Configure Marao Dashboard

After installing Marao Dashboard with HACS, add the Marao Dashboard integration from Home Assistant’s integrations page. On first setup, the integration creates a base dashboard JSON from your current area-assigned entities, generates YAML from it, and patches configuration.yaml.

The integration then:

  • Serves Marao’s dashboard runtime, editor, and camera-events card directly from /marao_dashboard_static through Home Assistant’s frontend and static APIs.
  • Generates dashboard YAML under dashboard/MaraoDashboard.
  • Copies the theme YAML under themes/MaraoDashboard and ensures the standard frontend.themes include is present.
  • Adds a marao-dashboard YAML dashboard entry.

No manual Marao Lovelace resource or third-party card is required.

The generated dashboard is written to:

dashboard/MaraoDashboard/dashboard/dashboard.yaml

The editable source of truth is:

dashboard/MaraoDashboard/dashboard.json

The integration adds an admin-only Marao Dashboard Editor page to the Home Assistant sidebar at /marao-dashboard-editor. Its Visual tab guides you through general settings, overview entities, rooms, cards, and optional pages using Home Assistant entity, area, theme, and icon selectors. Add card first shows the supported Marao card types, then filters the entity selector and offers common and advanced options for that card.

Use Add room to start an empty room or import a snapshot of a Home Assistant area. A snapshot copies the area’s current entities into the JSON and remains fully editable; later area changes are not synchronized. Older area-linked rooms keep their existing behavior until their first card edit, when the editor explains and performs the conversion to a snapshot.

The JSON tab edits the same document in the built-in code editor, with validation, formatting, schema help, and entity-ID suggestions. Unknown fields and raw Lovelace cards are preserved when switching views. Invalid JSON must be corrected before returning to Visual.

Changes remain local to the editor until you select Save & Generate. Use Discard changes to reload the saved source or Open dashboard to inspect the last generated result.

Each successful generation is saved under dashboard/MaraoDashboard/.history. Select History to access the latest 20 versions, including the JSON and the exact dashboard directory with preserved custom cards. Select Restore beside a version to restore both. The current version is saved before a restore, so you can also undo a restoration.

You can alternatively edit dashboard.json with a file editor, then call the Home Assistant service marao_dashboard.generate_dashboard to regenerate the YAML. Generated YAML may be overwritten; customize the JSON instead.

service: marao_dashboard.generate_dashboard
data:
  config_path: dashboard/MaraoDashboard/dashboard.json

Use dry_run: true to validate the JSON and see the planned dashboard key/files without writing generated YAML or patching configuration.yaml.

Minimal JSON 

{
  "name": "Marao Dashboard",
  "slug": "dashboard",
  "theme": "Marao Dashboard",
  "icon": "mdi:home",
  "overview": {
    "weather_entity": "weather.home"
  },
  "rooms": [
    {
      "name": "Living Room",
      "area": "living_room",
      "icon": "mdi:sofa-outline"
    }
  ]
}

Room overrides

Use entities or include to add entities, exclude to remove entities, and overrides to customize card labels, icons, templates, or variables. Use cards only for raw Lovelace cards that should be appended to that room view.

{
  "name": "Marao Dashboard",
  "rooms": [
    {
      "name": "Office",
      "area": "office",
      "entities": ["light.office_desk"],
      "exclude": ["sensor.office_unused"],
      "overrides": {
        "light.office_desk": {
          "name": "Desk",
          "icon": "mdi:desk-lamp",
          "template": "hc_light_card",
          "variables": {
            "show_slider": true
          }
        }
      },
      "cards": [
        {
          "type": "markdown",
          "content": "Office notes"
        }
      ]
    }
  ]
}

The dashboard is not regenerated automatically on every restart. After adding entities or changing layout, update dashboard.json and call the service again.

Julian-style pages

Rooms are the canonical list of normal entities. The overview popups and the Security and Media pages reuse those entities automatically, so IDs do not need to be duplicated. Add a pages section only for the optional Julian main pages and their page-specific roles.

{
  "name": "Home",
  "overview": {
    "weather_entity": "weather.home",
    "scenes": ["input_boolean.holiday_mode"]
  },
  "rooms": [
    {
      "name": "Living room",
      "icon": "mdi:sofa-outline",
      "entities": [
        "light.living_room_main",
        "cover.living_room_blind",
        "lock.front_door",
        {
          "entity_id": "media_player.living_room_tv",
          "apple_tv": {
            "remote_entity": "remote.living_room_apple_tv",
            "apps": [{"name": "YouTube", "source": "YouTube", "icon": "mdi:youtube"}]
          }
        }
      ]
    }
  ],
  "pages": {
    "security": {
      "alarm_entity": "alarm_control_panel.home",
      "actions": [{"entity_id": "button.open_building_door", "name": "Open building door"}]
    },
    "energy": {
      "house_power": "sensor.house_power",
      "month_energy": "sensor.energy_month",
      "month_cost": "sensor.energy_cost_month",
      "today_energy": "sensor.energy_today",
      "today_cost": "sensor.energy_cost_today",
      "loads": [
        {
          "power_entity": "sensor.water_heater_power",
          "toggle_entity": "switch.water_heater",
          "name": "Water heater",
          "icon": "mdi:water-boiler"
        }
      ],
      "appliances": [{"entity_id": "sensor.dishwasher_state", "template": "hc_dishwasher_card"}]
    },
    "wallbox": {
      "status_entity": "sensor.wallbox_status",
      "charging_power_entity": "sensor.wallbox_power",
      "max_current_entity": "number.wallbox_max_current",
      "current_control_entity": "input_number.wallbox_current",
      "current_presets": [6, 12, 16],
      "pause_resume_entity": "switch.wallbox_pause_resume"
    },
    "media": {}
  }
}

security.access_entities and media.players are optional replacement lists. When absent, Security derives locks and door/garage/gate covers from rooms, and Media derives room media players. media.players supports the same entity fields as rooms plus remote_entity, volume_remote_entity, and apps.

The generator always produces the Overview and Rooms views. It produces Security, Energy, Wallbox, and Media only when that object exists in pages. Overview tiles open generated Marao popups: Lights includes only on lights, while Covers includes every room cover.

Keep hand-written cards across regeneration

Generated views and overview/energy popups contain a protected block like this:

cards:
  # marao:generated:start
  # generated cards
  # marao:generated:end
  # marao:custom:start
  # Add custom Lovelace cards here.
  # marao:custom:end
  # marao:generated-footer:start
  # navigation bar
  # marao:generated-footer:end

Put hand-written cards between marao:custom:start and marao:custom:end, keeping their normal two-space YAML indentation. The generator replaces only its marked regions and leaves the custom block intact; the footer keeps the navigation bar below your cards. Do not edit or remove the marker comments. If they are damaged, generation stops without writing files.

The first marker-aware generation adopts an existing unmarked view only when it exactly matches the old generated output. If it differs, generation refuses to overwrite it because it cannot safely distinguish manual cards; move manual cards into a backup, regenerate, then paste them into the custom block.

Generated views include components/navigation/navbar.yaml as the last card. That include owns both the bottom spacer and the floating navigation bar, so the last dashboard card can scroll above the action bar. Do not add a separate bottom spacer in views; keep custom room cards before the generated navbar.

Frontend runtime

The integration registers its Marao card runtime through Home Assistant’s frontend API. Generated graphs use Marao’s project-owned background graph, and the floating navbar hides the top header while this dashboard is active.

Restart and open

  1. Restart Home Assistant after the integration patches configuration.yaml.
  2. Select Marao Dashboard in the sidebar.
  3. Select Marao Dashboard in your Home Assistant profile theme settings. Leave the theme mode on automatic/system so Home Assistant uses the light mode during the day/system light mode and dark mode at night/system dark mode.

If the dashboard does not appear, check that configuration.yaml contains:

lovelace:
  dashboards:
    marao-dashboard:
      mode: yaml
      title: Marao Dashboard
      icon: mdi:home
      show_in_sidebar: true
      filename: dashboard/MaraoDashboard/dashboard/dashboard.yaml
Marao Dashboard is distributed under the repository's license.