As I’ve been “playing” with it a bit, I thought I’d post some updated screenshots of the control system I use for the remote station. As a reminder, I use a Raspberry Pi 4 running Home Assistant OS and Home Assistant.
There are four tabs on the screen for: Overall status and control; Current and recent propagation conditions; more system status information; and environment conditions at the remote station.
In addition, there are special screens showing more detailed information and diagnostics should they be needed.
Home ScreenPropagation ScreenSystem State ScreenEnvironment Screen
The last screen looks more complex than it needs to be because I have been playing with the system to optimize the temperature and humidity in the cabinet. Once I’m done, I’ll hide the various thermostats because they’ll never be adjusted by a user.
I thought I’d add some screenshots of what the control UI looks like.
The one above shows the main screen with the various controls on it. Only two need to be touched in normal circumstances: the Radio Control button and the Windows PC button. These both kick off automations that sequence through turning things on or off – they don’t control things directly.
At the top of the screen are a number of tell-tales that indicate the state of various components, plus basic propagation information.
You can also see the lightning detector and some elementary status info. if Blitzortung reports lightning within 25km, a script runs that sends a Pushover alert, waits a couple of minutes and then kicks off the Radio Power Off script as if the user had tapped the Radio Control button.
Lastly you can see the state of the ATU, you can toggle the Lock function on the ATU to disabled the auto-tune function, and see whether it is tuned or not.
This image shows more comprehensive propagation info.
Lastly, you have a screen with some system status information.
There are more screens accessible via the side menu bar, but these three cover 90% of what’s needed. I’ve seen some remote control screens that are, in my opinion, far too crowded with irrelevant information. All that does is hide important information and controls and overwhelm the user with noise. (again, my opinion).
incidentally, all these screens are produced using the standard controls provided with Home Assistant, plus some useful ham-related plugins (e.g. Blitzortung and HF Propogation)
