I've been wanting a "house tablet" for a while - something to interact with my (app only) heating controls and play music on spotify. Has anyone found an acceptable setup? I had an old Android tablet permanently wall mounted for a while, but it was too slow (single core). I'd love an "appliance" style android tablet - but these don't seem to exist.
Owntone does Spotify premium accounts and serves up a web page you can use to control it. Itunes remote app as provided by Apple or "Retune" app on droid also work to control. Any additional airplay speakers (or shairport-sync) can control to have the sound coming out of them aka multiroom. Owntone integrates nicely with home assistant if you want to go there too.
If you can run a light webpage with the tablet it should be enough. Owntone and homeassistant need to run somewhere else on your network like on a pi, or an old laptop.
Your app only heating controls may well also integrate with homeassistant, a hell of a lot of that kind of stuff does. Homeassistant also serves up a light web page as a control interface. There's phone & tablet apps too.
I haven't done the touchscreen side of it, but have been thinking about switching to touch screen, currently my setup is just a display for infomation.
For software I'm using magic-mirror, and then use that to link into my calendar, Home-assistant, weather etc. There are some input modules that can be added, so that might enable some touch-features.
I'm just renting right now, so I just have the Pi mounted in a case by the plug with some of those 3M picture frame strips and run the HDMI to the monitor (also mounted with picture frame strips) hidden in a track, If I owned, I'd bring the plug up behind the monitor, and flush the PI in wall and then wrap the monitor around a frame or something.
Power usage. It is fine for stationary stuff but no chance you gonna have that had any sensible battery life. And even if you get to like a day, having to remember to put yet another device on charger every day is PITA.
I actually was building kind of monitoring screen; idea was to just leave it connected to ethernet and boot off network so it doesn't have any problems with SD durability or need any installation in case I wanted to have more than one.
I currently have an old windows tablet on the wall, with fullscreen browser running and connected to a charger 24/7 - the power drain amounts to less than 10EUR a year. I'm looking into turning off the screen based on motion sensors, but... the payout just isn't as much as it seems at first.
I’ve got a raspberry pi in a touchscreen case that I bought for my 3D printer but frequently gets repurposed for home automation. When we have someone house sitting while we’re away I set it up with a dedicated Home Assistant screen so they can turn on the garage lights from the house.
Both Android and iOS devices can be put into so-called Kiosk mode when they run a single app without other chrome. Is that not acceptable? The cheapest fire tablet is fine for the use-case.
It's not a software problem - it's a hardware problem. A tablet is designed to be a portable, handheld device - I want a wall mounted (or maybe tabletop), permanently powered device. I have no need for a battery.
There does appear to be a few Lenovo tablets which come with a permanent dock - maybe that's the solution?
