Seems it got to popular and WallyWorld upped the price to $49
Walmart has on sale for $39 a Quad core 7" Android tablet that may do well as a wall controller with eg AuthomationHD or ImperiHome. Battery life is not great but as a wall controller it’ll be on mains power anyway. I have one on order to use as a wall controller, monitor for my camera’s and to use for detecting and notifying me of power failures. (Tasker profile to detect if on battery or on charger)
[url=http://www.walmart.com/ip/Ematic-7-Tablet-8GB-Memory-Quad-Core-Black/28858632]Robot or human?
This is definitely not Samsung Galaxy or LG G2 tablet quality but the specs are pretty good for the price and it even has a front facing camera, HDMI and OTG USB connector. It’s running 4.2 OS
Technical Specifications:
?1.5GHz Quad Core processor
?1GB of system memory
?7" touchscreen, 1024 x 600 resolution, virtual keyboard with Swype
?Built-in b/g/n WiFi
Additional Features:
?Front webcam
?USB 2.0 port, HDMI port, dock connector port
?8GB on-board storage memory, additional memory via microSD card slot
?2 speakers
?3-axis gyroscope
?Weighs 0.708 lbs; 7.58" x 0.45" x 4.6" dimensions
Free shipping to your local WallyWorld. Figured I’d share.
enough cable 14/2 (code standard) to go from any light switch or power outlet to power the recessed power outlet behind the frame
screwdriver
Velcro within the frame and behind the frame
Studfinder
Project:
Frame order takes about 2 weeks at Michaels.
Use the drill to make the whole for the edged power USB cable and a hole for your finger to power on/off the tablet. First attempt as you see was a hole in the front but my second tablet I mounted I made a hole at the side of the frame which looks much better
Use Velcro within the frame so the tablet doesn’t move in any direction when you are using it
Cut a hole in the wall after you checked for power lines and/or studs and install the recessed box for the USB receptacle (instructions come with the box)
draw power from any existing switch or power outlet to the recessed box and ensure the wires are properly installed (outlet tester recommended)
Here’s what the hole looks like. In my case, the USB connection that goes into the outlet was slightly larger than the space, so it would press into the back of the tablet not allowing it to be mounted flush.
I had to dremmell down the mounts in the recessed gang box a bit to make it work.
[quote=“NickTheGreat, post:15, topic:183381”]Are most people using Imperihome? I’ve fooled around with the free version on my phone and it looks promising.
I like the idea of a pretty, customizable front end. I’ve looked into the Openremote a bit and it is over my head (for now)[/quote]
I really like it. there are always limitations, but the dashboard is super customizable. The icon choice is decent, but you can also load your own icons (although not dynamic) as well as background images. It can be bit tedious, but once you mess around with it, you can build some really cool front ends to your HA. I took pictures of my house rooms to represent lighting scenes, for example.
And while it doesn’t support Sonos or receivers yet, you can link out to other apps from the dashboard, solving the Sonos problem pretty well. For my receivers, since i’m either using an iTach or Harmony, I’ve built scenes (again, tedious) representing common controls, like volume, input, etc. Then i created a dashboard tile for each, treating them like buttons. works great.
the plugin is a nice touch as well. For example, when there is motion at my front door (as captured by a camera running Blue Iris), it flips all my wall mounted tablets to the dashboard page that shows the front door,… then two minutes later, goes back to the home dashboard page.
[quote=“tomgru, post:16, topic:183381”]I really like it. there are always limitations, but the dashboard is super customizable. The icon choice is decent, but you can also load your own icons (although not dynamic) as well as background images. It can be bit tedious, but once you mess around with it, you can build some really cool front ends to your HA. I took pictures of my house rooms to represent lighting scenes, for example.
And while it doesn’t support Sonos or receivers yet, you can link out to other apps from the dashboard, solving the Sonos problem pretty well. For my receivers, since i’m either using an iTach or Harmony, I’ve built scenes (again, tedious) representing common controls, like volume, input, etc. Then i created a dashboard tile for each, treating them like buttons. works great.
the plugin is a nice touch as well. For example, when there is motion at my front door (as captured by a camera running Blue Iris), it flips all my wall mounted tablets to the dashboard page that shows the front door,… then two minutes later, goes back to the home dashboard page.[/quote]
What’s your hardware for the BlueIris PC? I tried using a cheap laptop but not enough with 2 cameras and I want to add more cameras in the future.
So you are saying that ImperiHome will work using their Dashboard. My Tablets go into sleep mode after 3 min. Will your implementation work if I want something like:
All 3 tablets are in sleep mode
Motion sensor of Foscam will detect motion and brings the tablets out of sleep mode
No more motion at front door, the tablets will go to sleep after 3 min
One more question: I assume you are using the motion detection of your camera as part of the BlueIris software instead of having a separate hardware motion sensor at the front door. Correct?
I have a separate PC running blue iris, and the plugin pushing the images to Imperihome. and yes… also using that motion sensing software. For your other questions:
you actually turn off sleep mode in the tablet settings, and use the Imperihome “wake on camera” settings. Imperihome then puts the tablet into standby, and the front camera will wake it on motion. I find this works really well, but you have to drill a hole in your picture frame to make sure the camera (at least in my case) is visible. The only issue is that on my Acers, it doesn’t “fully” go into standby, and leaves the backlight on. It’s only noticeable in the dark as a faint glow, and doesn’t bother me. Others have got this working differently using other android apps, but that didn’t work consistently for me.
Yes, the camera plugin setup with motion sees the front door and does two things. In BI, it sends me a text to my phone with a snapshot of the front door. I have BI setup to not detect motion again for 5 minutes so it doesn’t keep sending me pics. the second piece uses the Imperihome plugin. The BI plugin motion sensor looks like a normal motion sensor in Vera, so I have a scene that when it’s tripped, it makes all my tablets (6) go to the dashboard page that has the front door image. For whatever reason, this automatically brings the tablet out of the Imperihome standby.
in the same scene, I have a two minute delay that then uses the imperihome plugin to push all the tablets back to the home dashboard page for each room. If no one uses the tablet/s, they will go back to sleep based on whatever I’ve set in the Imperihome settings.
Has anyone had and success with other “bargin” brand tablets?
I tried this one from Amazon and was able to set it up with imperihome and tts alerts really quickly. Then I put it down and went to do yard work. When I came back to it 9 hours later all the tablet would do is boot up crash and then reboot. I was able to boot in safe mode and restore factory settings but it continued to crash. I’m sending it back
My Walmart cheapie is still running strong as does another low budget one I picked up at TigerDirect. But mine run AuthomationHD and are on ‘daydream’ when not in use.
