Your setup for a wall mounted tablet

It dies have a permanent power cable, drilled through the wall right behind the bracket. Just two tiny cable strands soldered to a Micro-USB plug, not plugged in in the pictures though.
:smile:

I guess you meant does , not dies, right ?
:joy:

Well… yes! German autocorrection at it‘s best!

:joy:
I know exactly what you mean

I don’t have an old tablet lying around. I bought a new Fire on Prime Day only to learn it can’t be rooted, and the lock screen can’t be disabled without root access.

I’m looking at POE tablets on Alibaba. I found one in particular I like:

However, they all seem similar. I did look at the Sibo ones but, for the 10 inch range, I like how this one is shaped better.

I’m just a bit uncertain given my lack of familiarity with ordering on Alibaba. Have others been pretty happy with the results?

Here are some more ideas:

Almost no problems at all. Ordered around 20 times in the last two years, 2 orders did not arrive, got the money back. Shipping time from China to Europe is around 3 to 4 weeks, sometimes even longer.
Don’t forget the customs for your region if applicable. :joy:

Hi @poertner,

does this work reliably for you?
I have the problem, that the tablet cutts of Wifi and I cannot switch on the screen.
Usually this is no problem, because I use the F-K-B internal motion detection, but I would like to use the “LockScreen” function when not at home, but this will fail if wifi diconnected.

How did you solve this issue?

I run HABPanel on a Fire, there’s an easy trick to keep the screen on while plugged in, so you never see the lock screen: go to the device settings, click the serial number multiple times until the developer options appear, then go there and switch “Stay awake” on. Alternatively there are a number of apps in the store which do the same (for example https://www.amazon.com/Chethan-Dandgey-Screen-On/dp/B009WGJ6DU/)

3 Likes

I had the same problem, my tablet would lose Wi-Fi connection and not be responding to wake up commands via the network. :frowning:

I tried several apps that promise to always keep the tablet connected to Wi-Fi but all of them failed…

So now I just use the internal motion detection of FKB which works very reliable. The only drawback of the tablets camera is that you have to be in front of the tablet already for it to turn on.
Using my motion detectors would enable me to switch the tablet on when entering the hallway… so that it is awake and all values refreshed when walking by.

Thanks - What a pity.
Even in FKB itself there is a setting called
"Set Wifi Wakelock – das WLAN immer wach halten (normalerweise nicht benötigt, ver. 1.16+)"
(force wifi to keep awake)
But it’s not working as expected. :frowning:

I actually tried about 10 and they didn’t work- it appeared that Amazon’s software update was preventing them from working. I gave up before I knew about the serial number trick.

I ended up setting up the Fire for my son so I decided I’d just do a POE setup for HABPane. I actually already have Ethernet run behind the wall so it’ll be an easy drop-in install.

That’s great to hear! I think I’ll take the leap and try it.

I’m an iOS guy so I don’t know much about Android. Should Android 4.4 be up to the task of running HabPanel on something like Fully Kiosk Browser?

According to the programmers website it is compatible with 4.4 and up.
For 4.1 to 4.3 there is a special older version available.

http://www.ozerov.de/fully-kiosk-browser/

Another work around may be to use Tasker to show a blank screen eg. as an overlay (and keep the underlying tablet running and so unlocked via the Developer Options). This combined with a Motion Sensor app to get rid of the blank screen overlay may work in place of disabling the lock screen.

I might have been wrong about the “keep wifi connected”.
I tried it again (possibly the restart made the difference) and wifi seems to keep the connection.
So I am able to lock the screen.

With the REST interface I am also able to monitor, if I succeed locking the screen.

However, I need to keep an eye on the wifi connection itself as well as the battery life using a permanent wifi connection.

Android 4.x is pretty old. Hence why sihui says FKB has ‘special older versions’ for 4.1 - 4.3. You could soon find FKB say 4.4 is an ‘older’ version and then you start to lose new features etc on updates.

If it is a fairly generic OEM tablet though you might have more of a chance to root and upgrade the OS. But I would try and find/pick one that has an identifiable model and then look it up on the likes of the XDA developer forums to find upgrade paths, although they can still have issues sometimes with full hardware support.

The HABPanelViewer also looks interesting as an FKB alternative but it’s Android 6 and up.

Hi

today I finished my first real wall mount tablet. My hardware is a lenovo tab 3 7, the frame is made from alu profiles and the charger is an in wall charger in a switch socket behind the tablet. Alltogether about 70€
The tablet starts charging via a presence detector (KNX).
In daydream mode, I have to tap once to unlock the tablet, in lockscreen mode I have to tap it twice. Maybe I will change that with kiosk browser but for now this is fine for me.

Maybe this is a inspiration for some of you

Regards

3 Likes

use the FKB “screensaver” and set the screensaver URL to "dim:"
depending on the screen technology (OLED screen will be OFF and black, regular LED screen will just be black, some backlight shining through). when you touch the tablet the screen will revert to on

i use this method on a 50$ Amazon Fire 7 (most current) and it works a treat. tablet does not revert to any lock screens or anything. its dark all day until you touch it or it gets motion activated (FKB).

so yeah, the amazon fire tablets are annoying, but they can be made to work with some settings in FKB.

and i use a 3D printed mount for it:

I have a samsung tab pro 8.4 as another panel. I used a router and made a “picture frame” for it. i’ll try to post pictures to night if anyone is interested.

1 Like

Hi Daniel,

Very nice setup, but what do you mean with “The tablet starts charging via a presence detector (KNX).” ?

Br, Chris.

@xsherlock

Hi Maciej,

I really love the simple and easy to read panels you are creating!
One question though, would it be possible to get the widget code of your “Name / Time / Temp” panel at the top?

It might just be me who have overlooked it somewhere, but could you point me in the right direction then :).

Thanks

here it is someone asked about it already in unrelated thread: