I always wanted to have a wall-mount controller of some sort for my own home. So, no wonder when I saw the plethora of options HA ecosystem offered, I spent a bit of time considering my options.
Home Assistant is available via any decent browser, and for this reason the first candidate that comes to the mind is some sort of Android tablet, or an Amazon Fire tablet.
Being a long-time Android user, I kind of expected the problems that an Android tablet will have. They are nowadays quite bloated with all kinds of options, useful for a daily on the go usage, but counter-productive for a wall-mounted controller. For instance, a wall-mounted controller should only display one browser, full screen, and no other menu items stealing screen real-estate.
Other than Android tablets, I was able to find on the market Home Assistant-dedicated devices, but they were quite pricy. And they are closed-source solutions. I don’t want to rely on the good willing of some company that might close, or get bought, one year from now and leave me with an unmaintained device.
My love for Linux also kicked-in, so I just started to think about a small single board computer, with a touch-screen attachment.
I now have a wall-mounted tablet wich is a full-blown Linux system, standing on my network, with SSH access and running Debian Linux.
Next Up: What parts do I used?