New in Test flight: Wall panel devices based on ESP32 boards
A wall panel for Homey — a €48 round touchscreen that drives a room
For a while I wanted something on the wall that does what a wall switch should do in a
house full of smart devices: show the room you are standing in, and let you change it
without finding your phone. Not a tablet with a browser left open, not a cloud dashboard —
a device in Homey, with a knob.
So I built one, and it is now good enough to share. It is an off-the-shelf Elecrow
CrowPanel 2.1" rotary (about €48): an ESP32-S3 with a 480×480 round touchscreen and a
rotary ring around it, powered over USB power. Nothing is soldered and nothing is modified.
You swipe between cards, turn the ring to set a value, and press the knob to switch. Just like the watch app, configure the cards to optimaze the experience.
What is on the screen
You choose the cards per panel, in Homey, for one room:
- Lights — on/off, brightness, and warmth or colour, in one card for a lamp or a group
- Climate — the setpoint with the measured temperature on the same ring, heating or cooling, the fan
- Media — volume, play/pause, next track, which source, with what is playing in the middle
- Moods — your Homey moods as one tap each
- Energy — the figure, with a line under it so you see whether it is climbing
- Insights — a real chart from Homey’s own history, up to three readings over each other
- Alarm clock — set it at the panel or from a flow; it rings on the panel
- Presence — “leaving”, “back”, “asleep”, “awake”, which keeps Homey’s own user flags in step (flow configuration required)
- Zone cards, and a device card for anything else you own, with up to three controls
Why this and not a tablet
- It is a device in Homey, so its screen, brightness and cards are all flow-controllable.
Dim at night, bring the Energy card to the front when energy peaks, turn one card red
while the alarm is going off.
- Nothing is configured on the panel. You pick the cards in Homey, in the Repair wizard of
the device, and they appear on the wall within seconds.
- It updates itself. New firmware is a button on the device page: the panel downloads it,
checks it against a hash Homey gave it over a signed connection, and restarts.
- No cloud, no account, no telemetry. A panel talks only to your Homey, on your local network,
and every request it makes is signed. It never receives your Wi-Fi password from Homey —
you type that into the panel itself.
-Custom firmware. The panel is flashed with optimized fully unique firmware for this purpose, becomming a unique Homey device
What you need
- A Homey Pro
- One supported board (the CrowPanel above for now)
- The Wear OS Controller app. Panel support is in the
test version for now.
- One cable moment, once per panel. After that the cable never comes back.
Getting one going
- Open the web flasher in Chrome or Edge,
plug the panel in, press Install. Nothing to download or install.
- The panel opens its own Wi-Fi network and shows the name and an eight-digit password on its
screen. Join it with your phone, pick your network, and paste the pairing code from the
app’s settings.
- Add the panel as a device in Homey, then open Repair to choose its room and its cards.
- Print a case if you like: the models are in the repository, in PETG, with a wall-box mount
that makes its own 5 V behind the panel, or a desk stand.
Build and hardware
Everything — instructions, images, enclosures — is here:
GitHub - kaohlive/homey-wallpanel: A round touchscreen on the wall that drives a room in Homey: firmware images, enclosures and how to set one up. · GitHub
It includes a cup with bajonet style connection to mount the panel into.
Then choose between a desk stand or a flush mount.
Desk stand simple stable base to print and has the connections for the cup, easy remove the device from the stand by twisting the bajonet mechanism
Flush mount a more complex route, it is designed to fit standard flush gaps in your wall, but since it holds main at 230v we needed an adapter to fit there also. The mount holds a design to house a additional 3 euro adapter HLK-PM01 to deliver the 5 volt but that does require some soldering and carefull mouting, but it does fit as long as the wall box is nice clean and empty of other stuff 
But the result is a nice mounted rotatable, pressable screen on your walls without any visible wires (box needs phase and null).
Why it lives in an app called “Wear OS Controller”
Because that app already spoke the language: it drives Homey from a Wear OS watch and models
your phone as a device, over the same signed local API. The panel is a third client on that
same contract, so it got the same cards, the same groups and the same zone logic for free.
The name is historical; renaming an app in the store is not free, so for now it stays.
For your flows
Each card type fires a trigger when someone uses it, with tokens for which card and what
changed, so you can hang your own scenes off a panel. Actions: show a card, set an alarm, set
one card’s colour. And the panel reports on itself — link strength, its own temperature, and a
connectivity alarm when it has gone quiet for two minutes.
Status
One board is supported today, and the firmware is built per board, so a panel is only ever
offered an image built for its own hardware. It hangs on a wall here and works, since I distribute the firmware as part of the Homey app you get the firmware updates to push and keep it in line with the app you installed, so it should never break compatibility, dont run test version, your firmware will be the one aimed at the live version.
I need your feedback: a card that reads wrong for a device you own, a device whose controls
do not fit a ring sensibly, a panel dropping off Wi-Fi, or anything about the printed parts.
Say which board, which firmware version (it is on the device page) and which app version. A
photo of the screen usually says more than a paragraph. Issues can go in
the repository or right here.
If anyone wants a different display supported, say which one — the protocol and the Homey side
are identical for every board; what differs is the screen driver, the touch controller and the
pin map.
See the repo for pictures and detailed instructions.
Control anything - lights, locks, thermostats, blinds, switches.
Fire your scenes - trigger any Homey Flow with a single tap.
Tiles on your watch face - your top actions, one swipe away.
Built your way - pick what goes on the watch, and in what order.
