How to turn an old iPad into a smart home wall panel

Mounting a tablet on a wall to run a smart home has become common practice, and the iPad suits the job: plenty of them circulate second hand, the screen ages better than the battery, and Apple supports them for a long time. What remains is choosing a model, finding a place for it, stopping it from going to sleep, and deciding what belongs on the screen.

This article covers those four points. It is published by the company behind HomePad, a dashboard app for iPad, which is worth knowing as you read. Most of what follows applies whichever app you end up using.

Which iPad will do

The only criterion that matters is the version of iPadOS the device accepts. Processing power does not come into it: a wall panel displays states and sends commands, which asks nothing of a chip.

To check, open Settings > General > About and look at the Version line. Most smart home apps still maintained today ask for iPadOS 17 or later, HomePad included. iPads sold from 2017 onwards generally reach it. Older models are frozen on earlier versions: they still work, but the range of compatible apps narrows every year.

On size, the eleven inch class suits wall use best. It reads from across a room without taking up much surface. Thirteen inch models are easier to read at a distance and noticeably bulky in a hallway or an entrance. An iPad mini fits a tight spot, provided you accept walking up to it to read a value.

Where to put it

The height generally used is around 140 cm to the centre of the screen, slightly above a light switch. The screen stays visible without tilting your head and within reach of a child.

Which room you choose affects real use more than which wall. Entrances and kitchens give the best results, because people move through them with their hands busy, in situations where pulling out a phone is awkward. Panels installed in offices or living rooms are often abandoned after a few weeks, since a phone is quicker when you are already sitting down.

A panel stays powered permanently. Find the nearest available socket before settling on a spot, otherwise the cable becomes the main problem of the install.

Three kinds of mount

Adhesive mounts with a magnetic plate go up in minutes and come off without damage. The cable stays visible, which suits a trial run or a rented flat.

Screwed mounts with a cable channel need drilling and hide the cable. This is the most common choice for a permanent install.

Recessing the device into the wall, with a socket placed behind it, gives the most discreet result. It means cutting into plasterboard and having power at that exact point, so the location has to be settled before you start.

In practice many installs begin with adhesive and move to a screwed or recessed mount after a few weeks, once the position has proven itself.

Two settings you cannot skip

Auto-Lock has to be off, or the screen dies after a few minutes: Settings > Display & Brightness > Auto-Lock > Never.

Guided Access, under Settings > Accessibility, restricts the iPad to a single app. A triple click on the side button turns it on, a passcode turns it off. That is what keeps a visitor from wandering through the rest of the device.

Leaving auto brightness on avoids an over-bright screen at night, which is the most common reason hallway panels get unplugged.

What to put on the screen

This is where successful installs and abandoned ones diverge most.

The natural instinct is to show everything: every lamp, every sensor, the graphs, the list of offline devices. The result is a dense screen nobody consults, because nothing can be found on it quickly.

A wall panel gets looked at in passing, for a second or two. It answers a small number of recurring questions: did something stay on, how warm is it, is the door shut. Around those, a few comfort items are enough: the weather, what is playing, the scenes actually in use.

A simple test for pruning: if a tile has not been touched or read in a month, it is taking up space without earning it.

HomeKit or Home Assistant

The two systems cover the same need by opposite routes, and the choice is usually made before the panel goes up.

HomeKit is built into iOS and iPadOS. A compatible accessory joins by scanning a code, Siri works with no setup, and sharing between household members is handled by the system. The constraint is the catalogue: an uncertified device is not recognised.

Home Assistant is open source software installed on a machine on your network, often a small computer left running. It supports a far wider range of devices, including brands with no Apple certification, and keeps the full history of every sensor, which HomeKit does not. In return it asks for an initial setup and occasional maintenance.

Both can coexist in one home, but dashboard apps generally connect to one of them at a time. That is the case with HomePad, where the source is picked at first launch and changed later in Settings.

The apps available

On the HomeKit side, Apple's Home app is free and enough for many uses, but it was not designed for a permanent display: there is no standby mode, no free tile layout and no way to lock it to one room.

On the Home Assistant side, a Lovelace dashboard shown in a browser in kiosk mode remains the most common method. It is free and highly flexible, at the cost of manual configuration and the behaviour of a web page rather than an app.

Several third party apps sit between the two, including HomePad, which we publish. It connects to either HomeKit or Home Assistant, picks up the rooms already defined, lets you lay out a grid of tiles freely, and falls back to a clock, the weather and your photos when the screen is idle. It is a one-off purchase with no subscription, and it runs on the local network.

Before drilling anything, a trial costs little: stand the iPad on a piece of furniture where you plan to mount it and leave it running for a fortnight. It is the most reliable way to find out whether the spot is right, and whether the panel will genuinely be used.