E-ink dashboards for Home Assistant.

Add it to Home Assistant

1. 01
   Click Add to Home Assistant above, which opens your own Home Assistant with the repository filled in. Or open Settings → Apps → App store → ⋮ → Repositories and add https://github.com/dmellok/homeassistant-tesserae-addon
2. 02
   Install the Tesserae App and start it. Open Web UI: the editor loads inside Home Assistant, which handles the login.
3. 03
   Flash a panel from your browser, compose a dashboard, and push it.

Rather run it outside Home Assistant? Tesserae also runs standalone or in Docker, and your panels still show up in Home Assistant through MQTT discovery. Both routes.

Home Assistant on the glass

Home Assistant widgets sit beside weather, calendars, transit and photos on the same dashboard.

• Entities and sensorsAny entity, with its state and unit.
• History graphsA sensor over the last hours or days.
• EnergyEnergy use and solar from Home Assistant.
• ClimateThermostats, set points and modes.
• Lights and switchesWhat is on, room by room.
• LocksWhich doors are locked.
• MediaWhat is playing and where.
• CamerasA still from any camera entity.
• To-do listsShopping lists and chores.
• People and zonesWho is home, who is away.
• Battery levelsEvery device that runs on a cell.
• Automation historyWhat ran, and when.

All widgets · Community catalog

Tap to control

On touch panels such as the Seeed reTerminal E1003 and Sticky, buttons, switches, sliders and steppers call Home Assistant services: dim a light, toggle a switch, run a script. A switch bound to an entity shows its state, and on the reTerminal E series the buzzer confirms the tap while the e-ink catches up. On panels with physical buttons, a press can trigger an automation.

Touch · Buttons

Your panels, inside Home Assistant

Turn on Home Assistant discovery and every panel appears as a device, ready for dashboards and automations:

• 01Battery, battery voltage, signal and online, per panel
• 02The frame each panel is showing, as an image entity
• 03Dashboard and lineup selects to change a panel from an automation
• 04A notify entity: send a message to one panel or all of them
• 05An input event for button presses, taps, swipes and slides
• 06Firmware updates in Settings, like any other device

For example: switch the kitchen panel to an arrivals page when the front door opens, send "Bins tonight" to the hallway at 8pm, or get an alert when a panel's battery runs low.

Questions

Do I need to write YAML?

No. You build dashboards in a drag-and-drop editor in the browser and pick entities from lists. Home Assistant handles the login when Tesserae runs as an App.

Do I have to run it as a Home Assistant App?

No. Tesserae also runs standalone or in Docker. With MQTT discovery on, your panels still appear in Home Assistant as devices either way.

Which panels work?

Seeed reTerminal E series and Sticky, XIAO ePaper, M5Stack, Waveshare, Pimoroni Inky, paperlesspaper, Kindle, TRMNL-compatible panels and more. Most ESP32 panels flash straight from the browser.

How long does a panel last on battery?

Panels sleep between updates, so a slower refresh means a longer charge, often weeks. Quiet hours let a panel sleep through the night.

Can I control Home Assistant from the panel?

Yes, on touch panels such as the reTerminal E1003 and Sticky: buttons, switches, sliders and steppers call Home Assistant services, such as dimming a light or toggling a switch. Physical buttons can trigger automations too.

Is this the same as Tessera?

No. Tessera, by Max Gramser, is a separate open-source project that turns colour LCD touch screens into Home Assistant controls. Tesserae is for e-ink panels. If you're after an LCD touch screen, Tessera is the one to look at. Tessera website · Tessera on GitHub

Is it free?

Yes. Tesserae is open source under AGPL-3.0, self-hosted, with no accounts and no tracking.