Your hypothesis is correct, I have an old android phone in my kitchen that has been charging exactly that way for probably 3 years, and a lenovo tablet doing the same. Both fully kiosk. I love reusing old gear, especially my Sony phones as the hardware is too good to throw away. My kitchen "controller" has fully kiosk, a photo screensaver, and my media control apps. I use my EP1 sensor to turn the screen on and off. I will be re-visiting my FK settings after watching this though. Thanks
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.
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!
@HomeAutomationGuy if I was going to use the device off the dock, then I would choose 80% to have a little more charge, but since it sounds like you won't, 70% is a little bit better for the battery. Lower than that is diminishing returns for sure
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.
Crestron I believe has some models, trw 60 or something like that, but they do sell b2b only afaik. Otherwise you might try your luck at AliExpress but don't expect to see high performant tablets over there. Some background information: I wanted to do this some years ago as in installing a tablet in each room much like what control4 can do, but in the end decided for the approach that everything should be automated and that the house should do more for me by itself, without me commanding it. So I did drop the idea for tablets in the end. Edit: crestron TSW-X60 is an example, but as I said there are probably other models out there
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.
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.
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.
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!
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
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.
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% :)
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%
My solution to the battery overcharging issue is to use a batteryless (is that a word?) 10 inch tablet for Home Assistant. As it's on the wall and always plugged in, it's great. Cost around £35 on Amazon I believe and just needed a 45w charger to make sure it stays on
I've just purchased a "Blackview Tab 90" loaded with Android 15 for this purpose - we shall see if it gives me the battery management. Thanks for putting this video all together - will follow to the letter! cheers
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.
You can have a smart plug and create an automation to turn on and charge the tablet when the battery falls to certain level, and turn to stop charging when the battery is charged to certain level.
Great video and I've been eyeing the Pixel with the speaker dock. I've been reviewing the ViewAssist project and mirrored the wake word portion of it and have it working on an Android tablet, so might be worth reviewing to get the wake word setup.
About Android devices. I have a Samsung Galaxy Tab A8 that i have Fully Kiosk Browser installed on it. In settings (android) you can limit so it wont charge more then 80%. And that solved my problems.
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 👍.
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.
If you have an older phone with a removable battery, you can use it as a dashboard safely. Remove and discard battery solder the usb cable + and - to the battery terminals on the phone. drill a hole in the phone back cover to run the wire out, also tie a knot in the usb cable to prevent it from getting pulled to hard. In case you wondering why not just remove the battery and plug in a usb cable instead sounds a lot easier, well without the battery terminals having power the phone will not turn on.
I've got two old amazon fire hd tablets as dashboards with 3d printed wall mounts.. the batteries were doa thats why they were free... They work fine sans batteries which were put into the recycling battery bins at work.
Additional complexity and price. Decent bigger screens are not cheap, add a pi to it and you are above tablet level and more extra work. I wanted to go on that route aswell, but a tablet seems way easier to manage. I found a nice tablet case that doesn't have a full border, its push in from the side. That was very easy to modify to accept a flat ribbon cable, now I have a thin tablet case with hidden power cable, but battery is still a concern that needs to be solved.
We have a fire tablet for the guest room that we converted to full android. It's amazingly efficient in standby (5hrs+ for 1% battery drop), but sometimes (rarely) it stops updating HA as it's in too deep a sleep. So we have an automation to check if the battery state hasn't changed in 8hrs. If so then power on the smart switch just for a few minutes as that's enough to wake it up so HA can continue to monitor its state. Template trigger: {{ (as_timestamp(now()) - (as_timestamp(states.sensor.our_guest_fire8_battery_level.last_changed))) // 60 | round (0) >= 492.0 }}
Is it possible to do a video on setting up homeassitant\fully kiosk to display a camera (reolink) feed when motion it detected I have not been able to get this to work consistently.
I keep on umm-ing and ahh-ing about light-switch replacement wall panels such as the NSPanel Pro - do they fail gracefully if the HA server is offline or the network is down, so you can still use them as a 'dumb' switch for the light they're wired to?
Not really, no. This is why I prefer to use Zigbee smart light switches as my "every day light switch", and use these panels more as a convenience and secondary control panel. If HA goes down or an update breaks the wall panels, I can still press the physical smart switch to control the lights or dim them
How do you find that cheap tablet? I think I have effectively the same - just a different brand name - in my office and find the contrast a bit milky and can lag. Going to put another in the kitchen but torn between the one you have and a Fire tablet 10. PS, do the same charging routine you have raised on my phone at night, my work laptop and the two tablets in the office and all work well.
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.
I am finding the Battery Saver settings for Android 15 on my tablet very confusing. What exactly are the settings? I have selected "Use battery saver". I have set a schedule "Wll turn on at 20%". What do I do with the "Turn off at 90%" setting? Do I leave this on or off? The terminology is *very* confusing.. Or is this Battery Saver setting nothing to do with the battery protection talked about in this video? thanks
I was equally confused at first! After a while I figured out that the "battery saver" feature is designed for when you're out and about and your mobile phone is running low on power, but you need it to last longer. "Battery protection" prevents the battery from over charging and exploding. My cheap tablet only has battery saving, which is useless to me, and no battery protection
@@HomeAutomationGuy Ok that makes sense now. No the Blackview Tab 90 doesn't seem to have Battery Protection settings. It is running Android 15. I am checking with the supplier. Cheers
I have 7x Galaxy Tab A 2018 wall mounted via a custom 3d printed dock. The wires are hidden within the wall and end up in a trap door in the ceiling. I use an app called Yakk to auto wake & start home assistant + output a camera stream for security NVR. The tablets have battery protection on, where it limits the charge to 80%. I might also put some smart wall plugs in between them to periodically toggle off for a couple of hours a day if that's better for the batteries. My main complaint is home assistant being really slow to load the tabs for my rooms. It always takes 2-3 seconds to load a tab and another 2 seconds to apply the styles. It seems to be very unoptimized. Samsung also likes to force close HomeAssistant and/or Yakk every day or 2, so I always end up manually starting them again.
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 ***
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 :)
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
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!
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.
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 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...
@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 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.
modern lithium batteries don't mind being plugged into a charger constantly, and majority of them comes with protection build in making sure you don't overcharge your battery and get the dreaded bulge. also majority of devices after 2018 comes with all sorts of battery protection features, charging caps, and I've even seen a bunch of devices with charging passthrough essentially bypassing the battery all together. besides i bet you that you'll be hard pressed finding a single town in the west that doesn't have at least 1 3D printer, getting parts printed or even printing them yourself has never been easier, and for the price of alot of the wall mount devices, you could almost buy a 3d printer and reuse ur old devices.
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.
@@ashtonwhitcomb3217 I think zigbee buttons make much more sense for that, or have your motion automations. Guest shouldn't need to have granular control over your smarthome, or your probably doing something wrong.
Not that I recommend this but many Android tablets you can just remove the battery (yes it takes effort) and they will happily run just on the power adapter. You will probably see a complaint that there is a battery error but this can of course be ignored. Doing this will definitely void your warranty so more intended for old tablets.
@@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!
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
I have 2 fire tabs without the battery, I connected the + and - from a USB cable to the battery terminals and removed the battery. USB gives you 5V, close enough to battery voltage of 4.7, continuously connected to power with no issues for 3 years, this will likely be more challenging to do in newer, slimmer and harder to open tabs, but still doable. Make sure you have a charger that supplied at least 1-1.5 A, most tabs will need that especially when booting up and with higher brightness setting
@ can you please suggest what samsung or lenovo (newer) tablets, would be a good replacement for those firetabs (but with the battery modification)? Is 4gb enough? Maybe 6gb? What would you choose today for this purpose? Thank you!
It's on my IoT network, so doesn't have access to the internet. But yep, I agree that is a concern. I used to tape the camera on my Nest Hub over, because I didn't trust it!
@@HomeAutomationGuy That is very interesting! So you run a separate network for iot devices that don't need access to the internet. I imagine your HA instance is connected to this network as well. Wireless or with an ethernet cable? Might be an interesting video! Or did you already make one?
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
I have to say, this video is correct. SOME devices have smart charge protection but not all. I was a technician at a mobile phone shop in the UK and I have seen phones and tablets of all makes, models and ages have expanding batteries.
We had four iPad Mini 4th gen, around 2018, in my place of work as wall tablets outside of meeting rooms. All four had to be taken down after two years due to expanding batteries.
0:30 absolutely clueless and fearmongering intro about how charging works. on ANY device. once is full is full, the charger only supplies the current necessary for the device to run. it can sit at 100% for years.
The battery getting puffed up doesn't necessarily have anything to do with being all the time connected to charging. I had an old samsung tablet do this and that one was only charged when the battery was below 30%. Also my dad had this same problem with his tablet under similar use. Generally I have understood that this just means that the battery is old. Also possibility of fire with this is quite lower than what people think.
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*
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.
@@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.
Mulțumim!
Thank you so much for supporting me and the channel! You are amazing! 🙏
Your hypothesis is correct, I have an old android phone in my kitchen that has been charging exactly that way for probably 3 years, and a lenovo tablet doing the same. Both fully kiosk. I love reusing old gear, especially my Sony phones as the hardware is too good to throw away. My kitchen "controller" has fully kiosk, a photo screensaver, and my media control apps. I use my EP1 sensor to turn the screen on and off. I will be re-visiting my FK settings after watching this though.
Thanks
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.
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!
@HomeAutomationGuy if I was going to use the device off the dock, then I would choose 80% to have a little more charge, but since it sounds like you won't, 70% is a little bit better for the battery. Lower than that is diminishing returns for sure
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.
Oh? Got any brand names or models you recommend?
Also interested!
Tell us more pls!
Crestron I believe has some models, trw 60 or something like that, but they do sell b2b only afaik. Otherwise you might try your luck at AliExpress but don't expect to see high performant tablets over there.
Some background information: I wanted to do this some years ago as in installing a tablet in each room much like what control4 can do, but in the end decided for the approach that everything should be automated and that the house should do more for me by itself, without me commanding it. So I did drop the idea for tablets in the end.
Edit: crestron TSW-X60 is an example, but as I said there are probably other models out there
Battery managemwnt as you described, works well. Using Wall Panel and Companion app.
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.
Great to hear!
I do 80/30 for my Fire 8 tablet and a smart plug.
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.
@@EdoDijkgraaf li-on batteries have no memory effect.
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.
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!
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
Yep I've got a Fire tablet too, they're amazing value - esp on Black Friday or other Amazon sale days!
Ooh. That's clever! Thanks for sharing!
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.
That's the perfect way to charge li-ion batteries. There should be no worries of explosions this way.
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% :)
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%
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!
My solution to the battery overcharging issue is to use a batteryless (is that a word?) 10 inch tablet for Home Assistant. As it's on the wall and always plugged in, it's great. Cost around £35 on Amazon I believe and just needed a 45w charger to make sure it stays on
The HA companion app reports the battery level. I use it with a smart plug to control the charging.
I did the same thing. And I used an automation to don't charge the device when I'm not at home.
I've just purchased a "Blackview Tab 90" loaded with Android 15 for this purpose - we shall see if it gives me the battery management. Thanks for putting this video all together - will follow to the letter! cheers
Let us know how it goes! 😊
@@HomeAutomationGuy So far no battery protection.. bugger..
Is no one else going to mention that awesome Christmas card?
That's my partner for you, she's a keeper
Looking forward to a video on Fully Kiosk Browser screensavers for use with an HA Dashboard Tablet! 🙂
I really wish there was a US version of the Shelly wall display
Great video! Have you considered using an All-in-one device? It can be pricey especially the industrial devices with touch screen and wall mounting.
I saw a couple that looked useful, but they were over a thousand dollars each!
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.
That's true. But it really annoyed me, so I wanted to throw some shade at Google 😉
I'm using Amazon's shopping list, which I share with my wife.
You can have a smart plug and create an automation to turn on and charge the tablet when the battery falls to certain level, and turn to stop charging when the battery is charged to certain level.
Yup
Thanks for this. Now have my tablet in HS. with a blueprint phone charger in use.
Just noticed that it shows the camera stream.
Love your videos. My recommendation for your battery issue is to use a chargie
Great!
I also use Fusion instead of a new dashboard. Love it...
Great video and I've been eyeing the Pixel with the speaker dock. I've been reviewing the ViewAssist project and mirrored the wake word portion of it and have it working on an Android tablet, so might be worth reviewing to get the wake word setup.
Oh cool! Thanks for sharing! 🙏
I am still looking for PoE powered screen for my home assistant
About Android devices. I have a Samsung Galaxy Tab A8 that i have Fully Kiosk Browser installed on it. In settings (android) you can limit so it wont charge more then 80%. And that solved my problems.
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 👍.
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 🙏
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.
Which features are causing the performance problems? I noticed camera streams slow them down, but nothing else really
Question - how do I find the weblink for my new dashboard? Great video again!
If you open Home Assistant in a web browser, you can copy the URL from the address bar
Nice idea, still wanting to execute one like this myself too. Any insight in the power usage of your setup?
If you have an older phone with a removable battery, you can use it as a dashboard safely. Remove and discard battery solder the usb cable + and - to the battery terminals on the phone. drill a hole in the phone back cover to run the wire out, also tie a knot in the usb cable to prevent it from getting pulled to hard. In case you wondering why not just remove the battery and plug in a usb cable instead sounds a lot easier, well without the battery terminals having power the phone will not turn on.
I've got two old amazon fire hd tablets as dashboards with 3d printed wall mounts.. the batteries were doa thats why they were free... They work fine sans batteries which were put into the recycling battery bins at work.
Setup a smart plug for charging or pull the batteries great dashboards
How about touch screen monitor connected to raspberry pi 4 running android? no battery management required, but need manual 3d printing case.
Additional complexity and price. Decent bigger screens are not cheap, add a pi to it and you are above tablet level and more extra work. I wanted to go on that route aswell, but a tablet seems way easier to manage. I found a nice tablet case that doesn't have a full border, its push in from the side. That was very easy to modify to accept a flat ribbon cable, now I have a thin tablet case with hidden power cable, but battery is still a concern that needs to be solved.
I really like the pixel tablet, I’m gonna replace all the Samsung tablets on my walls with more of these
We have a fire tablet for the guest room that we converted to full android. It's amazingly efficient in standby (5hrs+ for 1% battery drop), but sometimes (rarely) it stops updating HA as it's in too deep a sleep.
So we have an automation to check if the battery state hasn't changed in 8hrs. If so then power on the smart switch just for a few minutes as that's enough to wake it up so HA can continue to monitor its state.
Template trigger: {{ (as_timestamp(now()) - (as_timestamp(states.sensor.our_guest_fire8_battery_level.last_changed))) // 60 | round (0) >= 492.0 }}
Thanks so much for sharing!
Is it possible to do a video on setting up homeassitant\fully kiosk to display a camera (reolink) feed when motion it detected I have not been able to get this to work consistently.
I keep on umm-ing and ahh-ing about light-switch replacement wall panels such as the NSPanel Pro - do they fail gracefully if the HA server is offline or the network is down, so you can still use them as a 'dumb' switch for the light they're wired to?
Not really, no. This is why I prefer to use Zigbee smart light switches as my "every day light switch", and use these panels more as a convenience and secondary control panel. If HA goes down or an update breaks the wall panels, I can still press the physical smart switch to control the lights or dim them
How do you find that cheap tablet? I think I have effectively the same - just a different brand name - in my office and find the contrast a bit milky and can lag. Going to put another in the kitchen but torn between the one you have and a Fire tablet 10. PS, do the same charging routine you have raised on my phone at night, my work laptop and the two tablets in the office and all work well.
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.
I like all the options that Fully Kiosk gives, especially the screensaver - which is the topic of a future video 😉
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.
I am finding the Battery Saver settings for Android 15 on my tablet very confusing. What exactly are the settings? I have selected "Use battery saver". I have set a schedule "Wll turn on at 20%". What do I do with the "Turn off at 90%" setting? Do I leave this on or off? The terminology is *very* confusing.. Or is this Battery Saver setting nothing to do with the
battery protection talked about in this video? thanks
I was equally confused at first! After a while I figured out that the "battery saver" feature is designed for when you're out and about and your mobile phone is running low on power, but you need it to last longer.
"Battery protection" prevents the battery from over charging and exploding.
My cheap tablet only has battery saving, which is useless to me, and no battery protection
@@HomeAutomationGuy Ok that makes sense now. No the Blackview Tab 90 doesn't seem to have Battery Protection settings. It is running Android 15. I am checking with the supplier. Cheers
I have 7x Galaxy Tab A 2018 wall mounted via a custom 3d printed dock. The wires are hidden within the wall and end up in a trap door in the ceiling. I use an app called Yakk to auto wake & start home assistant + output a camera stream for security NVR. The tablets have battery protection on, where it limits the charge to 80%. I might also put some smart wall plugs in between them to periodically toggle off for a couple of hours a day if that's better for the batteries. My main complaint is home assistant being really slow to load the tabs for my rooms. It always takes 2-3 seconds to load a tab and another 2 seconds to apply the styles. It seems to be very unoptimized. Samsung also likes to force close HomeAssistant and/or Yakk every day or 2, so I always end up manually starting them again.
I use a Samsung tablet like you but I use a shelly mini to control the charger of the tablet
Apparently, Shelly doesn’t sell their Wall Displays on US since wall boxes are different than in rest of the world. What else to use then?
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.
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 ***
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 :)
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
I thought you customized an older nest hub max. Now I gotta wait for another Black Friday sale to get the pixel tablet+stand.
I wish I could! The hardware of the old Nest Hub is nice but I'm not smart enough to hack it
Welcome. 👍
Connect smart plug to the tablet that turns power off when its at a certain %
Yup
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!
I'm glad they're working out for you! Great to hear about the firmware with the option to remove the bar!
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.
I wish there was a way to mod my Alexa Echo TS with fully kiosk so I could simply load up a HA dashboard on the Echo....
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.
Android 13 for the cheaper tablet and 15 for the Pixel tablet. Motion detection works on both of them for me
@@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...
I rooted the tablet and set the charging limit to 55%, this saves so much hassle
How about a raspberry pi with a small LCD touch screen attached to it?
It's on my list to test!
@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 😀
Much more expensive than a cheap tablet. But you can connect some sensor to the pi (DHT humidity/temperature for example).
@@HomeAutomationGuy Video please when you get round to it ;)
@@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.
You likely could just remove the battery and run it from the power cable only.
Have you tried that? I'm not sure it would work that way 🤔
@HomeAutomationGuy I have done it with other battery electronics. There are tutorials online for tablets. Samsung tablets even have a no battery mode.
modern lithium batteries don't mind being plugged into a charger constantly, and majority of them comes with protection build in making sure you don't overcharge your battery and get the dreaded bulge.
also majority of devices after 2018 comes with all sorts of battery protection features, charging caps, and I've even seen a bunch of devices with charging passthrough essentially bypassing the battery all together.
besides i bet you that you'll be hard pressed finding a single town in the west that doesn't have at least 1 3D printer, getting parts printed or even printing them yourself has never been easier, and for the price of alot of the wall mount devices, you could almost buy a 3d printer and reuse ur old devices.
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.
I'm seeing $400US for the pixel with the speaker base.
That seems a lot cheaper than I've seen here in the UK
Noticed that you were at my regular swim spot in September 2020. Hope you enjoyed your time down this way.
Mevagissey? My partners father grew up down there! 😍
Porthpean. I have swam at Mavi a few times and there is an absolutely delicious Ice Cream shop in Mavi
have a old tablet and remove the battery (or let it removed by a repair shop) - easy as is
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.
I generally agree with that. But sometimes you need to glance at a camera or override an automation in case something different happens
Ok
If you live with others or have guests, you need a way for them to control things
@@ashtonwhitcomb3217 I think zigbee buttons make much more sense for that, or have your motion automations. Guest shouldn't need to have granular control over your smarthome, or your probably doing something wrong.
There’s no right or wrong, it depends on your needs. This is why HA is so good, it’s completely configurable to suit each use case.
Not that I recommend this but many Android tablets you can just remove the battery (yes it takes effort) and they will happily run just on the power adapter. You will probably see a complaint that there is a battery error but this can of course be ignored. Doing this will definitely void your warranty so more intended for old tablets.
Am I the only one who uses my old Google max hub displays to cast a dashboard for the corresponding room?
Edit: Yes touch screen works this way.
I used to try that but found it a bit flaky. It was a while ago, so maybe it's improved!
I am NOT an expert, but can't you just pull the batterie out?
Not without disassembling it, and voiding the warranty. Even then, I have no idea if the tablet would even work like that?
@@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!
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
I have 2 fire tabs without the battery, I connected the + and - from a USB cable to the battery terminals and removed the battery. USB gives you 5V, close enough to battery voltage of 4.7, continuously connected to power with no issues for 3 years, this will likely be more challenging to do in newer, slimmer and harder to open tabs, but still doable. Make sure you have a charger that supplied at least 1-1.5 A, most tabs will need that especially when booting up and with higher brightness setting
@ can you please suggest what samsung or lenovo (newer) tablets, would be a good replacement for those firetabs (but with the battery modification)? Is 4gb enough? Maybe 6gb? What would you choose today for this purpose? Thank you!
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.
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.
@ In that case a couple of (super) capacitors might help.
£400 gets you an entire Homey Pro and use of their new Dashboard functionality.
And what do you display those dashboards on?
@@HomeAutomationGuy Hahaha salty much
@@djLovelyTime Not at all, I am genuinely curious. Isn't it just a smart hub that needs something else to display the dashboards?
What about privacy concerns? Allowing the tablet to use the camera and microphone for movement sounds a little bit creepy
It's on my IoT network, so doesn't have access to the internet.
But yep, I agree that is a concern. I used to tape the camera on my Nest Hub over, because I didn't trust it!
@@HomeAutomationGuy That is very interesting!
So you run a separate network for iot devices that don't need access to the internet. I imagine your HA instance is connected to this network as well. Wireless or with an ethernet cable?
Might be an interesting video! Or did you already make one?
@@steffer51 Yes, that's correct! I've got a couple of videos about it on my channel already if you want more information
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
Not sure why it happened to my devices then. 🤷🏻♂️
Two of my tablets made after 2019 got broken. I have now automation to turn off the charger at 80% and on at 20%.
Except he showed two examples of how it happened... Yet you tell him it's not true? 🤣
I have to say, this video is correct. SOME devices have smart charge protection but not all. I was a technician at a mobile phone shop in the UK and I have seen phones and tablets of all makes, models and ages have expanding batteries.
We had four iPad Mini 4th gen, around 2018, in my place of work as wall tablets outside of meeting rooms.
All four had to be taken down after two years due to expanding batteries.
0:30 absolutely clueless and fearmongering intro about how charging works. on ANY device. once is full is full, the charger only supplies the current necessary for the device to run. it can sit at 100% for years.
Can you help me understand why the battery on my two mobile devices puffed up when left on charge for months on end?
The battery getting puffed up doesn't necessarily have anything to do with being all the time connected to charging. I had an old samsung tablet do this and that one was only charged when the battery was below 30%. Also my dad had this same problem with his tablet under similar use. Generally I have understood that this just means that the battery is old. Also possibility of fire with this is quite lower than what people think.
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*
30 minutes if you're great at DIY, which I'm definitely not 🤣
This is such bull, sorry for my frankness.
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.
hmm.. can you recommend what tablets we should use? i hope those are not expensive.
If I'm buying more expensive tablets then the Shelly and Sonoff wall panels become even more attractive from a price point of view
@@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.