Home Assistant integration

Kiosky works with Home Assistant in three ways, which you can mix:

1. Dashboard sign-in and theme: the tablet shows your HA dashboard, logged in with a long-lived token. See Dashboards & browser.
2. MQTT with discovery: the tablet appears in HA as a device with sensors, switches, buttons and more, and accepts commands. This page covers it.
3. Voice: the tablet is an Assist satellite with an on-device wake word. See Voice and Assist below.

MQTT is not required. The same commands are also available over the local REST API, which you can call from HA with rest_command.

Set up MQTT#

You need an MQTT broker that Home Assistant also uses, for example the Mosquitto add-on with the MQTT integration. Create a broker user for the tablet.

1. On the tablet open Settings, Connections, MQTT.
2. Turn on Enable MQTT.
3. Fill in Broker host, Port (default 1883; use 8883 with TLS) and, if your broker requires it, Username and Password.
4. Turn on TLS if your broker uses it.
5. Leave Base topic as kiosk unless you need another prefix.
6. Leave Home Assistant discovery on (the default).
7. Tap Save MQTT. The status chip goes from Connecting to Connected, or shows the error.

A saved password shows "A password is saved. Leave blank to keep it." and Remove password clears it. The card also shows the topic prefix it will use, for example kiosk/hallway_tablet/....

The tablet appears in Home Assistant under Settings, Devices & services, MQTT with the name you set in Settings, Device, Device name. The device id used in topics is a lower-case slug of that name with underscores, for example Hallway Tablet becomes hallway_tablet. Renaming the device changes every topic; Kiosky clears the retained messages left under the old id.

Security. An anonymous broker lets anyone on your network read state and send commands. Use a broker account and TLS. Kiosky shows warnings under Lock & security, Security when the broker is anonymous or has no TLS. See Security.

IP address and Wi-Fi signal are published (and their sensors created) only when the connection uses a Username, or when you turn on Share IP and Wi-Fi over MQTT under Lock & security, Security.

Entities#

Kiosky publishes retained discovery configs on homeassistant/<component>/<device_id>/<object_id>/config, so HA creates the entities by itself. Every entity belongs to one device, whose Visit link opens the tablet's admin page, and goes unavailable when the tablet goes offline.

Some entities appear only when they apply: hardware that exists, features you switched on, or remote control you allowed.

Entity unique ids look like kiosky_<device_id>_<object_id>.

Events#

The Event entity mirrors kiosk/<device_id>/event. Its event types are:

Example automations#

These examples publish to the tablet's command topics. Replace hallway_tablet with your device id, which is shown at the top of Settings, Connections, MQTT (the "Topics:" line). The YAML uses the Home Assistant 2024.10 format (triggers:, actions:, trigger:, action:).

Show the door camera when someone is at the door#

automation:
  - alias: Hallway tablet shows front door camera
    triggers:
      - trigger: state
        entity_id: binary_sensor.front_door_person
        to: "on"
    actions:
      - action: mqtt.publish
        data:
          topic: kiosk/hallway_tablet/cmd/popup
          payload: >-
            {"camera": "camera.front_door", "timeout": 30, "title": "Front door"}

camera takes one entity id or an array of up to four (["camera.front_door", "camera.driveway"]). timeout is in seconds (default 60, up to 3600) and title is optional. The popup needs the Home Assistant address and token saved under Dashboard, Home Assistant sign-in. It wakes the screen, and you can close it with dismiss_popup:

      - delay: "00:00:30"
      - action: mqtt.publish
        data:
          topic: kiosk/hallway_tablet/cmd/dismiss_popup
          payload: ""

To show a web page instead of a camera, send a URL: {"url": "https://example.com/alert", "timeout": 20}. The host must be an allowed host.

Wake the screen when someone arrives#

automation:
  - alias: Hallway tablet wakes on presence
    triggers:
      - trigger: state
        entity_id: binary_sensor.hallway_motion
        to: "on"
    actions:
      - action: mqtt.publish
        data:
          topic: kiosk/hallway_tablet/cmd/screen
          payload: "on"

If you enable face presence on the tablet itself, use its Presence entity as the trigger instead. Or tick Wake screen on face or Wake screen on motion in the app, see Camera & sensors.

Make the tablet speak#

automation:
  - alias: Announce laundry done
    triggers:
      - trigger: state
        entity_id: sensor.washer_state
        to: "finished"
    actions:
      - action: mqtt.publish
        data:
          topic: kiosk/hallway_tablet/cmd/tts
          payload: '{"text": "The washing machine has finished.", "volume": 60}'

volume is optional (0 to 100). The Speak notify entity does the same through notify.send_message. Speech comes from the tablet's own Android text-to-speech engine.

Switch dashboard at a set time#

automation:
  - alias: Evening dashboard
    triggers:
      - trigger: time
        at: "18:00:00"
    actions:
      - action: select.select_option
        target:
          entity_id: select.hallway_tablet_dashboard
        data:
          option: Evening

You can also publish {"name": "Evening"} or just Evening to kiosk/hallway_tablet/cmd/dashboard. For fixed daily windows, the built-in planner needs no automation.

React to someone moving the tablet#

automation:
  - alias: Tablet tamper alert
    triggers:
      - trigger: state
        entity_id: binary_sensor.hallway_tablet_tamper
        to: "on"
    actions:
      - action: notify.mobile_app_phone
        data:
          message: The hallway tablet was moved.

Entity ids such as select.hallway_tablet_dashboard are chosen by Home Assistant from the device and entity names. Check the real id in Settings, Devices & services, Entities.

Voice and Assist#

Kiosky can be a voice satellite for Home Assistant Assist. A wake word runs on the tablet, and audio is only sent to Home Assistant after the wake word is heard.

Requirements

• A Home Assistant with an Assist pipeline that has speech-to-text and text-to-speech (Home Assistant Cloud, or local Whisper and Piper).
• The Home Assistant address and a long-lived token.
• The microphone permission.

Settings, Voice, Voice assistant

1. Turn on Enable voice.
2. Enter the Home Assistant URL and Long-lived access token (Profile, Security in HA). The token is stored encrypted. Remove token deletes it.
3. Optionally enter an Assist pipeline id. Blank uses your preferred pipeline.
4. Tap Allow microphone and grant the permission.
5. Choose a Wake word: Okay Nabu (the default), Hey Jarvis or Hey Mycroft.
6. Adjust Wake threshold. Lower wakes more easily and falsely more often. Higher needs a clearer wake word. Each model has its own default.
7. Tap Save voice. A status chip tells you whether Kiosky is listening and why not, for example "Paused while the screen is off".

Short commands are handled on the tablet without a round trip to Home Assistant. They are matched against the whole sentence, in English: "screen off", "go home", "volume up", "volume down", "set volume to 40", "stop", "reload", and "show <dashboard name>". Anything else goes to your Assist pipeline, and the spoken answer plays on the tablet.

Note. Wake word accuracy depends on microphone distance and room noise. There is no pipeline picker yet, so enter the pipeline id by hand. Voice needs a Home Assistant address that uses a certificate trusted by Android; self-signed HTTPS is not supported for the voice connection. Voice is among the candidate Kiosky Pro features.