Making a Dashboard for the 7 inch TFT display

That's ok.

I appreciate it is sometimes needed to "think outside the box" for a solution.

I should know. (wink)

Plenty of usb 90 connectors to take cable behind fairly neatly

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I agree that an old tablet might be a much cheaper solution - I actually also used an old nexus tablet for this - but I admit that I am still having problems with that:

Note that I wanted to have a node-RED dashboard running 24x7 hours that I can consult quickly at any time but I never managed this .... after some time of inactivity the dashboard (or chrome browser) looses its connection which means that it first has to remake its connection. I also succeeded in configuring android so that it keeps it connection but this resulted in crash of my tablet.

So @davidcgu , did you succeed in a stable setup running 24x7 hours ? If so, I would be very interested in knowing what you did to achieve this.

kr
Jan.

There is a usb to ethernet adapter and use to work with all tablet, I have tested years ago... however I guess you should check in advance if is mandatory in your case.

Regarding the cable supply you can let tablet connected to power the same way that you will have to have theraspi, is what I did in my case.

For the wall mount, there are sold several models pre-build however if you wanted to take your time you will find many people did it already in several ways even to be integrated on a wall.

As a simple example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=26vTRyHy048

But there are many other, google it or check on youtube.

For me even if is just to have a wall control I think 10" will be always better than 7" and the price is going to be the same....

Note if you wanted something easy and removable.... I just broke a part on of those tablet cases and stick it to the wall with 3M tape, this is not the best... but is easy, cheap and allows me to remove the tablet from the wall at any moment quite and easy

image

Regards

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Janvda

Really I had same issue, I'm using chrome at full screen to display the dashboard 24x7 and after long time gets disconnected, you see the dashboard however to use it you need to slide finger down over the screen to force it to refresh and takes a few seconds...

It's true that this is a problem but sure it has solution but I have not being working on it to solve it, first is required to understand if is energy saving on the tablet which closes up connection or is chrome to save energy and check what could be done.

In my case as you can see on the picture I posted I'm using a really check tablet (30$) with MQTT dashboard and some buttons and on real live this is more practical for common things than the full dashboard and because of this I have not dedicated time to look deeper on the connection lost on dashboard.

Regards

Hi David,

Thanks for the extensive response.

You are referring to a posted picture - but in the picture posted earlier in this thread - I see 2 different tablets with different dashboard. So it is not clear for me to which one you are referring.

I am also a bit wondering what you mean by "MQTT dashboard and some buttons". So is this not a dashboard created by the node-red-dashboard nodes ?

kr
Jan

On the picture you can appreciate a top white 10" tablet with node-red dashboard, this is ok but on normal conditions you just use a few buttons or gauges, on the bottom I have a 8" 30$ tablet with one app called "MQTT dashboard" which give you capabilities to create buttons, switches and gauges with different styles even colors depending on the real status.

I recommend you to give it a look, for several purposes is simply great, those are running in parallel to node-red switches,buttons,whatever, so you can use directly nodered dashboard or this app and will give you same results.

As example:

If you require any more info let me know and maybe I can explain you, this app is really straight forward, very easy.

Regards

All of the smaller tablets are powered via USB - the battery is irreverent - except that it gives you several hours of battery backup in case the power goes out. Could be important if you are using the system to run/control alarms and other critical stuff.

Probably wouldn't be too hard to hide the connector or at least disguise it.

Indeed, I would strongly recommend adding backup power to a Pi based solution. Not only is it all too easy to corrupt your SD card if the power goes out, I've found that my Pi2 is very unreliable at reconnecting the Ethernet if there is a power blip.

However, personally, I wouldn't rely on a single unit if I needed to control my alarm system. I would run a separate Pi (with battery backup, mine is on a APC PC unit along with the switch, router and WiFi AP, good for several hours) as the main server with MQTT, database and Node-RED and keep the display for interactions - by the way, the tablet has the major advantage of being touch sensitive.

I currently do something similar. I have my main Pi running everything. Then I have a cheap Windows 10 tablet that I use as a photoframe (it was cheaper than hi-res photoframes!). The tablet also runs Node-RED so that I can automate things from the main Pi. For example, my connected doorbell can sound off on the photoframe thanks to NR and MQTT, it can even speak though SHMBO doesn't like that, finds it creepy or something, who knows.

Assuming the tablet is running Android (though just as easy on Windows), use an automation tool to do something to keep the tablet alive. Also you should automate the browser to reload the page occasionally which should help reduce issues. Changing tabs on Dashboard isn't enough as all of that is in memory.

Also remember that the Dashboard uses both Angular v1 and JQuery libraries which makes the browser page very large. If you really want something that runs 24x7 I would recommend using a dedicated app or a lighter weight custom webpage dashboard.

Thanks for the advice.

  1. I am actually wondering what exactly the automation tool must do to keep the tablet alive.
  2. I am even more interested in how I can automate the brower to reload the page occasionally in case I am using the Node-RED dashboard.

If availability is very important - which is apparently the case for you as you need to be able to switch off the alarm within 20 seconds - I would be very careful with handcrafted solutions. The tablet option in that case seems a no-go to me as it would add extra complexity and a proper 24x7 stable dashboard solution is not known.

Regarding the pi with TFT touch screen option: I certainly would go through a lengthy test phase before putting this into production. Switching on/off your alarm system is not the first IoT use case I would recommend.

best luck
Jan.

specifically for the alarm and daily use after several test I moved to an RFID reader which is the most easy solution even I made the keypad with node red and still have it.

image

For android there is also a specific app for a MQTT alarm panel which works well:

And if you plan to do a dedicated panel with a raspi and a 3,5" display there was an interesting prject here:

As told, in my case I integrated the keypad directly on node red but I'm using the RFID for simplicity, cost is around 5$.

In the past also tested what could be an easy and good solution with a 4x4 matrix keypad which was also working well and is 1$ cost

image

Here you have a few ideas....

Regards

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I'm not an Android person so probably not the best person to ask. But I believe that most people use Tasker for Android automation. You may well find some settings hidden away that will let you keep the device on as well. Certainly I have my old iPad set to never turn off as I only read RSS news feeds on it these days.

A Google search turned up some possibilities for browser automation. But it is easy enough to get a web page to reload itself periodically.

On Android, under Developer options there is a Stay Awake while charging function.
You can enable the developer menu by opening the "about phone" menu and pressing the "build number" tab 7 times.

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Hi Garry,

I have tried that but keeping my old android tablet always connected (awake) did result in a freeze of my tablet which required me to reboot it.

You might be able to update it:

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I suggest doing an automated restart from time to time.

how can i control 4x4 matrix keypad with node red?

Topic closed - please stick to your original thread