r/FacebookPortal

A couple of my Portal Dashboards that I'm pretty much done with tweaking...

Front Door, Lounge and Garden Room.

Lounge and Garden Room ones have Immich screensaver enabled but are not shown here, as these are displayed in the browser so you can see how they work without wonky camera holding

PortalHABridge is currently my app of choice on my Meta/Facebook Portals..and it works really well for pretty much everything I need.

I've never bothered with screensavers before, as I'd never look at them, but with several Portals around the home (6 at present), it's nice to have them doing something other than displaying Home Assistant, which, when you don't need that info, is oblivious to everyone.

So using PHAB's built-in screensaver ability and setting up Immich for the first time, I've now got 6 digital photo frames with HA sitting behind them...if HA isnt used, or a scrren isnt touched for 60 second, the screensaver starts, then tap the screen and your instantly back at your HA home screen, then once you've finished, it happily goes back to screensaver mode...and of course with the Portals backend handling ambient lighting control, its never too bright or too dark

Very high on the wife acceptance factor, and it means some of the photos we have taken now actually see the light of day

I am the author of Ava Pro, a fully self-contained voice satellite and kiosk project for Android 5–16, built around ESPHome. First of all, I would like to thank everyone for every recommendation, share, and piece of honest feedback. Without the long-term testing by community members and the frank discussions and comments on Reddit, there would be no Ava Pro today. By continuously pointing out those small but impactful issues in daily use, everyone has gradually given me the confidence to seriously introduce this project to more people.

I have been developing Ava Pro for over half a year. Since it is called a voice assistant, the voice experience has always been its most important focus. To ensure it runs smoothly on older phones, low-spec tablets, and smart displays, I restructured the wake-word detection, echo cancellation, noise reduction, gain control, and voiceprint functions, and rewrote many performance-sensitive paths in C/C++.

For this reason, I restructured the dual wake-word engine. The first engine retains the lightweight and mature microWakeWord; the second engine, vsWakeWord, offers capabilities significantly different from the original Ava Pro. It follows the ONNX/openWakeWord model approach but does not cram the complete ONNX Runtime, training tools, and general-purpose operators into the device. Those components are powerful but contain many capabilities that are completely unnecessary for wake-word detection. Packaging them as-is would not only significantly increase the installation size but also waste the limited memory and processing resources of older devices. Therefore, I reimplemented a lightweight ONNX model reader in C++, parsing only the structures and operators truly needed by the wake-word model, and rewrote the related feature extraction and model execution functions.

Furthermore, Ava Pro combines a custom-tuned software echo cancellation system, intelligent noise reduction, intelligent gain control, and lightweight 16-dimensional voiceprint matching. It can reduce playback bleed during voice interactions, suppress persistent background noise, and perform speaker matching without requiring high-performance hardware. Many performance-sensitive speech paths have also been rewritten in C/C++. The open-source components used were not simply bundled into the installation package; instead, they were individually refactored, trimmed, recompiled, and compressed according to how Ava Pro actually uses them. This is why the Lite APK has remained below 20 MB for a long time.

Therefore, even with voice, dashboard, music, Bluetooth, calling, and numerous expansion capabilities, the official Ava Pro Lite APK remains below 20 MB and is currently around 18 MB. This makes it considerably smaller than many similar kiosk and voice-panel applications. The 20 MB limit is not a random number; it is a long-term boundary I have set for Ava Pro. We cannot keep adding features at the expense of the already limited storage on older devices. After installing Ava Pro, these devices should still have enough room for Home Assistant, music players, and other genuinely useful Android apps.

Ava Pro has gradually grown to fit real-world home environments, including a Quick Entity panel, home screen, widgets, browser, Bluetooth proxy, presence detection, LAN voice and video calls, and Music Assistant/Sendspin multi-room synchronization, with per-device sync delay, a five-band equalizer, and lyric timing adjustments. Every feature can be disabled individually, and even the voice pipeline is optional.

The screen experience has also been refined: Smart AOD, pixel shift, and background load reduction work together to reduce the risk of burn-in and unnecessary power consumption during extended screen use. The redesigned Dawn Wallpaper brings together wallpaper, time, weather, and Home Assistant status to create a more comfortable experience when viewed from across the room. I especially encourage existing Ava Pro users to experience these changes firsthand, as many features cannot be fully covered in a single introduction.

Integration for beginners is straightforward: install Ava Pro, grant the microphone and overlay permissions, and then enable General Services. Next, in Home Assistant, go to Settings → Devices & Services → Add Integration, search for ESPHome, and select the automatically discovered Ava Pro device. No MQTT or HACS is required. You can also install HA STT and HA Edge TTS from the Mod Store to create your own voice pipeline through Wyoming.

Special thanks to video creator Lone Baggie.

Without his long-term hands-on use, recordings, and feedback, there would be no Ava Pro today.

You can first watch his real-world usage video.

Then use his shared Home Assistant Blueprints and HTML Views.

Together, they can help you quickly build your own Ava Pro kiosk.

Bluetooth proxy and LAN video calling are distinctive extensions, but they are not Ava Pro’s main focus. Its true and ongoing focus remains on how voice, dashboards, and everyday interactions can be naturally integrated into the home.

If you encounter any problems or find something unclear, please leave a comment and let me know. I genuinely want to hear what still needs improvement, and I will do my best to address it.

A lot of us were using our Portals to keep in touch with aging parents, especially if they live far away. I just saw an ad for this system on my Facebook feed. I don't know much about it yet, and my needs have changed, sadly, since my mom who lived 1300 miles away died in November last year.

The device looks a lot like a Portal TV device. You can drop in, like with Echo Show devices, actually change TV channels for your parent via your phone, if needed. I am not sure but it seems that it sadly does not have a camera that will follow the person if they move so needs to be mounted where you have the best field of vision.

It even has a monitoring system that will give you a report of when the person is stationary, or when they last moved in the room.

This YouTube video gives a really detailed description of what you can do and its many different included options depending on your parent's level of ability and needs.
JubileeTV Product Demonstration

>"JubileeTV connects your phone directly to their TV, so you can control it remotely. Fix the TV, change the channel, start a video call, and more  — no matter where you are."

>Remote Caregiving System | TV Remote for Elderly - JubileeTV

It is subscription-based, starting at $39 monthly or $379 annually. If you cancel the subscription, you have to return the device. HOWEVER, they also have what they call the "All-In" plan, which is definitely what I would do if I were going to get it.

Difficult to find on the web site, but I finally asked the chatbot what All-In is.

>The All-In plan is a service plan option that requires a single, one-time payment in exchange for no recurring monthly or annual service fees 🔗🔗.

>Plan Pricing

>The cost of the All-In plan depends on where you purchased your JubileeTV hardware:

(This makes no sense to me; if you get it direct it should be less expensive in my mind, but whatever - saving $189 would be the way to go....)

>Purchased from GetJubileeTV.com: The one-time cost is $789 🔗.
Purchased from a 3rd party (e.g., Amazon): The one-time cost is $600 🔗.

>Important Considerations

>No Recurring Fees: Once the one-time charge is paid, there are no additional recurring fees for your JubileeTV Membership 🔗.

>Cancellation Terms:

>If you rent your hardware (purchased via GetJubileeTV.com): The All-In plan is not refundable or transferable 🔗.

If you own your hardware (purchased via a 3rd party): The Service Plan cannot be canceled. You may only choose to delete your Membership 

(This also makes no sense - if you purchase through their web site, you are still considered to be "renting" it? I assume this means you have to send it back if you cancel?)

In any case, I am posting this for the multiple folks who have posted in this forum recently and long ago who are trying to stay in touch with and assist elderly parents or keep a watchful eye on paid caregivers or nursing homes. This could be their godsend solution.

Sixteen days ago I posted the first version of Portal Launcher here. At the time, I was honest about its limits: it was French-only, designed almost entirely around my own 10-inch Portal, rough to configure, and barely tested outside that one device.

A lot has changed since then.

The post reached more than 11,000 views, people forked the project, tested it on other hardware and sent the first outside contributions. Thank you to everyone who took an early beta seriously enough to try it, especially adroidian for contributing code rather than just reporting what was wrong.

The most important change is that it is now a complete Android launcher, rather than a Home Assistant screen that happens to open when you tap it.

Portal Launcher takes the real Home role. From the clock you can move to a normal application grid, launch any installed app, place and resize Android widgets, create folders, use app shortcuts, hide or rearrange applications, and apply third-party icon packs. Home Assistant is one native page of the launcher, not the only thing the device is allowed to do. You can keep the calm clock as the default view, control the important things directly, open your full Lovelace dashboard when you want it, or use any other Android app installed on the Portal.

It is also no longer tied to one screen size. I now use it on both my Meta Portal and a 5-inch Echo Show running LineageOS. The same interface adapts from the short Echo display to larger 10-inch panels, and the layouts are designed to keep scaling on 12-inch devices as well.

On compact screens, control panels open full-screen instead of being squeezed into one side. The alarm keypad, media controls, volume page, weather forecast, clock and Home Assistant pills all resize from the space actually available. Less important information disappears before the controls you need do.

The other large piece of work was setup.

The old basic configuration has become a guided onboarding flow for launcher permissions, layout, backgrounds and the optional Home Assistant integration. On a large Portal it uses a wider composition; on a short display it presents one decision at a time.

You also no longer need to type a Home Assistant URL and long-lived token on the Portal keyboard. The launcher can display a temporary QR code, let you complete the configuration from a phone on the same network, then test the connection on the panel. The local server stops when you leave the setup screen and old QR codes stop working.

Since the original post:

- The whole interface is available in English and French.

- Portal Launcher now has a real Home Assistant page with favourites, custom groups, and organisation by room or entity type.

- The HA controls cover more entity types and adapt to each device's capabilities.

- Weather, media, thermostats, lights, covers, locks and alarms have been reworked for both compact and large displays.

- Backgrounds can use the Android wallpaper, a calm offline background, a local photo, or an Immich album.

- The launcher grid now includes free app placement, folders, resizable widgets, app shortcuts, hidden applications, third-party icon packs, notification dots and layout backup/restore.

- A rooted Portal can grant the launcher role and required system permissions automatically from the onboarding flow.

- Home Assistant state updates no longer redraw the entire launcher. On the small test device, updates that previously took roughly 122-145 ms now fit within one frame.

- Controls respond immediately while waiting for Home Assistant to confirm the command, so the interface feels much less remote from the thing it controls.

I also fixed a pile of less exciting problems: taps passing through panels, stale unavailable values, cramped temperature labels, media controls losing space to metadata, excessive image memory use, and several onboarding screens that looked fine on a Portal but fell apart on a shorter display.

One correction from my first post: this is still sideloaded and currently built through Gradle. It is not in an app store yet. The latest tagged release is 0.0.7-beta, while the responsive small-screen work and the new setup flow are part of the next release currently being prepared.

I still see Portal Launcher as a complement to Lovelace, VACA, Kiosk Satellite and the other projects people mentioned last time, not a replacement for all of them. Its job is to make the entire device useful: a quiet clock when the room is idle, a few useful states when you glance at it, native controls when you need them, and a real Android home screen for everything else. Home Assistant and every installed app remain one tap away.

It is still a solo project and it is not finished, but it is considerably more stable and coherent than the version I posted here two weeks ago. More importantly, it is no longer designed around only the Portal sitting on my desk.

Github: https://github.com/iblur01/portal-launcher
Original post : https://www.reddit.com/r/FacebookPortal/s/w0rERZcly2

If you have a Portal, Portal+, Portal Mini or other unusual Android display, photos and bug reports are still extremely useful. I would particularly like to see how the next build behaves on Portal models I cannot test myself.

Théo :)

So, I purchased a (Walmart) onn 8.1 Core (2026) tablet to replace my ancient Samsung Tab and then I discover the whole new ADB and Immortal Launcher for Facebook portals and I started to play with it just to discover that this new tablet I just ordered is literally in the same ballpark as hardware goes.

I'm just speechless, Facebook really put good hardware in their Portals just to nerf it out with the worst software if a well reviewed entry level tablet from 2026 has very similar performance (except the double of RAM and a much much more responsive touchscreen lol).

I mean, on the technical side, the QCS605 in the Portal has A75 and A55 whereas the SM6225 (aka 865) in the onn Tab has a generation older combo of A73 and A53. On the graphical side however the Portal has an Adreno 615 while the onn Tab as an Adreno 610v2 and it seems like the V2 is better when I look at the specs on Wikipedia so I ran 3DMark and there it is also a clear win for the Portal this time.

I don't know if this info is useful, I just wanted to share it because it bewildered me to see such good performance from a 2019 "picture frame" made for video calls and how bad low-end tablets are and on top of all, these Portals were considered as eWaste only few months ago! Also, I paid $128CAD for TWO Facebook Portal (brand new, shipped by Facebook) in February 2022 and that onn tablet? $170CAD few days ago...

I just hope someone will find a way to fully jailbreak these and get a custom rom, if only for security purpose and also ditch Facebook stuff, because man Android 10 with 6 years old security patches is so ancient!

Link to Geekbench scores for more details (3DMark only give images to share)