Not sure if this is the right sub to submit to, so let me know if otherwise.

EDIT: Added short version at the end.

I've recently had this idea, and been doing lots of research, about having a large screen on the wall that serves as a dashboard for my house. Its location would be near the front door, but clearly visible from the living room. Basically it serves as a replacement for some items my household still uses physical things for(calendar/whiteboard/stickynotes on fridge). As well as adding smart functions that would be hard/impossible with hard copies.(like the current weather/forecast, reminders, other real-time data)

I've looked around a few days while coming up with some software designs, seems like the solutions out there right now are either; the crappy ones that come with home security solutions, LG smart TV's apparently, apps for iOS/android, tech demos for future smart homes.

So as far as the hardware goes, I have a wall mounted 1080p 46" tv, fits perfectly in a good spot for this bigger would have to be vertical...though that might be cool. As far as the computer goes, I initially did a prototype with a raspberry pi. That...did not go well. I settled to use Lazarus IDE with free pascal. Pretty sweet setup, did a quick mock-up with the time and weather to test layout. I did the development on a windows laptop for ease of use(because lazarus is "code once run anywhere"). I got to installing lazarus on the rPi, a couple hours later it was finished. However I got lots of errors opening my project, apparently the version you get with apt-get is old, like really old. So I spent the next 12 hours or so trying to get the latest version compiled for linux-arm. I decided finally that this is not the direction I want to go, the rPi is too slow and this isnt exactly the right platform for my idea.(I imagined a but of animations/etc) So I went hunting around my storage of random hardware and slapped together a pc in a small htpc case and put windows 10 on it. Took a couple hours from start to running a basic prototype on it. I switched to using C# with visual studio, from my laptop where I program it, transfer to a windows share on the htpc, VNC to launch it. Could be better but the workflow is much better now.

I kind of want to do touch, but at the same time only 1 or 2 things would benefit from touch, in fact it's mostly just a dashboard that doesn't require interaction at all. So I'm a little hesitant to drop the cash on a frame to add touch ability to the display, especially looking at the prices...damn. So what is the method of interaction then... Well the calendar function is easy, I'll just do a google calendar and hook into their api to display upcoming events. Share the calendar, and I will be able to edit the calendar from anywhere, even my phone. Weather... well, the tv isn't mobile, just needs zip. I also want to display some stats from my Nest thermostat, that should be easy enough they have an api. However everything else needs some form of input, and I haven't quite figured it out.

I want to do some form of "sticky notes" that aren't attached to a specific date/time. Need to figure out some way to add/remove/edit/prioritize them. Along the same lines a house-wide "todo" list. I have some ideas about those but the whiteboard has me really stumped.

My idea for interaction so far is to make a gmail for the tv. Use xmpp to connect to the google talk jabber. That way I can message the tv basically. On the other end I can do some keyword cases to perform actions. I have a proof of concept for that working. I'm just not sure if I should go forward with that or if there is some better way I'm overlooking. Basically I'm trying to get this whole thing working without having to make an app for mobile to control it. I am no stranger to mobile development but at the same time there is something to be said about designing a system that doesn't rely on one. On top of that, there are already some very well written apps for mobile/desktop to handle these specific things. Like the calendar, why re-invent the wheel, the mobile google calendar is very good. If I write my own app for communication I have to start worrying about things like networking, opening ports on my router, setting up firewall rules, etc. If I use google talk, I don't have to worry about any of that. It also opens up the possibility to do things like sharing a picture or video to the tv and have it display it. Like cool stuff from Voat :D. Or when family is visiting I can share images from our last trip somewhere, home movies, etc. The location the tv is mounted is comfortable distance from seating. So the way I imagine adding a todo item would be to message the tv's gmail "todo mow lawn", it will check if it's already added, then add that to a global todo list. "todo remove" will show a numbered list, and you can message the one to delete by numbers. Something along those lines. I'm still trying to come up with a way to do sticky notes and the whiteboard, which are more free-form than just a list.

Short version: I'm trying to make a smart home hub/dashboard thing on a large non-touch tv mounted on the wall. I want to replace physical calendars we have, sticky notes on the fridge, todo lists scattered all over the place, ugly whiteboards that get used 1 night a week. I am trying to figure out how to pack that functionality and more, such as real-time data from my nest/smart lights/smart meter/etc, into a system that requires little interaction. Since there is no touch(and it's prohibitively expensive) I am also trying to come up with a good way to add/remove items to the todo lists/sticky notes, some way to do a whiteboard(from a phone preferably). The calendar is easy enough through google and their api.

I would really like some help getting the concept for this more concrete. If any of you out there know of a system already doing this. Or if you think this is a shit idea, speak up I'd like to know why you think that(it may be true). And sorry about the wall of text, thank you very much to those that took the time to read :).