Bread Pitt
Member
Have tried a few smart home dashboards and the one that stuck is the least ambitious: the home panel on Google TV. It sits on the TV, shows the compatible lights, thermostats and cameras, and that is roughly it.
The reason it wins is location. A dashboard on a phone means finding the phone, unlocking it, opening an app. A dashboard on the TV is already in front of five people at once, so when someone asks whether the porch light is off, anyone in the room can answer without standing up. Doorbell notifications land on screen without pausing playback, which sounds trivial until you have paused a film to go check a delivery.
On the Streamer the box also acts as a Matter and Thread hub, so it is doing real network work rather than just drawing tiles. That matters more than the interface. A hub that stays powered and hardwired is a better border router than a battery anxious gadget in a hallway.
The limits show up fast. There is no scene editing worth the name, device coverage depends entirely on what your gear speaks, and anything unusual still means going back to the vendor app. It is a status board with a few switches attached, not a control system, and treating it as one will annoy you.
For people running Home Assistant alongside this, do you bother with the TV panel at all, or has it become dead space you skip past?
The reason it wins is location. A dashboard on a phone means finding the phone, unlocking it, opening an app. A dashboard on the TV is already in front of five people at once, so when someone asks whether the porch light is off, anyone in the room can answer without standing up. Doorbell notifications land on screen without pausing playback, which sounds trivial until you have paused a film to go check a delivery.
On the Streamer the box also acts as a Matter and Thread hub, so it is doing real network work rather than just drawing tiles. That matters more than the interface. A hub that stays powered and hardwired is a better border router than a battery anxious gadget in a hallway.
The limits show up fast. There is no scene editing worth the name, device coverage depends entirely on what your gear speaks, and anything unusual still means going back to the vendor app. It is a status board with a few switches attached, not a control system, and treating it as one will annoy you.
For people running Home Assistant alongside this, do you bother with the TV panel at all, or has it become dead space you skip past?
