Echo Show 5 Room Card: A Single-Room Dashboard for Tiny Wall Screens

If you’ve been hanging around the Home Assistant world lately, you’ve probably noticed a trend: Echo Show 5 units are becoming mini dashboard screens. Between the jailbreak progress and the ability to run LineageOS on them, they’ve suddenly turned into a neat little “cheap wall display” option.

And that’s where my brain did the thing it always does: it saw a new form factor… and immediately started arguing with Lovelace layouts. 😅

Most dashboards are built like full control rooms: multiple cards, multiple columns, lots of context. On a small display, that quickly becomes tiny text + tap targets from another galaxy.

So I built something different:

The idea

One card = one room dashboard.

A single view that’s readable at a glance, touch-friendly, and looks intentional on a small screen.

That’s the goal of my new Lovelace custom card:

Echo Show 5 Room Card (custom:echo-show-5-room-card)

It’s available via HACS (Frontend), and it’s designed to shine as a panel view (single-card display).

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What it looks like

The layout is deliberately “room-first”:

• Top-left: Room name + subtitle (typically temperature + humidity)
• Bottom-left: A big room icon with a halo
• Badge: A static badge that changes icon + colour based on your temp/humidity thresholds (badge icon stays white)
• Center: A main control slot (thermostat / light / media / etc.)
• Right: Up to 8 action buttons in a fixed 2 columns × 4 rows grid

The design goal is simple: it should look clean whether you configure 2 buttons or all 8, and it should never “break” the layout.

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Why it works well on Echo Show style displays

Under the hood, the card renders a fixed 960×480 “stage” and scales it to cover the container. That means you get predictable positioning and proportions, without constantly fighting responsive CSS across random display sizes.

In other words: the layout stays consistent, and the device just becomes a window into it.

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Features (the useful bits)

Background + overlay

• Optional background image
• Configurable dark overlay so text stays readable even on bright photos

Header styling

Because backgrounds vary wildly, you can configure:

• Title text colour and font size
• Subtitle text colour and font size

Main icon + halo

• Big icon bottom-left
• Halo follows whatever your main icon colour is (no hard-coded teal)

Static badge (fixed position)

• Badge is fixed in place (intentionally not user-movable)
• Badge circle colour changes based on thresholds
• Badge icon changes, but stays white

Center control slot

You can choose:

• Preset + entity (easy mode): thermostat, light, media-control, fan, generic entity
• Or advanced mode: pass a full center_card config

Extras:

• Center background forced transparent so it blends into the design
• Optional hiding of the “more info” dots on the embedded card
• Light preset supports scaling (I’m using 1.25)

Buttons (up to 8)

• Fixed grid: 2×4 slots
• Per-button:
  • label
  • icon (picker)
  • icon colour
  • label text colour
  • entity (optional)
  • tap action (toggle / more-info / call-service / navigate)
• Empty slots don’t show outlines (no dotted “ghost buttons”)

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Recommended setup

This card is happiest as a panel view, so it fills the screen cleanly:

views:
  - title: Bedroom
    path: bedroom
    panel: true
    cards:
      - type: custom:echo-show-5-room-card
        title: Bedroom
        background_image: /local/images/bedroom.jpg
        env_temp_entity: sensor.bedroom_temperature
        env_humidity_entity: sensor.bedroom_humidity

##Optional: Browser Mod for kiosk vibes

The card itself doesn’t require anything extra.

But in my setup, I use Browser Mod to:

• hide the Home Assistant header / UI chrome

• make the display feel more “kiosk-like”

If you’re building a wall display out of a Show 5, Browser Mod is a great companion.

##Inspiration / credit

This card was inspired by Aguacate’s Room Cards concept:

https://aguacatec.es/room-cards/

##Where to get it

HACS (Frontend)

Repo:

(Once it lands in the HACS default store, I’ll update this post.)

##What’s next

This is the first release, and I’m planning to iterate based on real-world use. If you try it on an Echo Show (or any small wall display), I’d love to hear:

what devices you’re using

which center controls look best

what you wish the editor did differently

If you want to follow along (or file issues / feature requests), the repo is the best place to do it.

Thanks for reading, and happy dashboarding 👇✨