I’ve done quite a bit of research over the past weeks and am looking into the addition of a home tablet monitor in my home. I use smart things + sensors + have switched out most of my switches with the Ge Z-Wave and feel like it’d be great to have something on the walls of rooms to monitor the status of things.
I am leaning towards the new Fire HD 8. Does this support wireless charging with modifications as some people have tried with the older ones? Also, can I wire a 120v to 5v adapter of some sort to go behind the wall from a light switch to lead up to where I mount on the wall?
The interface I was thinking of using was action tiles. My goal was to make it so it plays photos unless touched which would bring up the action tiles interface.
Please let me know if anyone has any input and suggestions, I haven’t tried any of this before but looking over the forum the ideas and projects got me interested.
One of the quick browse lists in the community – created wiki in the project report section is for dashboards. You can see what hardware choices other people made and how they handled wiring.
BTW, Pass & Seymour (LeGrand) make a line of light switches and outlets with built-in USB chargers which can be a very simple approach for a wall mount tablet:
Couple of quick thoughts. If you can run CAT5, then using something like a PoE Splitter for MicroUSB would run low voltage power in the walls. I use these for a number of devices/cameras without any issue.
As for tablets, that’s a good question. By far, a current Samsung Tab S2 or S3 would work great in every scenario but that’s too costly when you want to buy a few of them.
I’ve just ordered a cheap Insignia Flex 10" ~ $60 referbed on eBay to evaluate if it will run Imperihome dashboards for this very purpose. Not sure how good that device will be but 10" tablet running Marshmallow sounds too good to be true. It has an Intel CPU, not great for Android/Tablets but I figured it’s not going to be too taxing.
I’m probably going to make a custom mount out of an Ikea ribba picture frame if it runs ok. Will also pair it up with an Android digital photo screensaver app to show feeds of social media pictures when it’s not displaying the dashboard pages.
The cool thing about the Imperihome dashboard app, it accepts Rest API calls to you can trigger it to display a certain page when say motion is detected. I have a virtual switch sending an http post command when a Aeon Labs motion sensor gets tripped.
I’ll confirm back once the Insignia tablet shows up.
I heard the fire 8 can just run google play store normally to install apps? I had read somewhere that since it’s relatively low powered it’s easy to wirelessly charged.
I did go through all the project sections but I still sometimes see it mentioned but no one actually says how to wire 5v usb wire into the light switch.
I’ve seen those light switches before with the built in USB, but only issue is I’d really like it to look clean without wires. I am not sure about POE/CAT5 because it just seems like a lot of extra work as those wires need power too.
Ideally I’d just like to hang this over my light switch with a hole drilled in and drop the wire into the light switch and wire it with power from there. Possibly using a QI pad behind to charge it, vs. drill power in?
You still need a transformer ( that’s what a wall wart does).
If you get the switch that has the USB slot built-in, then you can put the tablet over the top of that. Assuming your code allows it, and most do, you can inset the switch slightly so that the tablet will be flat on the wall or you can put a frame mount around the switch.
You had a chance to look at the mounting ideas thread?
Imperihome is really quite polished as Dashboarding tools go. It doesn’t talk directly to ST yet but the developer confirmed to me a couple of months back that they’re actively working on it. fingers crossed…
I’m using it in a number of ways. When it comes to ST, Imperihome is mostly being controlled by ST via their Rest API and HTTP POST commands. I use virtual switches in ST that when triggered, send an HTTP Post url to launch a particular dashboard page.
Example use case - motion detected at the front door triggers a virtual switch, that sends a post request to open a dashboard for a full screen camera feed showing the front door. The tablet I’m using for that is in picture frame near the front door, when its not displaying the door cam, its running a picture screensaver from family instragram etc. Multiple ST motion sensors & virtual switches around the house do simple things - motion on driveway, sides of house etc all trigger their respective Imperihome page displaying the Blue Iris cameras.
Imperihome directly supports a number of my smart home technologies such as Sonos, Nest, Hue, Blue Iris so much of my home is covered - I really want the full ST control so I can get to my Zwave devices plus Lutron (via your rocking SmartApp!!). That said, at this stage, its still extremely handy - beautiful Sonos screens, many custom icons, interactive weather maps etc.
More recently, I’ve been playing with @entityxenon PlexPlus smartapp. thats very cool in that it supports Plex Webhooks - I’ve hooked that up to similar virtual switches which control Imperihome dashboards in the media room. Motion in the room wakes up the dashboard; or playing Plex content triggers other actions on Imperihome.
I hope that helps, its seems fairly reliable and gets good WAF approval
I picked up a new Fire HD 8 last week on sale at Amazon. I’m running ActionTiles in the Fully Kiosk browser and it looks great. The 8" screen is a good size for it’s purpose, at least in my use case (8-10 lights/switches tiles, plus 2 IP cameras and a couple weather maps/forecast).
It’s relatively easy to load the required APKs to run the Play Store and install any apps you want. I also ran an APK to hijack the Fire launcher and use the Google Now launcher. I was up and running in about 20 mins. I can collect links to the XDA posts I used if you’re interested.
I haven’t figured out a mount option yet. Don’t know where I wanna put it, TBH.
Wow thank you very that very very thorough explanation. I’m very intrigued. I might have to play with it. I’m wondering if there’s a way to use one of the dashboard API’s to get the data into imperihome. Curious how they’re doing it.
I’m really jealous of your camera setup. I love the Arlo’s I have because they work well and are easy to use, but I don’t have access to the stream sadly. If I could get that it would be amazing. I have all the other same devices you have so going to have to check this out.
BTW, I am working on a new version for the Lutron stuff. It’s built in nodejs instead of Python so the install is super simple. Should be making it available soon, although if what you have is working no reason to change.
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tgauchat
(ActionTiles.com co-founder Terry @ActionTiles; GitHub: @cosmicpuppy)
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re: ActionTiles and non-SmartThings direct integrations…
For at least a while, we “honor/loyal” our WWST ("Works with SmartThings"™) designation and focus our efforts by specializing on integrating devices throughSmartThings. Additional HA system APIs like Nest, Wink, etc., are a likely move at some point in the future. Keep watch and participate on our Feedback Forum to help determine the future direction of our product: ActionTiles Forum / AT Support & Ideas
@Savio. Imperihome does support Nest directly but it currently has limited ST interoperability, namely you can control Imperihome home from ST but not currently the ability to control ST from Imperihome dashboards (which is I’m guessing what you want). Your best bet is @tgauchat ActionTiles if this is what’s needed right now. That has great ST support
I’m using the http rest apis to launch dashboards based on ST events/triggers (virtual switches firing off urls to open pages or launch dashboard from screen saver mode).
I’m getting good use from Imperihome as they support natively many of my smart home solutions (Sonos, Hue, Nest, Blue Iris, web) but I do crave full ST support to be able to control ZWave/Lutron - it’s coming but we don’t know dates.
Hey @zala per your suggestion I’ve taken a look at imperihome I’ve actually started working on a way to integrate ST devices into imperihome. I’m making some slow progress. Like you said they have a pretty good API so just need to build for it. Hopefully, I can get it all working smoothly.
Re that insignia panel, Awful, avoid like the plague!!
I have found a combination that works so well, looks good and gets high wife approval.
I’ve paired a fnf Ifive Mini 4S Tablet with a Vidabox Slim Wall mounted frame running ImperiHome.
The iFive Mini S has the exact dimensions of an iPad Mini so many mounting options out there. The Vidabox Slim mounts work well, I run power to them via PoE cat5 cables.
In addition to the Wall mounted option above, I’ve also mounted that tablet model in an Ikea pictureframe in another area of the house.
When the Wall mounts or frame mounted tablets are not showing my home controls or video camera feeds, they just cycle as family photo frames. Using standard zwave motion sensors, if activity is detected outside, the panels automatically switch to the live front door or side door camera feed which is very useful. That works via a custom http switch in ST and the ImperiHome API.
I would definitely recommend the fnf iFive 4s tablet. It’s approx $110, works like a champ!!
The tablets look great man.
I"m currently looking for a 10.1" tablet to replace the one I have. I have a samsung 10.1 tab but is extremely slow running andoird 4.0, I can not upgrade it as their is no custom ROM for it .
I"m using ActionTiles which I’m happy with, but looks like I’m going to give a thought about ImperiHome, but last I checked it doesn’t have an integration with Smartthings.
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