People love to share Home Assistant dashboards in chat groups and forums. Many of these dashboards look really impressive, but so many others I see make the same mistake.
Your Home Assistant panel isn’t just for you
The real test is whether someone else uses it
Many of the dashboards I see posted online are filled with a wealth of information. There are charts and graphs, camera feeds, music controls and buttons for every device under the sun.
The problem is, there’s so much going on that it’s hard to see the forest for the trees. The more information that appears on the dashboard, the harder it is to find the information or control you want.
Since you created the tableauyou know exactly where everything is, but most of the time you’re not the only one who will be using it. When your dashboard is packed with an insane amount of controls and information, it’s hard for other people in your home to do even simple things. turn on the lights.
This is a mistake that beginners often make. It’s tempting to add every possible device and card to your dashboard. You can lose sight of the fact that a dashboard is meant to be a useful way to manage your smart home, not just a bunch of data you can enter.
- Dimensions (external)
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4.41″L x 4.41″W x 1.26″H
- Weight
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12 oz
Home Assistant Green is directly the pre-built hub of the Home Assistant team. It’s a plug-and-play solution that comes with everything you need to set up Home Assistant in your home without installing the software yourself.
What is actually a shared dashboard?
It manages people’s needs and nothing else
If you are designing a dashboard for your household and not just yourself, then it is certainly less. Adding too much makes the dashboard too complicated and reduces its usefulness.
There are some entities that should have a place on your dashboard. Lighting controls, climate controls, security controls and media control are all useful things on the dashboard. Here’s what people in your home might want to use.
There are many things that really don’t need to be on a shared dashboard. Your family probably doesn’t care device battery level, Considered a HACS updateor find out how much RAM your home server is currently using. None of this will help them do what they need to do.
Other people in your home are more likely to appreciate a clean, minimal layout. Even if you like how your all-you-can-eat dashboard looks, they’re unlikely to be fans.
A place where tech stuff should live
There is no harm in having multiple dashboards
That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t include battery levels or refresh counts on your dashboard. This information can be really useful. It just doesn’t have to be on your main panel.
The beauty of Home Assistant is that you can create as many dashboards as you like or add multiple views to one dashboard. You can hide all this information from the main dashboard so that other people in your home can access what they need without having to touch it.
Even if you keep your main dashboard clean and simple, you don’t need to add everything to a secondary dashboard. It can be more useful to have individual dashboards for different purposes. There might be one that shows battery levels, for one energy monitoringfor one system healthetc. This can make it much easier to quickly find the information you need.
A habit that keeps the dashboard clean
Before you add anything else, ask a question
Sometimes it’s hard not to add more and more things to your painting. You see another post on someone’s Reddit dashboard and want to add some of the things you saw. Before you know it, your scoreboard gets seriously crowded.
There is a simple habit that can help. Whenever you want to add something else to your dashboard, ask yourself this question: I’ll have another one in my house you need to use it?
If the answer is yes, then it’s probably something worthy of a spot on your main dashboard. However, if the answer is no, then you will be adding it to your dashboard only. Instead, you might consider adding it to another dashboard or view where it won’t take up unnecessary space.
Keep it simple
Creating dashboards can be fun, but ultimately they have to be useful. Even if you love how your everything dashboard looks, other people who have to use it may not appreciate it the same way. Keep your main dashboard simple and you can create your own hidden dashboard that’s as fancy as you like.
