Plugins, Assist and screen hardware ​

A plugin adds tiles, screen functions or hardware support. Open Plugins in Tessera to browse them. The list shows which plugins fit your screens. Some plugins are beta features. While the plugin API is in beta, the current code enables the Plugins page in the dev app and local builds. A stable app without that page needs a release that enables plugins.

Choose a plugin and select the screens that should use it. You can select several plugins before pressing Install. Tessera shows the dependencies and builds each screen once. Installing or removing a plugin changes the firmware. Ordinary tile and layout edits do not need a build.

Open a screen's Plugins tab to change its plugin settings. Settings that need another build have a Save and build button. Read the plugin's description before installing community code.

Which screen has which hardware ​

These are the boards whose audio and camera hardware Tessera currently configures. A speaker or camera connector on another board does not by itself make these functions available. Plugins may bring additional hardware support; check their requirements.

Live viewing of a Home Assistant camera is separate from using the screen's own camera. All supported ESP32-P4 profiles can show live camera pictures. They do not all have their own camera or a configured speaker.

Voice assistant ​

The Voice assistant plugin connects the screen to Home Assistant's Assist. You need a supported microphone and speaker, and an Assist pipeline with speech to text and text to speech under Home Assistant's Settings, Voice assistants.

1. Open Plugins, choose Voice assistant, select your screen and install it.
2. In Home Assistant, open the screen's device and choose its Assist pipeline if you want a different one from the preferred pipeline.
3. Add the Assistant tile to a page. Tap it to ask a question without the wake phrase, or to stop a question.
4. To show its activity in the top bar, choose Top bar, Add, From plugins, Assistant.

The screen recognises its wake phrase locally. After a wake phrase or a tap, your question goes to Home Assistant and the speech and conversation services you selected there. The spoken answer plays through the screen's speaker. Whether those services use the internet depends on your Assist pipeline.

Plugin settings are available in the editor and on the screen under Settings, Plugins, Voice assistant. Wake word, Wake sound and Thinking sound are on by default. Wake phrase defaults to Okay Nabu; the other choices are Hey Jarvis and Hey Mycroft. Turning off Wake word leaves asking with a tap available. Ask now starts a question. Wake sound and Thinking sound control the sounds while listening starts and an answer is being prepared.

Speaker and media player ​

On the three audio-equipped models above, the screen is a media player in Home Assistant. Play media, send a text-to-speech announcement or use it as an automation's speaker. This works without the Voice assistant plugin.

Volume under Screen settings, Extras controls answers, announcements, music and camera sound. It starts at 50 % and ranges from 0 to 100 %, with 0 muting the speaker. It is the same volume as the screen's media player in Home Assistant. Microphone is on by default. Switching it off mutes every function that listens and is remembered after a restart.

The Tab5 and Waveshare P4 panel share a bus between their microphone and speaker. While sound plays, the microphone pauses. It listens again after playback, so a wake phrase cannot interrupt sound on these boards.

A media tile can control this player, just as it controls another speaker in your house.

The screen's own camera ​

Install Screen camera on the reTerminal D1001 or M5Stack Tab5. Home Assistant adds Camera to the screen's device in the ESPHome integration. Put it on a dashboard or use it in an automation that requests a snapshot.

The camera sends pictures only when Home Assistant asks. Add Camera in use through Top bar, Add, From plugins to show when pictures leave the screen. It says Live during a stream and Camera for occasional pictures.

People who can access the camera entity or a dashboard showing it can see its pictures. Disable the camera entity in Home Assistant to pause access, or remove the plugin to remove the function.