Screensaver

The panel can use a screensaver when it's not being used. When active, it can dim the normal screen, show a dim clock, display a Home Assistant image, or turn the backlight off so the panel goes dark. Touch the screen to wake it up.

There are three screensaver modes, configured in Settings > Sleep & Schedule > Screensaver on the Setup page. Panels with a built-in camera also have a fourth, Camera Motion:

Disabled

The screensaver does not run automatically. This is the default setting.

Timer

The screensaver turns on after the panel hasn't been touched for a set amount of time. Choose from:

• 10 seconds
• 30 seconds
• 1 minute
• 5 minutes (the default)
• 10, 15, 20, 30, or 45 minutes
• 1 hour

If the 10 or 30 second choices are not shown, update the panel firmware first. The web page checks what range the installed firmware supports before showing the shorter timer values.

What Happens

Use Then to choose what happens when the screensaver activates:

• Screen Dimmed — keeps the normal screen visible, but lowers the backlight. The first tap wakes the screen instead of pressing a card.
• Clock — shows a large drifting clock at reduced brightness. The clock repositions itself periodically to prevent burn-in.
• Display Off (the default) — switches to a black screen and turns the backlight off completely. While the backlight is off, Basalt can exercise the LCD pixels in the background to reduce burn-in risk; this should not be visible.
• Camera — on ESP32-P4 panels and the 4-inch 4848S040 ESP32-S3 panel, shows the selected camera.* or image.* entity full-screen. Choose Fit to keep the whole image visible (with black space where its shape does not match the panel) or Fill to crop the image to the screen. The image refreshes when Home Assistant reports an update and the previous successful image stays visible while a replacement downloads. If no image is available, the panel shows Camera unavailable and retries safely.

When Screen Dimmed is selected, Manual brightness mode uses Dimmed Screen Brightness. Automatic and Timed brightness modes use separate Daytime Dimmed Screen Brightness and Nighttime Dimmed Screen Brightness values, changing at the same sunrise/sunset or dawn/dusk boundary as the main screen. When Clock is selected, set separate Daytime Clock Brightness and Nighttime Clock Brightness values.

The 4-inch ESP32-S3 camera screensaver uses the panel's native 480×480 resolution. The screensaver requests the original Home Assistant snapshot to avoid extra compression, then resizes it on the panel. If downloading or decoding it fails, subsequent requests ask Home Assistant for display-sized snapshots for the rest of that screensaver session. Sharpness still depends on the source image; filtered JPEG resizing preserves detail when reducing images and smooths edges when enlarging them.

Photos from Immich

Use EspControl Immich Companion to show photos from your Immich library, albums, Memories or keyword searches. Its Home Assistant integration provides an image.* entity that works with Then → Camera, plus slideshow controls and photo-detail sensors.

Follow Connect to Basalt to install the companion, choose the image entity, match the screen shape and add optional date or location metadata. The companion controls photo selection and slideshow timing; Basalt displays the images when the screensaver activates.

Photo metadata

With Camera selected, enable Display Metadata below Display Clock to reveal the Photo Metadata Entity field. Enter a Home Assistant sensor.* entity containing the current photo's caption, date, or location. Turning the toggle off hides metadata and the field without clearing the saved entity. Existing metadata setups remain enabled after upgrading.

Text appears toward the bottom-right on screens at least 1024 pixels wide. On smaller screens and large panels rotated into portrait, it appears in the upper-right corner. Empty, unknown, and unavailable states are hidden; the clock stays in the same position. Metadata can also appear with Display Clock switched off. Long text wraps to at most three lines.

Display Clock applies only to the Camera screensaver, including camera.* and image.* sources. It is hidden while the media Cover Art screensaver is active. Camera and clock-overlay controls appear only when the installed firmware supports them.

Sensor

Instead of a timer, the screensaver is controlled by a motion or presence sensor (like a mmWave sensor mounted nearby). When someone is in the room, the screen stays on. When nobody is detected, the screen goes to sleep — and wakes up again when someone walks past.

To use this, enter the name of your motion or presence sensor from Home Assistant (for example, binary_sensor.hallway_presence) in Presence Entity. This remains the Screensaver's own sensor; Night Schedule has a separate Sensor Entity when it uses Sensor mode.

Below the presence entity, use Then to choose whether the panel dims the screen, shows the clock, displays a camera/image, or turns the display off when nobody is detected. Camera is available on ESP32-P4 panels and the 4-inch 4848S040 ESP32-S3 panel, using the same Camera Entity setting as Timer mode. The Fit and Fill choices apply here too.

Presence wakes the panel from those dimmed, clock, camera, or display-off states. When the normal cards or media cover art are already visible, presence does not change the page or restart the cover-art timer.

Switching back to Timer keeps the sensor name saved, so you can return to Sensor mode later without typing it in again.

Camera Motion

Camera Motion mode uses the panel's built-in front camera to wake the screen, so no separate motion sensor is needed. It is available on the 7-inch JC1060P470 V2 / new panel firmware.

The screensaver starts after the Timeout, like Timer mode, and uses the same Then options, including showing a Home Assistant camera. While the screen is dimmed, showing the clock, or off, the camera watches for movement and wakes the screen when it sees some. The camera is off while the screen is in use.

• Camera Sensitivity — from 1 to 100 (default 50). Higher values wake on smaller movements. Lower values need more of the picture to change, which helps ignore small movements near the panel.
• Show Camera Preview — shows a small live picture from the camera, refreshed about once a second. Areas that changed since the previous picture are outlined in red, with the motion level and picture brightness underneath. Use it to check what the camera can see and to set the sensitivity while walking past. The camera stops a few seconds after you hide the preview or leave the page.

Things to know:

• The camera needs some light and cannot see in a dark room. Switching a light on usually wakes the panel.
• The camera sees what is in front of the screen. A panel lying flat mostly sees the ceiling, so people walking past may not wake it.
• Pictures are processed on the panel and are not stored. The preview is the only time a picture leaves the panel, and only to the settings page while the preview is open.
• On a panel without a built-in camera, Camera Motion mode works like Timer mode.
• Backups include Camera Motion mode and its sensitivity. Restoring the backup on a panel without it uses Timer mode instead.

Home Assistant shows diagnostic entities that help with tuning:

Entity	What it shows
Camera Motion: Status	Whether the camera is in standby, starting, watching for motion, or has a problem.
Camera Motion: Level	How much of the picture changed, as a percentage.
Camera Motion: Motion	On while movement is being detected.
Camera Motion: Picture Brightness	How bright the camera picture is.
Camera Motion: Test Mode	Keeps the camera running while the screen is on, without waking it, so you can watch the level.
Camera Motion: Log Picture	Writes a coarse text picture of the camera view to the device log.

If the panel restarts unexpectedly while the camera is running, camera wake stays off and the status shows Stopped after unexpected restart. Restart the panel to turn it back on.

TIP

Touching the screen or pressing its Screen: Wake button in Home Assistant always wakes it up, no matter which screensaver mode you're using.

Wake from Home Assistant

Every panel exposes a stateless Screen: Wake button in Home Assistant. Pressing it behaves like touching the sleeping panel: it wakes a dimmed, clock, camera, display-off, cover-art, or manually sleeping screen and restarts the normal inactivity timers. If the screen is already awake, it extends the active period without changing the page or pressing a card.

You can use the button in an automation, for example to wake the panel when a door opens:

triggers:
  - trigger: state
    entity_id: binary_sensor.front_door
    to: "on"
actions:
  - action: button.press
    target:
      entity_id: button.your_panel_screen_wake

Replace the example entity IDs with your own door sensor and the panel's Screen: Wake entity. Home Assistant assigns the final button entity ID, so select the entity from the automation editor rather than relying on the example name.

Screen Schedule

The screen schedule is separate from the screensaver. Use it when you want the panel to be fully dark, dimmed, or showing a clock overnight.

When Night Schedule is using fixed Time hours, it has priority over screensaver sensor and camera wake during night time. The screensaver presence sensor still keeps the panel awake and wakes it during normal daytime operation, but it does not override scheduled night time. Touch and Home Assistant button wake still work, using the temporary wake settings from the screen schedule.

If you want presence to control when the panel is in night mode, set Night Schedule to Sensor mode instead of Time mode.

On the first start after updating to the separate-sensor firmware, the existing Screensaver Presence Entity is copied to the Night Schedule Sensor Entity once. You can then change either setting independently without affecting the other.