# Raspberry pi touch screen interface with Kivy **URL:** \ **Category:** 3rd Party\ **Tags:** raspberry, openhab2\ **Created:** [August 8, 2016, 9:13am UTC](https://community.openhab.org/t/raspberry-pi-touch-screen-interface-with-kivy/13071 "2016-08-08T09:13:09Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 17\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![bramkragten](https://community.openhab.org/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/b/b9bd4f/32.png) [@bramkragten](https://community.openhab.org/u/bramkragten)\ **Post date:** [August 8, 2016, 9:13am UTC](https://community.openhab.org/t/raspberry-pi-touch-screen-interface-with-kivy/13071/1 "2016-08-08T09:13:09Z")
Hi! I’m new here, and just got started with openHAB (2), really like the platform and all the bindings! Great work. I’m using an official raspberry pi 7" touchscreen that i’ve built into the wall of my living room to control openHAB (apart from my phone and tablet). Currently I use the basic ui in a chrome browser with some extensions to make it work better with my touchscreen. I would like to get a bit more from this screen, both in the form of functionality, the use of touch etc. and the looks, creating more of a dashboard that I can swipe through. I was thinking about building a dashboard/ui with Kivy for my Pi, no experience with Kivy, but would be nice to learn… Anybody else that is interested in such a project? Or are there projects like this out there already? Thanks! ---
**Author:** ![yves](https://community.openhab.org/user_avatar/community.openhab.org/yves/32/3856_2.png) [@yves](https://community.openhab.org/u/yves)\ **Post date:** [August 8, 2016, 9:37am UTC](https://community.openhab.org/t/raspberry-pi-touch-screen-interface-with-kivy/13071/2 "2016-08-08T09:37:17Z")
> [@bramkragten](#): > > Kivy do you know that both iOS and android have specific apps for openhab? maybe your time bring more value by helping these projects… ---
**Author:** ![bramkragten](https://community.openhab.org/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/b/b9bd4f/32.png) [@bramkragten](https://community.openhab.org/u/bramkragten)\ **Post date:** [August 8, 2016, 11:58am UTC](https://community.openhab.org/t/raspberry-pi-touch-screen-interface-with-kivy/13071/3 "2016-08-08T11:58:32Z")
Does a raspberry pi run iOS or Android? OK, it can run Android but not well yet… Besided that, I don’t think the UI of the native apps is the best for a dashboard. ---
**Author:** ![fog](https://community.openhab.org/user_avatar/community.openhab.org/fog/32/41438_2.png) [@fog](https://community.openhab.org/u/fog)\ **Post date:** [August 8, 2016, 12:24pm UTC](https://community.openhab.org/t/raspberry-pi-touch-screen-interface-with-kivy/13071/4 "2016-08-08T12:24:09Z")
Hi @bramkragten > [@bramkragten](#): > > Besided that, I don’t think the UI of the native apps is the best for a dashboard. have you seen project rotini created by @igor? I personally think it looks good as a dash. However as you say a pi might not be the best option for android but what I’ve seen so far is that it should work. Should you give it a try either Kivy or Android on the PI please let us know. > [@HomeHabit Dashboard - Original thread](https://community.openhab.org/t/different-take-on-client-ui-android-for-now/3561): > > I have been lurking around this community/forum for a while, and using openHAB for almost a year. My primary usage is through mobile either my phone or tablet that is sitting in the living room. As some of you here, I have not been entirely pleased with UI design and UX of current Android client. In addition, I wanted: more flexibility for voice commands (different for each device) UI widgets that are specific to common home automation use cases such as thermostat responsive interface for t… ---
**Author:** ![bramkragten](https://community.openhab.org/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/b/b9bd4f/32.png) [@bramkragten](https://community.openhab.org/u/bramkragten)\ **Post date:** [August 8, 2016, 12:45pm UTC](https://community.openhab.org/t/raspberry-pi-touch-screen-interface-with-kivy/13071/5 "2016-08-08T12:45:32Z")
Hi @fog, I have seen it yes, that indeed looks awesome. I was thinking of making something like that for the raspberry. Before I start on Kivy, i’ll try to run android on my pi, but what I’ve read so far, does not sound promising… ---
**Author:** ![yves](https://community.openhab.org/user_avatar/community.openhab.org/yves/32/3856_2.png) [@yves](https://community.openhab.org/u/yves)\ **Post date:** [August 8, 2016, 10:15pm UTC](https://community.openhab.org/t/raspberry-pi-touch-screen-interface-with-kivy/13071/6 "2016-08-08T22:15:42Z")
> [@bramkragten](#): > > I was thinking of making something like that for the raspberry. just out of curiosity, why is it important to have it on the raspberry? Why can’t you work with an android tablet? ---
**Author:** ![bramkragten](https://community.openhab.org/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/b/b9bd4f/32.png) [@bramkragten](https://community.openhab.org/u/bramkragten)\ **Post date:** [August 9, 2016, 6:59am UTC](https://community.openhab.org/t/raspberry-pi-touch-screen-interface-with-kivy/13071/7 "2016-08-09T06:59:36Z")
> [@yves](#): > > > [@bramkragten](#): > > > > I was thinking of making something like that for the raspberry. > > just out of curiosity, why is it important to have it on the raspberry? Why can’t you work with an android tablet? Purely aesthetic, I didn’t want to stick tablet on my wall, with wires or a frame, but a screen that would be flush with my wall. Therefore, the touch screen of raspberry appealed to me. Not thought about / knew there were better interfaces for openhab on android. ---
**Author:** ![yves](https://community.openhab.org/user_avatar/community.openhab.org/yves/32/3856_2.png) [@yves](https://community.openhab.org/u/yves)\ **Post date:** [August 9, 2016, 7:11am UTC](https://community.openhab.org/t/raspberry-pi-touch-screen-interface-with-kivy/13071/8 "2016-08-09T07:11:01Z")
I realized that I had some bias here, for me, I assumed that a touchscreen would be less nicely then a premade tablet. I did not think about the flexibility of the screen on how you make it look. thanks for explaining. Make sense now. ---
**Author:** ![vespaman](https://community.openhab.org/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/v/ecc23a/32.png) [@vespaman](https://community.openhab.org/u/vespaman)\ **Post date:** [August 9, 2016, 7:17am UTC](https://community.openhab.org/t/raspberry-pi-touch-screen-interface-with-kivy/13071/9 "2016-08-09T07:17:26Z")
I’m also heading in the RPI/touchscreen direction. My main objective is to freely choose TFT size and use ethernet/PoE, so I’ll be interested to hear about your progress. Why do you think Android will be a problem? ---
**Author:** ![bramkragten](https://community.openhab.org/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/b/b9bd4f/32.png) [@bramkragten](https://community.openhab.org/u/bramkragten)\ **Post date:** [August 9, 2016, 7:47am UTC](https://community.openhab.org/t/raspberry-pi-touch-screen-interface-with-kivy/13071/10 "2016-08-09T07:47:33Z")
> [@vespaman](#): > > I’m also heading in the RPI/touchscreen direction. My main objective is to freely choose TFT size and use ethernet/PoE, so I’ll be interested to hear about your progress. > Why do you think Android will be a problem? Because as far I’m aware there is no hardware acceleration (performance issue), and no drivers for bluetooth and wifi. I would like to use bluetooth, need to use wifi… But there might be hope… [device/pifoundation/rpi3 - Git at Google](https://android.googlesource.com/device/pifoundation/rpi3/) ---
**Author:** ![vespaman](https://community.openhab.org/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/v/ecc23a/32.png) [@vespaman](https://community.openhab.org/u/vespaman)\ **Post date:** [August 9, 2016, 8:31am UTC](https://community.openhab.org/t/raspberry-pi-touch-screen-interface-with-kivy/13071/11 "2016-08-09T08:31:26Z")
According to this site [http://raspex.exton.se/?p=356](http://raspex.exton.se/?p=356) both wifi and bt is up, and since he also mentions youtube as working, graphics shouldn’t be too bad? This is the RPI3 though. ---
**Author:** ![bramkragten](https://community.openhab.org/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/b/b9bd4f/32.png) [@bramkragten](https://community.openhab.org/u/bramkragten)\ **Post date:** [August 9, 2016, 9:54am UTC](https://community.openhab.org/t/raspberry-pi-touch-screen-interface-with-kivy/13071/12 "2016-08-09T09:54:31Z")
Sounds promising. I’ll give that a try tonight! 🙂 Hopefully it will also support the touchscreen. I have both RPI2 and 3, so I’ll try both. ---
**Author:** ![michael\_sutter](https://community.openhab.org/user_avatar/community.openhab.org/michael_sutter/32/27561_2.png) [@michael\_sutter](https://community.openhab.org/u/michael_sutter)\ **Post date:** [August 10, 2016, 8:27am UTC](https://community.openhab.org/t/raspberry-pi-touch-screen-interface-with-kivy/13071/13 "2016-08-10T08:27:54Z")
Hi There I also look for an alternative touch device. Why? I don’t like google or apple on my wall(s) 😉 Let me know, if you go further with Kivy. Regards Michael ---
**Author:** ![sihui](https://community.openhab.org/user_avatar/community.openhab.org/sihui/32/55674_2.png) [@sihui](https://community.openhab.org/u/sihui)\ **Post date:** [August 10, 2016, 9:07am UTC](https://community.openhab.org/t/raspberry-pi-touch-screen-interface-with-kivy/13071/14 "2016-08-10T09:07:42Z")
Try > [@HABPanel - Yet another implementation of a no-frills dashboard](https://community.openhab.org/t/habpanel-yet-another-implementation-of-a-no-frills-dashboard-for-oh1/12853): > > Hi, I just wanted to let you know about the web dashboard project I’ve been hacking for the last few weeks, it began as a private project but I’ve decided to share it anyway in case others would be interested. I know it’s similar to the quite popular Dashing-based project, I tried it and I think it’s very nice, and I don’t see it as “competition” because my needs were different.. I wanted the last possible maintenance on the server side, so I put my modest AngularJS skills to use to find out i… … works on any browser, so you could use it on your RPi panel without additional programming. Edit: also works with openHAB 2 > [@HABpanel bundle proof-of-concept (aka. Panel UI)](https://community.openhab.org/t/habpanel-bundle-proof-of-concept-aka-panel-ui/12981): > > Hi, I had a little free time today so I made a proof-of-concept bundle for [my alternative GUI project](https://community.openhab.org/t/habpanel-yet-another-implementation-of-a-no-frills-dashboard-for-oh1/) as suggested by Kai slight_smile If you want to check it out, download the .jar here: [https://github.com/ghys/openhab2-addons/releases/tag/panelui-2.0.0-SNAPSHOT](https://github.com/ghys/openhab2-addons/releases/tag/panelui-2.0.0-SNAPSHOT) and drop it into your addons folder. It will install automatically. Check the logs for: [INFO] [b.ui.panelui.internal.PanelUIService] - Started Panel UI at /panelui It should also appear on the home page dashboard: Re… ---
**Author:** ![michael\_sutter](https://community.openhab.org/user_avatar/community.openhab.org/michael_sutter/32/27561_2.png) [@michael\_sutter](https://community.openhab.org/u/michael_sutter)\ **Post date:** [August 10, 2016, 9:30am UTC](https://community.openhab.org/t/raspberry-pi-touch-screen-interface-with-kivy/13071/15 "2016-08-10T09:30:55Z")
@sihui Thank you very much. I’ll try it ---
**Author:** ![markus7017](https://community.openhab.org/user_avatar/community.openhab.org/markus7017/32/39859_2.png) [@markus7017](https://community.openhab.org/u/markus7017)\ **Post date:** [August 18, 2016, 6:55am UTC](https://community.openhab.org/t/raspberry-pi-touch-screen-interface-with-kivy/13071/16 "2016-08-18T06:55:12Z")
Hi, you should habe a look to HABpanel. It’s easy to use and client Javascript only. Beat regards, Markus, ---
**Author:** ![TCke](https://community.openhab.org/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/t/e19b73/32.png) [@TCke](https://community.openhab.org/u/TCke)\ **Post date:** [January 10, 2018, 7:29am UTC](https://community.openhab.org/t/raspberry-pi-touch-screen-interface-with-kivy/13071/17 "2018-01-10T07:29:54Z")
Hi, this does look like an older thread, but i’m looking to do the same as @bramkragten. I was already building a Kivy App and have a working app for controllling a mopidy music server. That works great! But i’m looking to centralize all integrations on one central point (i was thinking of openhab). I have a complex setup however: - Loxone (with KNX) for home automation → works with openhab2 - Mopidy music players for multi room audio - Motu 24Ao for multi room distribution - Hikvision camera’s for monitoring - … I want a custom kivy front end on my Rpi3 with 7" Pi TFT because when you need to start a web browser performance is poor and integration to play a rtsp stream (from my surveilance cameras) is a little tricky and flaky. The playback of the camera images is perfect in Kivy, the remote control (using javascript websocket library of mopidy) works also great. I would like to develop a kivy front for the openhab project, but there is only a REST API, what about status updates? Shouldn’t there be a websocket API to listen for events? Or is this already available? I have some experience with kivy programming the front for mopidy & for my camera’s, so if possible it should not be a problem to write a front for openhab in Kivy. The reason i chose the Pi TFT’s is the same, it looks great on the wall without any visible cables. Thanks in advance for your answer. Kind regards, Tom