Hey everyone! I’ve been diving into the world of smart home dashboards lately, and I wanted to share my experience with setting up a wall-mounted touchscreen display using a Raspberry Pi. It’s been an absolute blast, and I’m thrilled with how it turned out!
My goal was to create a seamless, kiosk-like experience without dealing with battery or charging issues. After some research, I decided to go with a Raspberry Pi 5 starter kit. The 8GB version has been more than sufficient, especially since I wanted to run YouTube videos smoothly in the kitchen area. Pairing it with an 18.5-inch touchscreen display was a game-changer—it’s bright, responsive, and looks fantastic mounted on the wall.
For the mount, I went with a VESA-compatible option from Bauhaus. It was a bit of a puzzle figuring out the screws, but a couple of short M4 screws did the trick. I also picked up a mini HDMI to HDMI adapter to connect everything neatly. To make the setup process easier, I connected a USB keyboard and touchpad during the initial configuration phase.
Setting up the Raspberry Pi OS was straightforward using the Raspberry Pi Imager. I enabled SSH access and Wi-Fi right from the start, which made the entire process much smoother. Installing the Matchbox on-screen keyboard was a must for touch navigation, and switching the window manager from Wayland to X11 resolved a few display issues I encountered.
I decided to create a simple dashboard in Home Assistant called “kalender” and used Chromium in kiosk mode to display it. The setup involved a bit of terminal magic, but the results were worth it. I also stumbled upon a helpful guide to disable startup error messages in Chromium, which made the experience even more polished.
To ensure everything starts up automatically, I created a .desktop file in the autostart directory. It runs the necessary commands to launch Chromium in kiosk mode, pointing to my dashboard URL. Rebooting the system after setting this up was a pivotal moment—I was greeted with my perfectly configured dashboard right away!
One thing I’m still working on is setting up presence detection to turn off the display after a few minutes of inactivity. It’s a small tweak, but it would make the setup even more efficient. For now, I’ve left screen blanking enabled to conserve power.
This project has been a fantastic way to dive deeper into smart home technology. It’s not just about the functionality—it’s about how it enhances my daily life. The ability to have all my important information at a glance is incredibly convenient, and the whole setup looks great in my kitchen.
If anyone has questions or wants to share their own Raspberry Pi dashboard setup, I’d love to hear from you! Happy tinkering! 
