Back when I started this journey, I found a really cool theme package that made my views look like LCARS straight out of Star Trek: TNG. To be clear, to this day, I still admire the work that Jesse has done with his theme. THe problem I had, though, is that for me, screen real estate is a premium. Especially on the 2 monitors I keep running in my "cockpit" to keep track of everything going on in the house. I needed to go for something more compact.
You know that old saying, "You don't know what you don't know?" Yeah, that works with HA too. By utilizing AI, I've been able to find packages that do exactly what I'm looking for - but, that I had no idea of their existence!
You can easily get lost in the world of HACS and add-ons. As far as I know, there is no comprehensive catalog out there of all the different add-ons available. In my last post, I talked about decluttering templates I didn't know that existed! Nor did I know about Custom Button Cards. I've since made extreme use of those, and here's why.
Yes, there are many different packages out there that can make your dashboard look snazzy, sexy, sleek, or whatever adjective you want to use. For my tastes, I needed functional. Something that "just works" and gives me, in an instant, a snapshot of my environment. Custom Button Cards does that for me, in spades.
Those two screens stay up in my cockpit, and I can tell at a glance if something is amiss just by keying in on the colors.
As always, your mileage may vary. For me, this just works, and my wife and mother-in-law like the simplicity as well. I had to work to win them over to HA and my obsession with collecting data from the house and automating what I could. Having dashboards that were easy to understand and use helped that process out tremendously.
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