Raspberry Pi Pico W Home Assistant Dashboard

Requirements

• Raspberry Pi Pico W
• Waveshare 1.3" LCD display (part number Pico-LCD-1.3)
• WiFi network with WPA/WPA2/WPA3 Personal authentication within range
• Home Assistant
• rshell on a computer with a USB port
• A USB to Micro USB cable

Installation

1. First flash the Pico W with the MicroPython firmware via the UF2 bootloader. See Raspberry Pi's instructions.

2. Then clone this repository:

   git clone https://github.com/mgrove36/home-assistant-pi-pico-w-dashboard.git && cd home-assistant-pi-pico-w-dashboard
   

3. Edit env.py in this directory to contain your settings.

4. Plug in the Pico W using a USB to Micro USB cable, and start rshell:

   rshell
   

5. Check the board is connected:

   boards
   

   Which should return something similar to the following:

   pyboard @ /dev/ttyACM0 connected Epoch: 1970 Dirs:
   

6. Copy the project onto the Pico W:

   cp -r * /pyboard/
   

The dashboard will now run whenever the Pico W is provided with power.

Settings

The env.py file contains all settings for the dashboard. The variables are set as follows:

• HOSTNAME: The hostname of the Pi Pico W, used when connecting to WiFi.
• SSID: The SSID of the WiFi network to connect to.
• WIFI_PASSWORD: The WPA key (password) of the WiFi network to connect to.
• HASS_URL: The base URL of the Home Assistant instance to connect to. It should start with http:// or https://, and not end in a /.
• TOKEN: The long-lived access token used to connect to Home Assistant. You can generate one by following the instructions here.
• SCREENS: A list of the screens to be displayed on the dashboard. Each screen is represented by a dictionary. Their requirements are detailed below.

Screens

The SCREENS settings variable is a list of dicts. Each dict must contain the following key-value pairs:

• name: A string, denoting the name of the screen to be displayed at the top of it.
• type: An integer:
  • 0: A lights dashboard, for interacting with up to four light entities.
  • 1: A media dashboard, for interacting with one media player entity.

Each dashboard type has additional required data, detailed below

Lights dashboards (type 0)

Lights dashboards (type 0) must contain the following additional key-value pairs:

• entities: A list of dicts, with each dict representing an individual light entity. Each dict must have the following key-value pairs:
  • id: A string, storing the entity ID of the light.
  • name: A string, storing a short name for the entity to display on the dashboard.

Media dashboards (type 1)

Media dashboards (type 1) must contain the following additional key-value pairs:

• entity: A string, storing the entity ID of the media player.

Example env.py file

The below example file connects to Home Assistant at https://hass.example.com via a WiFi network named MyNetwork, and shows a dashboard with one lights screen and one media screen.

HOSTNAME="mypico"
SSID = 'MyNetwork'
WIFI_PASSWORD = 'MyPassword'
HASS_URL = "https://hass.example.com"
TOKEN = "xxxx.xxxx.xxxx"
SCREENS = [
    {
        "name": "Downstairs",
        "type": 0,
        "entities": [
            {
                "id": "light.bedroom_light",
                "name": "Bedroom"
            },
            {
                "id": "light.kitchen_light",
                "name": "Kitchen"
            },
            {
                "id": "light.hallway_light",
                "name": "Hallway"
            },
            {
                "id": "light.downstairs_lights",
                "name": "Downstairs"
            }
        ]
    },
    {
        "name": "Living Room",
        "type": 1,
        "entity": "media_player.living_room"
    }
]