Visual Floorplan Smart Home Dashboard for Non-Technical Users
Smart home owners juggle 5-10 brand-specific apps. Home Assistant can unify them but requires YAML editing and significant setup. Users want a visual floorplan where they tap a room to control lights, see sensor data, and get alerts. A builder on HN is validating this exact gap with a floorplan dashboard product that skips SVG and 3D modeling entirely.
Don't compete with Home Assistant on integrations. Build a beautiful floorplan layer that sits ON TOP of Home Assistant as a frontend. The HA API is well-documented. Users who already have HA running want a prettier, tap-friendly interface for their wall tablet. Users who don't have HA want you to handle the setup invisibly. Pick one audience first.
landscape (3 existing solutions)
Home Assistant dominates the unified dashboard space but its complexity creates an accessibility floor that excludes most smart home owners. The specific gap is a floorplan-based visual interface that auto-discovers devices and lets users place them on a room map without technical knowledge. The HN project getsmarthomefloorplan.com is the first to target this exact niche.