A better family command center

Beacon is an open-source, self-hosted family dashboard built for wall-mounted displays. It gives your household a single, glanceable view of the day — calendars, chores, weather, music, photos, and more — without subscriptions, cloud lock-in, or a $650 price tag.

Beacon runs as a Home Assistant add-on or as a standalone Docker container, so if you already have a smart home hub, you are most of the way there.

Feature overview

Weekly calendar with drag-and-drop

View the entire week at a glance. Create, edit, and delete events directly on the display. Drag events to reschedule them. Recurring events (daily, weekly, monthly) are supported out of the box. Each calendar gets its own color so you can tell family members apart from across the room.

Dashboard with clock, weather, and tasks

The dashboard view shows a large clock, a personalized greeting (“Good morning, Sachs family”), today’s events, current weather with a 5-day forecast, a task checklist, and a countdown widget for upcoming milestones.

Family members and chores

Add up to 8 family members with custom avatars (55+ emoji options across 5 categories), colors, roles (parent or child), and optional PINs. Assign chores with dollar values and track completion streaks on a leaderboard.

Grocery lists

Connect Grocy or AnyList through Home Assistant to manage shopping lists directly from the display. Quick-add items, check them off, and get alerts when products are about to expire. Meal plan display is included when using Grocy.

Music controls

Control any Music Assistant or media player entity in Home Assistant. See album art, track info, and a progress bar. Switch between multiple speakers. A persistent “Now Playing” bar appears at the bottom of any view when music is playing.

Photo frame

Turn your display into a digital photo frame. Load photos from your Home Assistant media directory. The slideshow auto-cycles with crossfade transitions, shows a clock and date overlay, and can display music controls on top of photos.

7 built-in themes

Choose from Skylight (default light), Midnight (dark), Nord Ice, Dracula, Monokai, Rose, and Forest. An “Auto” mode switches between light and dark based on time of day (6 AM / 7 PM). Themes are applied via CSS custom properties, so creating your own is straightforward.

Timer and stopwatch

A slide-out panel with countdown timer (1, 5, 10, 15, 30 minute presets) and stopwatch mode with lap tracking. Audio alerts sound when the countdown finishes.

Notifications

Browser push notifications and Home Assistant mobile app notifications fire 15 minutes before calendar events. No configuration needed beyond granting browser permission.

Screen saver and burn-in protection

After 5 minutes of inactivity the screen dims. After 10 minutes a clock screensaver appears with the time and date, repositioning every 30 seconds to prevent burn-in. Any touch or movement wakes the display.

Self-hosted and private

Your family’s data stays on your local network. No accounts, no cloud services, no telemetry. Calendar data flows from Google/CalDAV through Home Assistant to Beacon — never to an external server.

Free forever

Beacon is open source under the MIT license. No subscriptions, no premium tiers, no “free trial” that expires.

How it compares

Get started

Ready to set up Beacon? Head to the Getting Started guide to install the add-on and connect your first calendar in under 10 minutes.

Documentation