I have three Amazon Fire tablets mounted around the house running Fully Kiosk Browser as Home Assistant dashboards. They’re cheap ($35-50 each during sales), they have decent screens, and Fully Kiosk turns them into locked-down kiosks that show a dashboard and nothing else.
My music setup had accreted into a mess. Across two Kubernetes clusters I was running Navidrome, Lyrion Music Server (LMS), beets, and my own AI radio station (SUB/WAVE) - plus a Raspberry Pi running piCorePlayer wired into a Dayton DAX66 matrix amp for whole-home audio. Four things that all “played music,” none of which talked to each other, and no single place to control any of it from Home Assistant.
A notification that says “person detected on doorbell” is useful. A notification that says “a delivery driver in a brown UPS uniform placed a medium-sized box on the porch and is walking back to the truck” is significantly more useful — especially when you’re in a meeting and trying to decide whether to get up.
Home automations are code that controls physical things. When they break, the consequences aren’t a 500 error — they’re a garage door that won’t close in a snowstorm, or window shades that open at 3 AM, or a tablet that charges to 100% and stays plugged in for months until the battery swells.
My Home Assistant dashboard has evolved significantly over the past year. What started as the default auto-generated cards has become a carefully organized interface that my whole family actually uses. Here’s how I built it, with a focus on the whole home audio system that ties everything together.
I have six Honeywell T6 Pro Z-Wave thermostats throughout my house controlling a multi-zone HVAC system. Out of the box, these thermostats have their own scheduling and “smart” features that conflict with Home Assistant automations. Here’s how I configured them to let HA take full control.