New dashboard idea

I have always wanted an interactive dashboard for my smart home but have never found a dashboard tool that suits my needs. It needs to show the status of my devices and allow me to control my devices directly on the screen. Up until this point, no dashboard option has entirely met all my needs.

I have now discovered another dashboard option, one that I think has a lot more configuration. Node-Red is a browser-based flow editor that makes it easy to wire together flows using a wide range of nodes. It comes with a dashboard feature, and I hope this might be a better dashboard solution.

A vital component of this solution will be MQTT, a data exchange protocol that sends data between constrained devices and server applications. MQTT is a publish/subscribe protocol that allows edge-of-network devices to publish to a broker. MQTT clients connect to this broker, which then mediates communication between the two devices. When an MQTT client publishes a message on a subscribed topic, the MQTT broker forwards the message to any MQTT client that has subscribed.

I should be able to publish information from my Homey Hub to display on the dashboard. For example, I could show the temperature from my sensors throughout the house or the status of each light in my home. I will also be able to receive information back from the dashboard. For example, I will use a control on the dashboard to set my heating temperature and then send it back to my Homey to up the temperature on my central heating device.

It looks like I found something for me to do over the weekend while in lockdown.