Home Assistant and Loxone wall panel: 3 options

Disclosure: I am building Lumapanel, one of the panels mentioned near the end. Most of this post, though, is a set of selection criteria that hold whatever you end up putting on your wall.

A home with automation usually has a great phone app and… nothing on the wall. And a phone is a poor light switch: you have to find it, unlock it, open the app, scroll to the right room. A wall panel is meant to solve exactly that — except “wall panel” means three quite different routes, each with its own trade-offs.

What a wall panel should actually do

Before comparing options, write down what you expect from the panel. My list, after years of looking at installations:

Show state, not just buttons. Is the gate closed, is the living-room light on, what is the temperature. And honestly: when the panel has no data, it should say “unknown”, not zero or “off”.
Keep a few frequent actions at hand. Scenes, lights, blinds, the gate. Not every device in the house — the ones you reach for daily.
Work locally. When the internet goes down, the hallway light still has to switch on. The panel should talk to the automation system on the home network, not through a cloud.
Be predictable after a failure. After a power cut or a controller restart it comes back on its own, and a failed configuration change does not leave a black screen.
Be easy to change. Homes change: devices are added, rooms change purpose, the household learns what it really uses. A panel whose layout is hard to adjust freezes in its day-one state.

The last point is the one most often skipped, and it decides whether, a year later, the panel is used or ignored.

Route 1: a tablet in kiosk mode

The most popular start, especially in the Home Assistant world: an Android tablet or an iPad on a mount, with a browser or an app showing a dashboard full-screen.

Pros:

Easy to start — plenty of people already have a tablet in a drawer.
A large, sharp screen on familiar hardware.
You build the dashboard with the same tools you use in your automation system.

Cons:

A tablet is a consumer device designed to be carried, not to live on a wall around the clock. A battery permanently on a charger and OS updates that change the device’s behaviour on their own are typical sources of trouble.
You have to look after kiosk mode yourself: locking the app, waking the screen, dimming at night.
Mounting and power usually involve a compromise — a charger cable, a surface-mounted bracket.

A good route for someone who enjoys tinkering and accepts that the panel is a project rather than an appliance.

Route 2: a ready-made panel from the system’s vendor

Many automation vendors and companies in their ecosystems offer dedicated wall panels: a device designed to be mounted, with software prepared for a specific system.

Pros:

The hardware is made for the wall — enclosure, power, mounting.
Integration with the “home” system is usually polished.
The installer knows the device and can deploy it.

Cons:

The panel is usually tied to one ecosystem. If your home runs more than one system, or you plan to switch, check this before you buy.
Changing the screen layout often goes through the vendor’s configuration tools or through the installer. For the resident, that means a call to the company for every tweak.
The look and the capabilities follow the vendor’s decisions — you can configure them, but within the vendor’s frame.

A good route when the whole house runs on one system and the layout is set up by the installer and rarely touched.

Route 3: a panel with a browser layout editor

The third route combines the first two: a dedicated device for the wall, but with a screen layout you change yourself — in a browser, without programming. The panel is a client of the automation system you already have: it pulls the list of devices and scenes from it, and you decide what goes on the screen.

Pros:

The resident or the installer changes the layout, with no programmer visit and no firmware flashing.
The same panel can work with different automation systems — provided it has an adapter for them.
The hardware is designed for the wall, not borrowed from the tablet category.

Cons:

Everything depends on whether the adapter for your system exists and works. Check the status of the specific integration, not general promises.
It is a younger category — fewer finished installations to look at and fewer experiences from other users.

Why changing the layout should not require compiling

It sounds like a technical detail, but it is the heart of the choice. If every screen change means rebuilding software, every change has a cost: a specialist’s time, the risk that something stops working, and reluctance to make tweaks. The result is predictable — the panel stays exactly as it was on installation day.

An example from our own testing: the live Home Assistant install we test Lumapanel against has around 460 entities. By our measurement, something like 30–50 of them belong on a wall panel. The rest is telemetry, diagnostic readings, phone batteries. Picking those few dozen is not a one-off decision but a process: a week later one tile turns out to be useless and another is missing. If each such tweak requires a compile, nobody will make it.

So the good question to ask of any panel is: who will change the screen layout six months from now, how — and what will it cost?

Where Lumapanel fits (the honest part)

Lumapanel is the touch wall panel we are building at LumaSoft, and it takes the third route. The key facts:

Designer in the browser, no compiling. The screen editor runs on the panel itself: you type the panel’s address into a browser, lay out pages from your home’s devices and save — the panel shows the new layout straight away.
A failed save does not break the screen. If the panel rejects a project, it says so plainly, and the previous layout stays.
No cloud needed to control your home. The panel talks to your automation system on the home network.
Nothing to install on the controller. The panel uses the interfaces your system already provides.
Camera tiles (10.1″ panel). IP cameras on your home network, previewed in tiles on a page.

Integration status, exactly as on the product page:

System	Status
Home Assistant	works — connected via the WebSocket API, tested on a live installation
Loxone	works — tested on a test Miniserver
Fibaro Home Center 3	in testing
Ampio	planned, no date

And most importantly: Lumapanel is in development. It runs on prototypes, it is not on sale yet, and we are not giving prices or dates until they are certain. If you want to know when we launch — or you are an installer and want to talk about deployments — join the waitlist on the Lumapanel page.

Summary

Tablet in kiosk mode — a quick start and flexibility, in exchange for looking after a consumer device.
Ready-made vendor panel — a polished integration with one system, in exchange for layout changes going through the vendor or the installer.
Panel with a browser editor — a device made for the wall and a layout you change yourself, provided your system has a working adapter.

Whatever the route, check three things before you buy: does the panel work without the internet, what does it show when it has no data, and who will change the screen layout when your home changes.

Lumapanel is made by LumaSoft (LUMA sp. z o.o.). Home Assistant, Loxone, Fibaro and Ampio are trademarks of their respective owners; LumaSoft is not affiliated with them.