Roadmap · the wishlist

Everything works.
Now let's make it show off.

The plumbing's done — the alarm's alive, the house is local, the solar's on the wall. So this is the fun list: the ambitious, the playful and the genuinely useful things we can bolt on next, rated by effort and nothing more. Nothing here is committed. It's a menu.

quick win a weekend ambitious

01 · Dashboards & look

Make the wall panel a joy to walk past

The house runs itself; the panel is how it shows its face. These two are about that face — one practical, one pure theatre.

Switchable dashboards

a weekend

One tap — or the time of day — swaps the whole panel. The wall tablet already flips its brightness and state by time; this makes the entire layout follow suit, so you only ever see what matters right now.

  • Daysolar, weather and the day ahead, up front
  • Nighta dim clock and the alarm state — nothing else
  • Guestjust the lights, nothing to fiddle or break
  • Securityevery camera at once, one glance to sweep

Step one shipped — a six-tab, no-scroll panel · see the wall panel page

Still to do: the time-of-day auto-switch and a guest view — and, because the current panel is already built from a theme, an LCARS skin would drop straight in.

LCARS bridge console

ambitious

A full Star Trek LCARS skin for the panel — the house as a starship's ops console. Tap a system to read it out. It's a mock below, but the numbers are the ones the panel already knows. Pure theatre, entirely doable.

DECS · Deck 1 · Home OpsSD 47935.2

↳ tap a system on the rail — POWER is live by default.

02 · Make it think

Automation with a bit of a brain

Everything's already reporting in — presence, solar, the sun's angle, the alarm's state. These four just join the dots so the house acts on its own, at the right moment.

a weekend

Presence & geofencing

The house disarms as your phone reaches the drive and arms itself when the last person leaves — no fumbling for a fob. The trick is to start the disarm early, so the alarm's slow radio never leaves you waiting at the door.

a weekend

Solar-aware automation

The Victron data's already live — so run the big loads when the sun's up and the battery's full. The washing machine, the immersion, the car: all wait for surplus, and hold back the moment you'd be importing. Free energy, spent on purpose.

quick win

Adaptive lighting

Lights that track the sun — warm and low in the evening, bright and cool at midday — with a "last one to bed" sweep that quietly takes the whole house dark behind you.

quick win

Away & holiday mode

A believable, lived-in look while you're away: lights that replay your real evening patterns rather than an obvious timer, tied straight to the alarm's armed state so it arms itself the moment you leave.

03 · Security, levelled up

The alarm's alive — now make it fast and watchful

ambitious

Instant-disarm key-fob relay

The alarm's hub radio wakes slowly, so a spoken disarm can lag a few seconds. The fix is elegant: an ESP32 wired across the buttons of a spare, already-enrolled remote — a real fob that Home Assistant can press. Genuinely instant, rolling-code arm and disarm, indistinguishable from the real thing.

Spec'd and ready to build

a weekend

Cameras on the wall

Fold the cameras into the panel and a dedicated Security dashboard — the same one the "Security" view above would summon on a tap.

  • Live tiles, every feed at a glance
  • Snapshot-on-motion straight to your phone
  • A doorbell press pops the front door full-screen
04 · The quick-hit list

Small things, big polish

The little stuff — mostly an evening apiece. Filter by how much of a Saturday it'd cost.

HA Energy dashboard

Wire the Victron feeds into Home Assistant's native power-flow diagram.

quick win

Per-array solar breakdown

Map the three MPPTs to the 2.1 / 6.3 / 4.2 kWp arrays and chart each on its own.

quick win

Fully Kiosk self-heal

Auto-restart on crash plus start-on-boot, so the wall panel never needs babysitting.

quick win

Voice scenes

"Movie night", "good morning", "everyone out" — one phrase, a dozen actions.

quick win

Whole-house red on intruder

Pull every RGB bulb into the alarm strobe, not just the landing & hall.

a weekend

Second-household voice control

Full alarm voice control from a second family member's own account.

a weekend

Nothing that ambitious down here — the big swings live up in sections 02 and 03.

Nothing here is committed

Pick one, and it moves into the build.

None of this is set in stone — it's a menu to graze from. Fancy the LCARS console lighting up the wall, the presence-based geofencing that disarms the house before you reach the door, or a washing machine that quietly waits for the sun? Those three are top of the pile. Say the word and any item here moves off this page and into the plan — same Pi, same no-cloud rules, same weekend energy.

LCARS console · presence geofencing · solar-aware loads — the favourites·everything else, on request