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Home Assistant & MQTT

Kite integrates with Home Assistant in two ways: it loads your HA dashboard as the kiosk URL, and it can report device state back to HA via MQTT. This page covers both.

Dashboard URL

The Dashboard URL is the page Kite loads on startup. For Home Assistant this is typically:

http://<your-ha-ip>:8123

or a specific dashboard path:

http://192.168.1.100:8123/lovelace/kiosk

You can set this in Settings → Web kiosk → Dashboard URL, or during the onboarding wizard.

Scan for Home Assistant

If you don't know your HA IP address, use the built-in discovery:

  1. Go to Settings → Web kiosk → Scan for Home Assistant.
  2. Kite scans your local network using mDNS and a network sweep.
  3. A dialog lists all discovered instances, labeled mDNS or Network scan.
  4. Tap an entry to fill the Dashboard URL automatically.

Tip

mDNS results appear faster. If your router blocks mDNS, the network scan will still find HA as long as both devices are on the same subnet.

MQTT Integration

With MQTT configured, Kite publishes device telemetry (battery level, motion events) and auto-registers itself in Home Assistant via the discovery protocol — no manual entity configuration needed.

Requirements

Before enabling MQTT, make sure:

  • A valid Dashboard URL is already set (the MQTT toggle is gated on this).
  • All six MQTT fields below are filled in.

Settings Reference

Navigate to Settings → MQTT.

Setting What to enter
IP Address Hostname or IPv4 address of your MQTT broker (e.g. 192.168.1.50 or homeassistant.local).
Port Broker port. The standard unencrypted port is 1883.
Client ID A unique identifier for this device on the broker (e.g. kite-hallway-tablet).
Username Broker login username.
Password Broker login password (masked).
Friendly Name Display name reported in HA discovery payloads (e.g. Hallway Kiosk). This is the name that will appear in your Home Assistant entities list.

After filling all fields, flip the MQTT master toggle to enable the connection.

Debounce

Text fields save after roughly 1 second of no typing. Toggle changes save immediately.

Home Assistant Auto-Discovery

When MQTT is active, Kite publishes standard Home Assistant discovery payloads. Your device appears automatically under Settings → Devices & Services → MQTT in HA with sensors for:

  • Battery level and charging state
  • Motion detected (binary sensor)
  • Camera stream URL (when Camera Streaming is enabled)

No YAML configuration required on the HA side.

Camera Stream URL Sensor

When camera streaming is enabled, Kite publishes the live MJPEG endpoint as a sensor:

Entity Example value
sensor.<clientId>_camera_url http://192.168.1.x:8080/stream.mjpg

The sensor value is empty when streaming is off, and updates automatically when the port changes. You can use this URL directly in a camera: generic entry in configuration.yaml — no username or password needed. See Camera Streaming → Home Assistant Integration for the full setup.

Troubleshooting

MQTT toggle is greyed out — check that the Dashboard URL is set and all six MQTT fields are non-empty.

Device does not appear in Home Assistant — verify the broker IP/port are reachable from the tablet (try pinging from another device), and confirm the username and password are correct.

mDNS scan returns no results — your router may be blocking mDNS. Try the Network scan option, or enter the IP address manually.