Indeed! And even he doesn't always manage to get them to burst into flames 
And if you or your family are into driving 6" nails through expensive tablet computers, I would gently recommend steering away from their use 
3 Likes
Yes certainly, mister police officer...
On the Belgian radio news they mentioned that tablet and smartphone were responsible for lots of house fires. It was also in the news papers (in dutch ...), based on a new campaign (also in dutch) of the Belgian ministry of the Interior... If you have any doubts about whether both articles are trustworthy, please contact the embassy of Belgium. You can find them in Grosvenor Cres, London SW1X 7EE 
Thanks David for getting me convinced!!
I did a quick search of some wall mount cases for a Fire 7 tablet, but didn't find much:
-
This one is nice and has integrated power, but it costs 40 EUR:
-
Here is one that looks familiar, and costs 22 EUR:
-
And Amazon has its own case, but that is unavailable at the moment:
So not sure yet what I'm going to do with that...
Some time has passed since the original post, so I am not sure if this is relevant any more. What I have here does not tick most of the requirements in the original, but it is an interesting contender:
https://www.weidmuller.com/en/search.jsp?query=hmi&tab=products
WeidmĆ¼ller has these web-compatible HMI displays. Unlike many industrial HMIs that have a separate screen design software, these web-compatible devices have a web admin page, where you can specify a URL that is loaded on a full screen browser at startup. That is all. But it makes in great to display and web-based system.
It has decent performance, I tested on a webpage that had embedded free IP camera feed and I could play streaming feed on it.
You can get it in different screen sizes and pick resistive of capacity touch screen.
Hi @nygma2004,
Thanks for joining.
When I see here, the price of that screen is Ā£1499.00 exclusive VAT.
Not sure if I would dare to propose something like that to my wife.. Most probably she would propose that I should start drilling first, to search for oil or gold about 3000 meters below our house
2 Likes
And a fancy price tag too: 1.476,54ā¬
Not unusual for industrial application but ā¦ i know long time availability and industrial grade quality and support has a price point.
Somine on YouTube made a video on order screens for restaurants ā¦ with embedded pentium processors running dos ā¦ still in use and production
Uh that is steep. I knew it will be expensive, but not that much...
It is when, at around 2.5 meters down, she says "that's good enough" that you really start worrying 
3 Likes
I'll nip down tomorrow, I'm sure they'll let me in when I tell them how much I like Belgian Beer. 
No batteries there though. But certainly a known issue, especially with the early models which is why I've always advocated never driving them at more than 50% rated wattage.
We prefer the more traditional 6 feet down here in the UK 
Anyway, joking aside, lots of ideas in this thread and a couple of things to worry over. For me, price is the big issue anyway along with the faff of trying to mount things in the wall. We have plenty of shelf and cupboard top space to put things on stands and no need for a screen in each room anyway. Also plenty of phones always on us and a selection of switches around. So an occasional free-standing screen with a few buttons is more than enough. We never have got on with voice commands - I put it down to our natural British reticence. Maybe we will reconsider as we get into our dotage.
Seems clear to me that if you really want screens on your walls, spare phones or cheap tablets are the way if you really want touch and maybe voice. Maybe look for ones with removable batteries if you are concerned about that. Wireless charging seems a nice thing to use if you want the screens easily removable from the wall, if not, maybe honing your woodwork skills is best but always make sure that the tablet/phone has sufficient airflow to keep it reasonably cool and don't go mad driving it hard all the time. make sure that any power supplies are decent ones, preferably genuine EU rated ones and not the lowest-cost Chinese ones. Better as well to have an over-spec'd power supply as that will tend to run with lower temperatures.
If you have courage, it is also possible to remove the batteries parmanently from a fire 7 tablet and use a dc adapter instead. As described in this video. But I don't think that this will be a safer solution, so I am certainly not going that road ...
Well that might look obvious, but thanks for the reminder! I would have forgotten about that most certainly...
No cable no Battery? (And a dedicated function)
There are solar or even energy harvesting (kinetic energy) devices available you can stick on the wall. I use them when I plan glass walls for offices where cables are a little bit obvious and batteries are a maintenance problem:
Only an example I quickly googled:
But again professional equipment so not cheap. But peel off the sticker and you are ready to go.
1 Like
And we are back to Zigbee where the battery lasts a loooong time and - if you choose carefully - they aren't expensive.
Must say Bart, I concur with Julian here. I bought a ZigBee USB stick and plugged it into a pi, installed Zigbee2mqtt & bought a hand full of buttons, temperature, PIR and door magnetic switches (all costing around Ā£8 each) (example)
The battery still reports (in the MQTT payload) as 90% 6 month later.
They are great little gadgets and setup is simplicity itself.
2 Likes
So you mean instead of displaying an alarm keypad on a touch screen, use a zigbee keypad?
You certainly could but I was more so backing up early statements of not worrying too much about custom screen enclosures for temperature etc.
Basically, don't shy away from zigbee (like I did) as it is very straight forward, flexible and reliable.
4 Likes
What resolution does the temp sensor give? I can't find it in the specs.
How often does it give a reading, or do you have to poll for it?
Can you recommend a USB Zigbee stick?
There's also M5 Paper (which is unfortunately EOL, but maybe a new one will come back) M5Paper ESP32 Development Kit (960X540, 4.7" eInk display, 235 ppi) | m5stack-store
Later edit: There already is a new version:
- high density e-ink + touch
- ESP32 + PSRAM
- built-in battery that could be removed but it would also be nice to have it like a remote that stays on the wall, so the built-in battery is a nice to have
- dev friendly, can easily add extra sensors, etc.
- looks good
I really love e-ink for this application. Was thinking of starting a "dashboard" like project that would stay in sync over websocket. I was thinking of handling everything in nodejs and just send compressed grayscale images over the wire... makes it very extendable (will probably start over the winter, when there's some more inside time).
Think same screen, cheaper, new touch option and nice board design (most connections pointing inward! And other features)
I use the stick from Slaesh: CC2652R stick - slae.sh
after I had problems with the "Texas Instruments CC2531 ([now no more] recommended)"
1 Like
@Christian-Me FYI The $15.21 is for a cover for the screen, the units are $30 or $35 each. ALIExpress offers are like that all over. They will show something for $0.60 when that is for a cable while the actual unit is $5. Just a 'Bait and Switch' scheme to get you to look at it.
