Smart Home With Home Assistant: Dashboard Overview
- Harshal
- 2 days ago
- 3 min read
Top-Level Tour: Rooms, Mode, People, Energy, And More
I will share different parts of my smart home across several posts and am starting with an overview. This post walks through my Home Assistant dashboard. The dashboard shows top-level information and the main components you use before drilling into specific automations.
I spent 30 minutes writing and recording this. You need 2 minutes to read this.
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People and location
The top of the dashboard shows who is home and tracks location so the system knows home vs away. Automations change based on who is present or when someone leaves.
Mode of the day
Instead of raw time or sunrise/sunset, the setup uses a single abstraction: morning, day, evening, night, sleep, or away. This mode stays consistent across seasons. We can switch the whole system to manual mode when needed. In manual mode, automations stop, but physical remotes and buttons still work.
Favourites and shortcuts
Quick actions live here like unlock the door, trigger announcements, or use the kettle. I also keep a few common toggle switches on the home page.
Energy at a glace
One area shows energy use for the washer, dryer, and sterilizer. See when they finish or how long they have been running without opening separate apps.
Room-Level Controls
Each room has its own dashboard. The living room dashboard includes:
Thermostat for temperature
Lights with control over brightness, colour, and warmth
Saved modes such as wake up or toggle (e.g. lights ramping from 0 to 100% at a set time in the morning, blinds opening, curtains open or close)
TV and Portal (Meta) and smart speakers (Google in some rooms, Alexa in others)
Fan on/off
IR control for speakers and HDMI switch
Curtains and blinds
I have a similar structure in other rooms.
Other Dashboards: Globals, Telemetry, Hardware
A separate area holds many toggles. Some control global settings for the whole house; others keep state for a single room or device. This area also shows temperature thresholds and sensor and device status, like a monitoring view. One screen groups on/off switches for many devices in one place when needed.
Hardware
Because we own the Home Assistant host and networking gear, a dedicated view to track their connectivity, temperature, and usage.
Energy
A dedicated energy dashboard shows power for heavy appliances with a power monitoring plug. It can be even more detailed if I add back the Emporia Vue device.
Focused dashboards
Additional views focus on one concern each: lights, heating, sleep, occupancy, battery, and blinds. The blinds dashboard controls all blinds from one place. The battery view lists device batteries across rooms so you can check what is low and plan replacements or charging.
Up Next
I'll continue making and sharing some more posts on my smart home.
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