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Madelena Mak edited this page Jun 29, 2022 · 38 revisions

My Home Assistant Config

Maximalist Dashboard

This is a redacted version of my personal dashboard configuration for Home Assistant, an open source home automation server that integrates nearly 2000 existing IoT services into one powerful, private, and unified user interface.

ko-fi

✨ Thank you @legovaer and @pbohannon for your generous support! ✨

Table of Contents

Design Principles

The design is based on the principle that data is beautiful.

Contrary to conventional UX design, the dashboard is intentionally dense with information and not minimalist, because it is designed for only one power user: me.

My goal is to create a sense of awareness of my surroundings and my resources through information, while my second priority is to be able to control and fine-tune all aspects of my living space. This is not designed for convenience since I already have physical buttons and switches for such purpose.

HA Config - Summary

The dashboard is designed to maximize the amount of information displayed without additional user interactions, acting as an ambient display in the background. Information is not hidden or tucked away from view but is instead shown in its full glory for those who love to look at real-time data visualizations.

Animation is toned down so that it still feels responsive but not distracting. Colors are used to draw attention to things that I need to attend to, and the monochromatic color scheme keeps the visual priority clear. The wireframe aesthetic for illustrations and flat icons keeps visual noise to the minimum.

It uses my own Metrology theme, based on Metro design system, to reduce visual clutter, create a sense of visual hierarchy, and focus on the data.

View all the dashboards here.

Features

Data Visualizations - Make it Beautiful

Data is beautiful! Data in HA is used to render some unique, eye-catching, and informative graphs as the visual focus of each page.

Axonometric Floor Plan Network Rail Map Energy Use Sankey Diagram
Psychrometry Chart Weather History + Forecast Chart Last.fm Music Charts

Additional visualizations are embedded from third-party sources.

The Weekendest Subway Map Bing Traffic Static Map Weather Underground Radar Map
jsOrrery Solar System Map Astropheric Weather Chart

Responsive Design - Make it Versatile

Grid reflows depending on screen width and device type.

Live Tiles - Make it Tidy

Perfect square grid with tiles in all sizes Rotating cube animation to subtly catch the right amount of attention
Variations based on states Layouts for cameras, pictures, media players, etc.

Contextual Showxatings - Make it Handy

Show the right amount of information in the right context.

An e-Paper display using ESPHome shows just what is needed before heading outside. A stretched bar LCD display running a custom server works as an ambient clock.
An always-on display with the Maximalist Dashboard works as a command center of the home. An Amazon Echo Show showing a simplified dashboard makes it easy to mark chores as done.

Summary Sentences for NUI - Make it Direct

Intelligible sentences are composed using a ton of templates by aggregating data from multiple sources. Great for page summaries and voice assistants.

How to install

The code is not meant to be installed as sensitive information had been redacted from the configuration. It is meant to be used as a reference to do some pretty wonderful things using lots of clever or ugly codes, tips, tricks, and hacks. Copy and paste stuff to your own dashboard config as you see fit.

A few requisities will help you use these codes:

Major HACS frontend mods

Template libraries

Include these lines in your dashboard YAML to use most of the templates defined in the config:

decluttering_templates: !include cards/decluttering_templates.yaml
button_card_templates: !include cards/button_card_templates.yaml
apexcharts_card_templates: !include cards/apexcharts_card_templates.yaml

Tools Used

Credits

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

Additionally, I would appreciate proper credits back to me if redistributed or modified. That would help my livelihood since design is my career.