An old Android tablet can be repurposed as a Home Assistant control panel using the Companion App's kiosk mode and wake word detection. Key challenges include battery management via smart plug automations to keep charge between 10–80%. The Bubble Card HACS integration helps create a clean, tablet-friendly UI by grouping entities into pop-up panels. The tablet also doubles as a voice satellite, with a local AI stack (Gemma-4-26B-A4B for conversation, faster-whisper for STT, Piper for TTS) running on home lab hardware. Alternative uses for old tablets include Frigate camera monitoring, ebook reading with Calibre-Web, or running Linux apps via Termux.
Table of contents
Home Assistant Companion App is necessary for my makeshift control panelBubble Card is the key UI element in my dashboardsMy tablet also serves as a Home Assistant voice satellite359 Impressions