So I’ve seen all kinds of dashboards depicting all sorts of informations and functions to control ones home and I was wondering, what things you have depicted on yours which turned out to be really useful esp. for other family members. I would like to keep mine as small and simple as possible. So far I have planned to show the following:
Helpful esp. before leaving the house:
- turn off all lights
- activate alarm within n minutes
- current and upcoming rain and outside temperature conditions
- List of open windows and doors
Helpful during the day
- Current and set temperature inside
- Autonomy of car
- Remaining time of washing machine
- State of dishwasher (ready, running, done)
- State of mailbox (empty, full)
What’s on yours you and others in your household interact often with? Which have you removed?
Our dashboard is primarily informational in nature, located in the kitchen, and meant to help the kids figure out what is going on. It’s just a standard 32" TV, with no touch input or anything.
- For each child, we have upcoming calendar items (sports, special school days, appointments, etc.)
- We have chore assignments listed for the day.
- The Clock is used in the morning to let them know when they need to be ready for school (it doesn’t just show the current time, it also has a countdown, and colour coding based on remaining time)
- Weather forecast, although minor, is also there. My kids don’t seem to do anything differently regardless of the weather.
- We also display which computers are active in the house, so that they are aware we know when they sneak onto Media when it’s not media time. I wish I could figure out how to include Nintendo Switch devices in this, but I don’t think it’s going to be possible.
Inputs in the future: Technically you can use the remote control to interact with the dashboard, but we don’t really want the kids doing that because it could also be used to switch away from the dashboard. I’m still considering alternative inputs (Voice, Touchpad, etc.) but we really need a way to differentiate between the children if we’re going to do this and I haven’t found a good option for that yet.