I prefer your original dashboard. Thanks for the video!

Personally, I prefer the original colorful view, easier on my eyes and brain for locating things. GREAT Video!

Thanks Chris. Nicely explained as usual. I have a daily driver tablet which I simplify by using room cards that only shows room temp. Touching the room card opens a new view for everything related to that room. Everything else on the home page is non room specific such as weather, calendar events etc. Nothing wrong with your approach if it suits your needs.

Let me try something from a designers perspective: for example your Door/Window contact sensors don’t have to be visible all the time. You could use a conditional card to only show you the open doors and hide all closed. The best thing is, the cards expand to fill the free space. So you can make a vertical stack, in that some horizontal stacks and if you have 4 cards in a horizontal stack, but only 2 doors are open, the cards fill the space. I also use bubble cards to make pop ups for lights, climate, security and all the stuff I don’t need to have at a glance. You just have to figure out, what things you use the most. On my tablet however, I used Project Grace and there I have a „sidebar“ section on the left, which tells me how many lights at on, how often I fed the cats, what shift my wife is working today/tomorrow and and 2/3rds on the right are my lights and and outlets for quick access. Just a few things I have and maybe fit your needs too or inspire you ;)

Hey Chris, thanks for giving us a walk-through of your dashboard. As others have said here I really like your existing dashboard. I want a dashboard that delivers all pertinent information at a single view and don’t want to have to scroll around or navigate to different pages to get a status update for the home. This is my top most viewed and I want deeper information, such as history graphs or finer controls then I’m willing to dig into sub pages. The hardest part for me is finding creative ways to display everything at a top level glance since I have a home set up with close to 150 smart home devices (lights, ceiling, fans, sensors, locks, cameras, etc.). That’s why it’s great to turn to videos like yours to get inspiration for new ways to think about laying out my main home screen. Thanks to another comment on this video I was able to find the Bignumber-card that you use for your room temperature sensors which I love. I’m going to be installing those on my board this weekend.

Thanks Chris...I am so lost when it comes to dashboards...sorry... I have watched you for several years...thank you for your insight...I have run HA on a VM (ProxMox) for several years...I would love to have a dashboard for my wife (so nothing gets screwed up)...and one for me (the Admin)...I have recently come across Dwains dashboards...still trying to understand...anyways, much thanks for all your efforts...JG

Thanks for the demo Chris. It gave me some ideas for my own dashboard. What is the browser plugin you are using to emulate different mobile devices?

Just a tip, if you are short on space you can ommit the section names and it'll close up the space so you can fit more in!

What card are you using for the alarm?

What is that plugin that allows you to see a dashboard in a browser window?

Use conditional cards in views that only show when something is out of range and requires attention. If you do not need to act on it until something isn't right, ie. temperature too high, make it conditional.

Chris, thanks. I’ve been holding off on a sectional dashboard because of the experimental status and pending changes. In the lastest release 2024.6 they added a conditional function to the cards. This might be useful for creating dasdboards by area, by device type or by person. Could also use it to only display cards by status. This would declutter further, by only displaying a card when it is in a "alarm" state - garage door left open or front door unlocked. Did you get your calendar to display on the sectional dashboard?

Maybe decrease font size and space between sections to make it all fit

What is the card you are using that's basically a button shape that shows the bar indicator, temps, icons, etc?

UX is so subjective. Now you have to move the mouse etc. Better to not use titles like this but to group them using color schemes or adjust to title header text and adjust the margins / spacing.

Just curious why you would be monitoring CO2 levels? Isn't that carbon dioxide?

I think you're too harsh on the less UX-pro dashboards. It's hard to get started and many beginners spend too much time on making a perfect dashboard on their first attempt and fail as a result. Prototyping a minimal viable product is a highly undervalued trend die home assistant. One will learn a lot by having an over or under populated dashboard. By reflecting on what one has, the next step can be taken. The old dashboard was not pretty but it worked.