I hired an illustrator to draw my house. Now it's my Home Assistant dashboard(antonfrolov.substack.com)
921 points by soheilpro 7 days ago | 202 comments
tl;dr: The author commissioned an illustrator to draw a custom day/night illustration of their house, with each smart device on its own animated WebP layer, then wired it into Home Assistant using the stock picture-elements card. Device states swap between still and animated frames via state_image, a sunset/sunrise automation toggles day/night overlays, and YAML mode plus card-mod enables reusing floor layouts across per-floor and combined views. The dashboard runs on a TV via the HAOS Kiosk Display add-on through HDMI, finally getting the whole family to engage with their smart home.
HN Discussion:
  • ↑Applauds hiring a human illustrator over using AI for the artwork
  • ~The illustrator deserved more prominent credit in the write-up
  • ↓Questions the value of smart home dashboards when automation should handle everything
  • ~Not interested in smart home tinkering generally, though acknowledges the project is cool
  • ↓Critiques specific automation choices like turning off AC when away as inefficient