Watch and control your home

Follow these steps in your own Denframe. This website never connects to your household, your accounts or your devices, and never asks for your credentials.

1. 1

   Connect Home Assistant

   In Studio, open Sources, then Home, and choose Connect Home Assistant. Enter Home Assistant URL and Long-lived access token, then choose Connect. Show Home Assistant sensor values walks through the token and the address.

   The token stays on the Denframe host and is never sent to screens, logs or links. Plain HTTP is accepted only for a local address (a private or loopback IP, localhost or a .local name); use HTTPS otherwise, and prefer it on your home network too.

   If a token may have been exposed, delete it in Home Assistant, choose Disconnect… from the ⋯ menu on the Home page, then connect again with a new token.

2. 2

   Choose what to watch

   On the Home page, type part of a name in Find an entity, such as back door or battery, and choose Watch beside it. Choose Refresh list if a new entity is missing. You can watch up to 100 entities.

   Each watched entity gets a row with its role. Denframe picks one from the entity; change it with the list on the row.

   Role	The screen says so when
   Door or lock	it is unlocked or active
   Window or opening	it is open
   Leak sensor	it detects moisture; this is always critical
   Climate	it is heating while a watched opening is open
   Light left on	it stays on past its time
   Battery low	it reads below the threshold, in percent
   Energy use	it reads above the threshold, in the entity’s own unit

3. 3

   Set how long before it counts

   Choose Change ▸ on a row. Set Display label, the name the screen uses, and Active for (seconds): how long the condition must last before the screen mentions it, from 0 to 86400. Window or opening starts at 600 seconds, Light left on at 1800 and the other roles at 0; changing a row’s role puts back that role’s starting values.

   Repeat cooldown (seconds) limits how soon the same condition can notify again after it clears and returns. It never hides a condition that is still true.

   For a battery, set Battery threshold (%), which starts at 20. For energy use, set the energy threshold in the entity’s unit; it starts at 1000. Choose Save.

4. 4

   Put the Home block on a dashboard

   Under Showing on on the Home page, choose Add to a dashboard… and pick one. You can also add a Home block from the dashboard editor.

   When nothing needs attention, the block reads “Home is calm.” and “All selected systems are normal”. Otherwise it reads “Home needs attention.” and lists them, critical first, a few at a time, with how many more there are. In its smallest size it reads “All normal” or how many need attention. A watched entity that is unknown, unavailable, renamed or removed shows as an advisory, and its row on the Home page says so.

   The Home block only reports.

5. 5

   Approve lights and switches

   On the Home page, under Control and share, find Use home devices in Denframe and choose Home controls…. Home controls are experimental and not yet tried with real devices.

   Under Find a device, search in Search lights and switches and narrow the list with Show: All lights and switches, Dimmable lights or On/off only. Each device has an approve button for on/off and, for a dimmable light, one for brightness.

   Approve a home control names the device and the one operation. For brightness, set Lowest brightness, percent and Highest brightness, percent. Tick the box that lets household owners operate it and, for a switch Denframe can’t identify, the box confirming it powers nothing unsafe. Then choose Approve control.

   On, Off and Set act on the real device at once. Use them only when you mean to switch that device.

   The device appears under Approved with On and Off, or a brightness field and Set, and Remove to take the approval away.

   Watching an entity never lets Denframe operate it. Each control is approved on its own, per device and per operation. Only household owners can approve a control, use it in Studio or choose it for a panel; anyone at a panel can press the controls chosen for it. From Home Assistant only single lights and switches are offered: groups, scenes, scripts, locks, covers, climate and every other kind never are, nor a switch named for a lock, door, gate, alarm, heating or water. Brightness needs the light’s on/off approved too, because setting a level turns it on. A household can approve up to 200 controls.

   Approving a control is not a test step: don’t switch real household devices on and off to try it. If Denframe can’t confirm a result, it says so and never sends the command again on its own: check the device itself, and while Denframe hasn’t heard back, use Check again rather than pressing again.

   Turning the Home Assistant connection off, disconnecting it, replacing its token or pointing it at another address ends every approval for good; a renamed or removed entity ends its own. A replacement device given the same entity ID and the same capabilities keeps the old approval, so remove the control before reusing an entity ID for different hardware.

   The Use Denframe in Apple Home row beside it, with Set up…, shares Denframe with Apple Home through Home Assistant: see Apple Home.

   Pairing HomeKit accessories directly and operating these controls from a touch panel are built but off in beta builds, and not offered: see what is still in testing.

6. 6

   Pause a Samsung TV’s dashboard while it’s in use

   This bridge is experimental and read-only. If a Samsung TV in Home Assistant also shows a Denframe dashboard through Cast, Denframe can pause that dashboard while the TV is off or reports another source or app, and resume it when one of the sources or apps you list returns. It only reads the TV’s state through Home Assistant: it doesn’t connect to the TV or SmartThings, and it never powers the TV, changes its input, sends remote keys or controls Art Mode.

   On the Home page, open the ⋯ menu and choose TV bridge (experimental)…. Choose the Samsung TV entity and the Denframe Cast screen, then enter Samsung model, Model year and Firmware (optional), and pick External Chromecast or Built-in Cast under Cast path.

   Enter at least one value in Denframe-active TV sources or Denframe-active TV apps, exactly as Home Assistant reports them, such as HDMI 2. Explicit Art Mode entity (optional) is only watched. Choose Add read-only bridge, then Save Samsung bridges.

   Reopen the sheet and choose Probe capability matrix for a fresh read of each saved TV’s power, source, app and Art Mode.

   No Samsung model is supported yet: “Hardware unverified” in the matrix is not a support claim. When the TV’s state is missing, unknown or unavailable, Denframe does nothing, and it resumes only a dashboard it paused itself.

7. 7

   Check it’s watching

   Wait for a real change you were expecting, such as someone leaving a door open, then look at the Home block: once Active for (seconds) has passed, it lists the door, and it returns to “Home is calm.” once the door closes.

   Don’t open doors, wet a leak sensor or switch lights just to test a screen.

   In Home controls…, each control you approved is listed under Approved: an on/off control reads Approved, a brightness control its range. On a panel you ticked controls for, the Home button opens the list; there is no need to press a control to check it.