How I Built the Star Trek control panel of my dreams

One of my pandemic hobbies that stuck was location automation. I discovered Home Assistant — the celebrated unfastened source, highly customizable location automation level — and each the intricate things you tin do pinch it to make your location activity better.

I person ADHD and person recovered Home Assistant to beryllium a valuable instrumentality for managing executive dysfunction. I usage it for audible almanac reminders, laundry reminders, timers, and monitoring my doorbell camera and my nanny cam for my dog. Its besides a awesome root of axenic nerdy joyousness for me. And I precocious took the astir joyously nerdy measurement yet successful my location automation fixation.

Home Assistant lets you create civilization dashboards to interact pinch your smart location devices. Community members walk untold hours perfecting their dashboards and immoderate of them are really impressive. I moreover discovered a organization theme for Home Assistant that goes a agelong measurement to looking for illustration the LCARS machine power strategy successful the Next Generation era of Star Trek I grew up on. LCARS is not a applicable aliases useful machine interface. Its stated intent is to “suggest thing well-organized erstwhile a spectator sees [it] successful the inheritance of a scene.” What it is, though, is gorgeous. The artistic sewage clasp of maine astatine 8 years aged and has ne'er fto go.

Most of my location automation happens done existent automation without my input, and I do make extended usage of sound power ( yes, “Computer” is my aftermath word. The mendacious alarms erstwhile I’m watching Star Trek are worthy it). But location are immoderate things I’ll ever want a dashboard for. Sometimes you want to power things manually. It’s bully for upwind displays aliases triggering civilization lighting scenes. Since the opening of my infatuation pinch Home Assistant, I’ve been dying to usage an LCARS-style interface. The taxable linked supra is very bully — I usage it for my phone’s main dashboard. But it’s not perfect.

The sizing and the proportions of the elbow dividers is simply a small off, and the buttons are each surgery up into 2 pieces. It’s mini stuff. But I’m the benignant of instrumentality who wants to return the accuracy point arsenic acold arsenic it tin go. So I made my own.

I precocious discovered LVGL (Light and Versatile Graphics Library), which lets you make schematic interfaces that are acold much customizable and blase than the banal Home Assistant dashboard setup. I figured location had to beryllium immoderate measurement to make LVGL talk to Home Assistant. The last portion of the puzzle was ESPHome. ESPHome is an open-source firmware model that lets coding novices for illustration maine usage comparatively elemental markup connection to programme Wifi-enabled microcontrollers for illustration the ESP32, ESP8266, and RP2040, and it integrates profoundly pinch Home Assistant. The possibilities are immense. I usage ESPHome components arsenic mobility detectors, beingness sensors, an aerial value sensor, and controllers for LED strips. And ESPHome supports LVGL connected circumstantial show hardware.

So I bought this Waveshare 7” touch show pinch an ESP32-S3 microcontroller built successful and I sewage to work.
I spent hours scouring the net to find screenshots and instrumentality recreations of immoderate of the galore LCARS panels featured successful ’90s-era Star Trek. And I narrowed it down to this:

It’s a schematic you spot successful Tuvok’s quarters successful Star Trek: Voyager. I’m not judge what it’s expected to do successful the show, but it has plentifulness of colorful buttons and rounded corners. And crucially location are 2 gauges astatine the apical for who knows what. But to maine those looked for illustration lighting brightness controls. So I had my design.

Next was to build it. To build an interface successful ESPHome utilizing LVGL, you usage YAML to specify the characteristics (size, positioning, color, etc) of the schematic constituent you want. LVGL calls them “widgets.” So I first created my creation successful Adobe Illustrator arsenic a reference.

I past began the alternatively tedious task of recreating that creation successful the ESPHome editor successful Home Assistant. Thankfully you don’t request to cognize C (the connection LVGL is written for) to usage it successful ESPHome. Instead you usage YAML, which is overmuch much forgiving for an enthusiastic amateur for illustration me. Component by component, I specified the dimensions of each button, its location, its color, what explanation it would have, and its shape. It’s champion believe successful LVGL to usage the inbuilt widgets alternatively of conscionable inserting pictures. LVGL does person that capability, but ESP32 microcontrollers don’t person tons of spare resources, and images will eat them fast. The only existent images utilized successful this creation are the 2 gauges astatine the apical right. All the different shapes are LVGL fastener widgets.

I did person to cheat a small for the irregular shapes. Some of the buttons successful the LCARS interface only person 2 rounded corners. LVGL buttons are each aliases thing erstwhile it comes to rounded corners. Thankfully though, LVGL doesn’t mind if you stack shapes connected apical of each other. For the buttons that are half rounded, I simply stacked a circle connected the extremity of a quadrate button. They’re the aforesaid color, truthful it looks for illustration a azygous shape. The elbows successful the mediate are made successful a akin way.

Eventually I sewage there. An honorable to goodness authentic-looking LCARS touchscreen successful my surviving room. 12-year-old maine would beryllium truthful impressed. 41-year-old maine surely is.

All that was near was to link it to my devices. While undertaking this project, I was hanging retired successful my surviving room, truthful I chose my surviving room lamps. (Yes, I made this full task earlier I had a clear thought of what precisely I would beryllium doing pinch it. This is not a hobby for group who are wholly pragmatically minded.)

I configured a definite fastener to move achromatic erstwhile the lights were on, and return to its original colour erstwhile the lights were off. A different fastener really toggled the lights connected and off. The much buttons that do much things, the much authentic it feels to me. And this sheet has much buttons than I person lights successful my house. One of the gauges some reflects and controls the brightness of those lamps. There are position buttons that show maine whether my home’s operating mode is “normal” aliases “cozy,” which determines the lighting scenes successful my extended WLED setup.

The touchscreen pinch the sheet rests connected a guidelines adjacent my couch. It’s not remotely practical. We already knew that astir LCARS. However, it is beautiful. And it makes my nerd bosom highly happy that I tin now power my location the measurement my puerility heroes controlled their starships.