliable do you find the Espresence project? I found that it looses my fingerprinted devices every 2 weeks or so and required repairing so not very reliable.

[@vespineyt]

Awesome!

[@kristyboldizar]

And where can I download this dashboard too?

[@notoryous2]

Thanks for this!

[@Bigglare]

Alexa, Tell Reed that his dashboard is good. Siri, turn off the patio lights while he looks at his dashboard. :-)

[@amadorjp]

I think you Will Change a lot of dashboards around The world 🤣 I Will use this first with The drop down, anda after with The presente detertors (i've to take those!)

[@RaghavendraPrasad]

I use similar concept in my dashboard

[@SwatiGorle-u4j]

ill buy it

[@wapphigh5250]

Very cool but what happens if the garage door is closed and you aren't in there...(there is no icon visible on the dashboard) and you want to open it in advance? I'm with Aly (at the end). Is there an easy way to switch between this smart dashboard (with invisible buttons and low clutter etc) and a dashboard with every button and room still seen?

[@SmartHomeSolver]

Yes there are buttons on the dashboard to jump into sub views for more buttons. I probably should have mentioned that because I spent a lot of time setting all that up. So everything is still accessible but the buttons that are rarely used are deeper in the dashboard.

[@wapphigh5250]

@@SmartHomeSolver Ok cool. Love the channel ! Love HA. I am aware of all the HA touchscreen hardware and software mods. Now I just want HA to sell one with all these smarts "out of the box". Why don;t you put one together and market it?! 🙂

[@aawesome-123]

The only problem is that you have to walk into each room to control it at that point you might as well just use the manual switch you would have to make it so that it's easy to control other rooms

[@floryy_]

Hey Reed, I was wondering, how is it possible to add the ring alarm to home assistant? I can only get my cameras on it.

[@SmartHomeSolver]

The way I did it was using MQTT. I followed this guide and it works extremely well. community.home-assistant.io/t/ring-alarm-integration-almost-working-see-cams-and-motion-but-not-door-sensors/217691/11

[@DavidBruner_NJ]

The management of all of those dashboards for each user is very time consuming over time. This is due to the current dashboard arrangement in HA.

[@brunobonneau9308]

Probably the dashboard is not the issue but how many automation you have. I can't imagine if you are doing the same thing in the factory. Keep simple.

[@Javicho08]

Name this app??

[@shiPham0705]

Can you share on how to create the room select dropdown menu please?

[@SmartHomeSolver]

There is a Helper you can create called Dropdown. It's really easy to set up since it uses the UI. I go over the steps to create that in the article smarthomesolver.com/reviews/how-i-built-my-automated-dashboard/

[@shiPham0705]

@@SmartHomeSolver thanks a lot!

[@alfrede.newman1838]

I have 2 BIG challenges, that I don't think are unusual or unrealistic, but before that I had to change my WiFi Router (my 5 year old Orbi Mesh started acting up at one of my houses so I got the Eero Pro 6+ but set the network Name and Password to exactly (case sensitive of course) the old Orbi name/pwd nd now I have to manually reset all my Alexa enabled devices including my smart thermostat. I mean "Amazon, this should not be so hard. WHY?) Anyway in terms of organizing my home devices: 1. I have a winter and a summer home, probably not at all unusual for many retired people. My Ring camera's are nicely organized by LOCATION in the Ring app/website, by my Echo and my Kasa smart plugs apps don't seem to recognize multiple locations. Everything seems to be 'Home'. Or am I missing something? 2. I setup my Ring camera's at both locations, and I have granted my wife as much access / priviliages to all my Ring cameras BUT she cannot set off alerts when I'm gone and she's at either house. Seems only I as the account holder can set alert notifications to Snooze for a period of time. Or am I missing something? Many thanks ...

[@607AAG]

I bought a bunch of the Bluetooth sensors and never could get them to work 🙁

[@Tom-gd4pb]

Is there a full android/linux/windows/pi alternatives ?

[@SmartHomeSolver]

This is running Home Assistant which can be run on many different machines. It has a great Android and iOS app.

[@Coweaterthe1st]

Didn't realise people weren't doing this.... been running this forever for lights and door sensors.

[@ItotheCtotheE]

If you've reached the point of needing to make special dashboards that update dynamically so that you can turn off the back porch lights, isn't more of a question of whether or not you need that function to be smart or not? Like you start making a house a smart house to simplify life, but isn't there a threshold of what is being made more simple?

[@ajma]

Use groups and auto-entities and you can get this with less work.

[@Maskra_]

Are you a wizard?