Hello,
So this is great if you have a wallmounted iPad as a dashboard and don´t want the screen to be always on. I searched everywhere for this but did not find any solution. Until yesterday ! I saw a post on reddit with a simple, yet brilliant solution.
You need this:
iOS device. I have an iPad with iOS 14 that is wallmounted.
One motiondetector compatible with homekit (or any other sensor working with homekit).
Sensors in homey can be used in homekit with the homeykit app.
In the Apple Home app set the motion sensor (or any other sensor of your choice) to send you a notification. This will trigger the display to turn on. In notifaction settings, turn off notification sound for the home app.
Go to settings for guided assess mode. Select how long the screen should stay on in guided access mode.
Open your dashboard of choice and then activate guided access mode with three clicks on the homebutton. DONE.
Now everytime the motion sensor register motion it will send a notifcation, the screen will wake up. But the notifaction will not be seen beacuse you have activated guided asstiance.
ATT: You might have to delete your screen password and set the screen to be always on in the screen settings for this to work.
Simple yet brillant I cant find the post on reddit but i want to thank the guy comming up with this idea.
A year ago I created a tutorial how to use an ESP32 to unlock an iPad. The ESP32 emulates an bluetooth keyboard and is connected with homey using Homeyduino. With this you can lock and unlock the ipad (like pressing a keyboard) from Homey:
A couple more tips / options for getting this to work in case they’re useful to anyone.
Using an older iPad
I have an older iPad used as a dashboard and it can only run iOS 12 so I don’t have any direct control over how long the screen stays on when in guided access mode. Instead there is a setting under guided access mode which allows it to mirror the auto-lock timeout set for the iPad overall. So I have set that to 5 minutes for my use case and then set the guided access mode to mirror it. I also removed the iPad password as suggested in the original post above.
More control over when the screen wakes
To give a bit more control over when the iPad wakes, I use a slightly different approach than a motion sensor sending a notification via HomeKit. Instead I have the Homey app installed on the iPad and logged in as my guest account (which is also the account I use for my homeydash dashboard). I then have flows set up on Homey to send a push notification to the guest user when I want the dashboard to wake up. I do use a motion sensor as a trigger but this way I can factor in other logic as well and in particular, keep the screen awake while there is still motion (without it going off and coming back on again) by sending a new notification after a bit shorter delay than the screen timeout on the iPad while there is still motion.
Hi Jonathan - I’m a newbie and can’t manage to make this work for me. Could you please share the flow you are using for this in order to make this work? A big great thank you!
Are you asking specifically about how to keep the display from turning off by sending repeat messages? I thought I had that working when I posted the message above but I think I must have been imagining it as after more testing I found the display going to sleep on the iPad can’t be extended with another message. So what I actually have now is the iPad going to sleep for a second or two before being woken again if there is extended movement.
My iPad screen is set to sleep after 5 mins and it dims about 30s before that. I found that sending a message before the display is fully off results in it just turning off at the end of its original 5 min time. So I need to time the message as soon after that as possible to minimise the amount of time it’s off. I’ve just refined that with trial and error and so far ended up at 307s as you can see in the flow. I might be able to shave a few more seconds off that with it still working reliably - still a work in progress.
I cant find the post on reddit but i want to thank the guy comming up with this idea.
