Dwains Dashboards are a template available as an integration on the HACS page that builds out a dashboard in just a couple of minutes based on your areas that you previously setup.
These were my first impressions:
Immediate features where Drag & Drop and how it was so easy to use.
I spent the next week improving and fine tuning the Drains Dashboards.
Tips
Organise your areas:
I created an area for each room in my house plus an outside area, each area can be personalised with an image of the area. You might have many “dead” areas that you are not sure why they were created just delete them and move the device / entity to the correct area.
The areas are a good recap for all automations, scripts, scenes and of courses devices that hit a particular area.
Bear in mind that areas are not the same as Zones, which are defines ad geolocations like home, school, work etc.
And areas are not like groups, which allow you to cluster entities into one, like kitchen lights. Groups now can also me added via the user interface and not just on YAML.
Clean up your integrations:
That will remove any device that you no longer own and help reduce clutter, this will improve your system performance but will certainly help with DD (dwains dashboard).
Check for any automation that you no longer have from the entities list and clear them out too.
Tricks
Drag & Drop is one of the best features of this integration however if you add a card manually either on the top or bottom you are no longer able to Drag & Drop so I will give you two cool tricks!
- Right click on a card and you can change the card type itself! This will keep the Drag & Drop feature.
- Import a pre-made grid card with custom and complex features.
I have one of them from my media dashboard
It is a conditional card with custom mini media player, mushroom chips cards, Sonos volume control, here is the code if you want to copy & paste
To use this, click add card, and search for manual card, then copy & paste below and change with your own entities.
square: false
columns: 1
type: grid
cards:
- type: custom:mushroom-chips-card
chips:
- type: entity
entity: sensor.nest_temperature
- type: entity
entity: sensor.fridge_temperature
- type: entity
entity: binary_sensor.fridge_door
- type: entity
entity: binary_sensor.kitchen_motion
- type: entity
entity: binary_sensor.patio_doors
- type: conditional
conditions:
- entity: media_player.atv_living_room
state_not: idle
card:
type: custom:mini-media-player
volume_stateless: false
toggle_power: true
sound_mode: icon
hide:
volume: true
power: true
info: false
source: true
icon: true
icon_state: true
next: true
prev: true
group: true
artwork: full-cover
entity: media_player.atv_living_room
- type: conditional
conditions:
- entity: media_player.atv_living_room
state_not: idle
card:
type: custom:mini-media-player
hide:
name: true
icon: true
info: true
power: true
source: true
controls: false
next: true
prev: true
play_pause: true
icon_state: true
group: true
entity: media_player.lounge
- type: conditional
conditions:
- entity: media_player.home_pod
state: idle
card:
type: custom:mini-media-player
volume_stateless: false
toggle_power: true
sound_mode: icon
hide:
volume: false
power: true
info: false
source: false
icon: false
icon_state: false
next: false
prev: false
group: true
artwork: cover-fit
entity: media_player.home_pod
- type: custom:mushroom-chips-card
chips:
- type: light
entity: light.kitchen_tv_light
- type: custom:vacuum-card
entity: vacuum.robot_vacuum
image: default
show_name: false
show_status: true
show_toolbar: true