smart home dashboard

Question

I am experimenting with IoT projects and I am using Raspberry Pi to host the MQTT broker & multiple NodeMCU ESP8266 boards to host the sensors. I got to a state where I have a number of ESP8266 boards with sensors such as relays, PIR relays, DHT11, etc and all of them subscribe to particular topics and post their state/value to MQTT topic.

I have installed in Raspberry Pi the freeboard to see and manage the sensors/relays, but it is really hectic. Every time I am rebooting the system, it looses the config and I have to load it or simply restore it from a saved file! This is not useful at all and I am looking for an alternative. I am using MQTT to have all the functionality, but I would like something to visualise it and make it user friendly, even for my kids. What I am looking for is the ability for the user to login and see a page that has:

• relays status and switch to enable it on or off
• thermometer to show in a nice way the current temperature
• PIR relays status
• door switches to show the current status

I would like it to be really light so it can be installed in Raspberry Pi (even RPi zero w). Ideally I would like to open a webpage eg http://192.168.x.y/dashboard/1stpage and login to see the status Have a different page with login credentials for a 2nd page eg.

http://192.168.x.y/dashboard/2ndpage

Could someone suggest a nice dashboard that I could use, please?

Answer 1

Would something like Grafana fill the bill? It's a dashboard construction set with a decent set of plug-ins for different widgets, data sources, databases and so forth.