Most smart home dashboards look like they were designed by a committee. Tiles everywhere. Half of them broken. No hierarchy, no logic, no thought given to who’s actually going to use it or what they need to see at 7am on a Tuesday.
Every Control Freaks installation includes a custom Home Assistant dashboard designed from scratch around your property, your devices, your routines, and what you actually care about. It runs on any screen — wall-mounted tablet, phone, TV, desktop — and updates in real time. One interface. Your entire home.
There’s no template. Every panel is built around what you have installed and how you use it. Typical dashboards we build include:
Live camera feeds— Multiple views from your Reolink cameras, updated in real time. Motion-triggered snapshots. Doorbell camera that pops automatically when someone arrives.
Energy and solar monitoring— Live solar generation, grid draw, household load, feed-in tracking, tariff period indicators, and cost-per-hour. All on one panel, always current.
Climate control— Current indoor temperatures across zones, AC status, outdoor conditions, and one-tap control of your split or ducted system. We integrate your Sensibo or native AC controller directly.
Security and alarm status— Arm, disarm, and monitor zone status from the dashboard. See exactly which doors and windows are open. Motion events logged and timestamped.
Weather — local, not interpolated— Your personal Bresser weather station data: temperature, humidity, UV index, rainfall rate, wind speed and direction. Not a BOM estimate. Your actual backyard, right now.
Presence and occupancy— Who’s home, which rooms are occupied, when people arrived and left. Drives automations, not just information.
Lighting and switches— Full room-by-room control. Scene triggers. Scheduled overrides. Manual control that doesn’t break your automations.
Garden and irrigation— Soil moisture levels per sensor, last watered timestamps, current sprinkler status, and weather-adjusted schedule indicators.
Integrations and live feeds— NSW RFS fire alerts, BOM data, traffic cameras, beach webcams, flight radar, pool status, gate sensors, garage door state. If it’s connected, it’s visible.
Automations panel— See what automations are active, what fired recently, and toggle individual ones without touching the backend.
Your dashboard isn’t a single fixed layout. We build separate views optimised for each screen type:
Wall tablet— Always-on kiosk mode. Landscape layout. High-contrast panels readable from across the room. Screensaver that activates between uses and wakes on motion.
Phone— Vertical layout, swipeable views, quick-access controls for the things you trigger most. Works on both Android and iOS.
TV display— Ambient dashboard that rotates between camera views, weather, energy and at-a-glance home status. Switches back to normal TV input when you start watching.
Desktop browser— Full expanded layout with more data density for anyone who wants the whole picture.
All views are managed from the same Home Assistant instance. Change something in the backend, every screen reflects it immediately.
There’s a difference between dragging tiles around in a consumer app and actually building a dashboard from the ground up.
We write custom YAML, use advanced Lovelace cards, and pull in data from every connected device and integration on your system. We can display third-party data feeds, conditional panels that only appear when relevant, dynamic graphs with historical data, and controls that adapt based on time of day, occupancy, or system state.
If the data exists in your system — or anywhere on the internet — we can build it into your view.
We also set up role-based views where needed. A simplified version for other household members. A technical view for you. A stripped-back display for a shared space or rental.
Your dashboard isn’t a one-time deliverable. As you add devices, integrations or automations, your dashboard gets updated to reflect them. Customers on our support plan get unlimited dashboard changes included — no per-request fees, no waiting for a callback, no rebuilding from scratch every time something new gets added.
We also run automated backups of your entire configuration, so if something breaks, restoring your dashboard takes minutes, not days.
We’re local. Based in Erina, servicing the Central Coast from Gosford to Wyong, Terrigal to The Entrance, and everything between. When your dashboard needs updating or your installation needs a revisit, you’re talking to the person who built it — not a support ticket system.
Our background spans 16 years in electronics repair, chip-level diagnostics, networking, and system integration. When we say we can connect almost anything to your dashboard, we mean it — because we’ve already built the integrations, resolved the edge cases, and tested them across real installations.
Can I update the dashboard myself?Yes. Home Assistant has an editor that lets you rearrange and adjust panels without touching code. We’ll show you how during handover. For more complex changes — new integrations, custom cards, layout rebuilds — that’s what the support plan is for.
What screen do I need for a wall-mounted dashboard?We recommend Android tablets in the 10–13″ range. We supply and configure Samsung or Lenovo tablets with fully managed kiosk mode, auto-brightness, and screensaver logic as part of our wall tablet add-on. You can also use an existing screen if it’s compatible.
Can you connect my existing smart devices to the dashboard?In most cases, yes. Home Assistant supports thousands of devices natively and via community integrations. Brands like Google, Philips Hue, Sonoff, Shelly, Reolink, Mitsubishi, Daikin, Sensibo, Ring, Arlo, and many others integrate cleanly. We assess compatibility during your free consultation.
Does the dashboard work when the internet is down?Yes. Home Assistant runs locally on your network. Your dashboard, automations, and device control all function without an internet connection. Remote access (from outside your home) does require connectivity, but everything inside your home keeps working regardless.
How long does it take to set up?Dashboard configuration is included in every installation. Most systems are fully operational within a single installation day. Complex multi-view builds with many integrations may require a follow-up session, which we’ll factor into your quote upfront.