I Hired An Illustrator To Draw My House. Now It’s My Home Assistant Dashboard

TL;DR

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Anton Frolov commissioned an illustrator to draw his home and used the artwork as the basis for an interactive Home Assistant dashboard. The project layers device images, animations and status labels over the illustration, aiming to make controls more appealing and usable for his family.

Anton Frolov has turned a custom, hand-drawn illustration of his house into an interactive dashboard for Home Assistant, the open-source smart-home platform. His report describes how the artwork became a visual control panel for household devices, after his family declined to use the dashboard he had built previously.

The project grew out of a practical problem: some automations still require people to act. Frolov said his garden lights can only be controlled through an app, and a timer he configured switches them off after a while. As the timer approaches its limit, the lights blink to prompt someone to open the app and extend it. He said other members of the household did not want to use his earlier Home Assistant dashboard.

Frolov considered floor-plan dashboards and settled on commissioning an environment artist. He supplied an architectural plan, room photographs, style references, examples of dashboards and a technical brief. He asked for separate day and night images, plus individual device layers with off-state stills and on-state animation frames. The assets were to share one canvas size and keep each element in its correct position, so they could be layered without being manually aligned later.

For the interface, Frolov used Home Assistant’s built-in picture-elements card. The illustration serves as the background, while image elements, icons and status labels sit above it; conditional elements can appear or disappear depending on a device’s state. He describes the setup as relying on a standard card and configuration techniques, rather than a separate 3D model or a custom dashboard application. The supplied report ends while explaining how device images change with their states, so it does not provide every implementation detail.

A Dashboard Designed for Household Use

The story highlights a usability challenge in smart homes: automations can reduce routine work, but residents still need an understandable way to manage exceptions. Frolov’s example is the garden-light timer, which needs a person to intervene before the lights switch off. A control panel that other household members are willing to use may make those occasional actions easier than relying on an interface they avoid.

The approach also shows how a visual design choice can shape a Home Assistant interface without replacing its underlying controls. Here, the illustration is not just decoration: device states and controls are layered onto the rooms. The report is a personal account, however, and does not establish that custom artwork will improve usability for every household or that the dashboard has produced measurable results beyond Frolov’s own experience.

From Automation to an Illustrated Floor Plan

Frolov said he had been automating his home with Home Assistant for about a year. He described routines that switch off air conditioners when everyone leaves and adjust sprinkler run time based on weather, including skipping watering when it rains. These examples frame the illustration project as an addition to an existing system, not a replacement for its automations.

He considered both 3D floor-plan dashboards and a pixel-art approach. In his view, many 3D examples used a static model with interactive icons layered over it, while pixel art would require drawing or arranging individual sprites. He instead chose an illustrator whose portfolio focused on environments. Frolov said the commissioning process and preparing the brief took a substantial share of the work; the artwork, he wrote, was the core of the project.

“For the first time, it’s one the whole family actually enjoys using.”

— Anton Frolov, author of the report

Costs, Results and Setup Details

The report does not state the illustrator’s fee, the project’s full timeline, or how much time Frolov spent configuring the finished dashboard. It also does not identify the illustrator in the supplied material. While Frolov says his family enjoys using the result, he provides no usage data or comparison with the earlier dashboard.

The available source text cuts off during its explanation of how Home Assistant changes an image when a device’s state changes. It therefore does not confirm all configuration steps, the full range of controls, or how the dashboard handles every device and screen size. The report also does not say whether the artwork or setup has been shared as downloadable files for other users.

Further Technical Details to Follow

The supplied report describes the commissioning brief and the basic picture-elements structure, but its excerpt ends before the complete implementation is explained. Readers seeking to reproduce the dashboard would need the remaining instructions or configuration from Frolov, particularly for animated device states and positioning the interactive elements.

No product launch, scheduled update or broader Home Assistant change is described. The next confirmed development is limited to the continuation of the author’s account, if available; the source material does not specify a publication date or a planned follow-up.

Key Questions

What did Anton Frolov build?

He used a hand-drawn illustration of his house as the background for an interactive Home Assistant dashboard, with device images and status information layered over it.

Why did he commission an illustrator?

Frolov said his family did not want to use his earlier dashboard, even though some tasks—such as extending a timer for the garden lights—still required a person to act.

What Home Assistant feature powers the interface?

He used the built-in picture-elements card, placing image, icon, status-label and conditional elements over the illustrated floor plan.

What artwork files did the project require?

Frolov requested separate day and night versions, device layers for different states, and files aligned to a shared canvas size. He also said animated WebP files would have been preferable to sprite sheets for his use.

Is the dashboard available for other people to install?

The supplied report does not say whether Frolov published the artwork or a complete configuration for others to download.

Source: hn