Home Assistant LCARS

Star Trek LCARS theme for Home Assistant

Color codes and font choice from https://www.thelcars.com --thanks Jim Robertus!

Examples

Dashboard

Edit modes

Mobile view

Included themes

Classic, Lower Decks, Romulus, Cardassia, Kronos, Nemesis.

Preamble

I am most definitely not a real web developer, and fumbled my way into the initial release with the help of Stack Exchange and various blogs on CSS techniques. My main goal was and still is to keep this theme 100% CSS with no extra assets required besides the font. I'm positive there are better ways to implement anything and everything I've done thus far, so PRs are welcome. I will continue to improve things as I learn and add more comments to my CSS so that you can know what things do and maybe tell me how it can be better if you know. I have tested this theme with most of the out-of-the-box cards that ship with Home Assistant, and some available in HACS like the Mail and Packages card. However, I'm sure there are some that could still be terribly broken. Simply create an issue and I will address it.

Installation instructions

Prerequisites

I. Enable themes and install card-mod

1. Install card-mod per the instructions on its GitHub page.

2. Make sure in your configuration.yaml file you have the following:

frontend:
  javascript_version: latest
  themes: !include_dir_merge_named themes
  extra_module_url:
    - /local/community/lovelace-card-mod/card-mod.js #or wherever you ended up putting card-mod.js

3. Under the Home Assistant Config folder, create a new folder named themes.
4. Restart Home assistant to apply the changes.

II. Add the font

This theme requires you to add the Antonio font as a resource to your lovelace configuration:

resources:
  - url: https://fonts.googleapis.com/css2?family=Antonio:wght@400;700&display=swap
    type: css

-OR-

Navigate to Settings → Dashboards → 3-dot menu → Resources and add a new Resource with the above URL and selected as a stylesheet.

III. Set up the clock

In order for the clock to work, you need to set up the Time & Date integration by adding the following to your configuration.yaml:

sensor:
  - platform: time_date
    display_options:
      - 'time'
      - 'date'
      - 'date_time'
      - 'date_time_utc'
      - 'date_time_iso'
      - 'time_date'
      - 'time_utc'
      - 'beat'

More info: https://www.home-assistant.io/integrations/time_date/

Install the theme

Install via HACS by searching "LCARS" or download the latest release and extract and drop the lcars folder into your themes folder.

Enable theme

Option 1: Via profile

1. Open your Home Assistant Profile
2. Under, Themes, select one of the new LCARS themes
3. Call the frontend.reload_themes service.

Option 2: Setting the default backend-selected theme

In order to have this theme set automatically as the backend selected default, add the following automation to your Home Assistant:

- alias: Set Default Theme
  description: ''
  trigger:
  - event: start
    platform: homeassistant
  condition: []
  action:
  - data:
      name: LCARS Default # or whichever other theme is available, like LCARS Lower Decks
    service: frontend.set_theme

Usage instructions

Classes

The theme includes some classes that can be added to cards like this to give them special styling:

card_mod:
  class: header

The class names are only indications of what types of cards they were intended for, but the classes can be applied to any card you like. I cannot guarantee how well they will work outside of their intended uses, however.

The classes are as follows:

1. header header-right header-contained header-open - top blue bar (in Default theme) meant for Markdown cards with one H1 line that will start a section

YAML	Result
type: markdown card_mod: class: header content: '# header' type: markdown card_mod: class: header-right content: '# header-right' type: markdown card_mod: class: header-contained content: '# header-contained' type: markdown card_mod: class: header-open content: '# header-open'

2. middle middle-right middle-contained - side red bar (in Default theme) meant for non-button sections below header and above footer

YAML	Result
type: markdown card_mod: class: middle content: '# middle' type: markdown card_mod: class: middle-right content: '# middle-right' type: markdown card_mod: class: middle-contained content: '# middle-contained'

3. middle-blank - special case for Mushroom Cards (@csanner please confirm)

4. footer footer-right footer-contained footer-open - bottom gray bar (in Default theme) meant for the last card in a section

YAML	Result
type: markdown card_mod: class: footer content: '# footer' type: markdown card_mod: class: footer-right content: '# footer-right' type: markdown card_mod: class: footer-contained content: '# footer-contained' type: markdown card_mod: class: footer-open content: '# footer-open'

5. button-small - squared off buttons intended to go in middle sections and horizontal-stacks and grids

YAML	Result
type: light entity: light.jesse_s_desk name: Desk Lamp card_mod: class: button-small

6. button-large - rounded button meant to be standalone outside of header/middle/footer sections

YAML	Result
show_name: true show_icon: true type: button tap_action: action: call-service service: frontend.reload_themes data: {} target: {} show_state: true card_mod: class: button-large

7. button-lozenge button-lozenge-right - pill-shaped button; only works on standard button cards; also works on button cards in a horizontal-stacks and grids up to two columns wide; more columns get glitchy and is not advised

YAML	Result
show_name: true show_icon: true type: button tap_action: action: toggle entity: switch.speakers icon: mdi:speaker-multiple card_mod: class: button-lozenge show_name: true show_icon: true type: button tap_action: action: toggle entity: switch.lightsaber card_mod: class: button-lozenge-right

8. button-bullet button-bullet-right - similar to the lozenge, but with a squared-off side; same column restrictions apply

YAML	Result
show_name: true show_icon: true type: button tap_action: action: toggle entity: light.bedroom_tree card_mod: class: button-bullet show_name: true show_icon: true type: button tap_action: action: toggle entity: switch.counter_lights card_mod: class: button-bullet-right

9. button-capped button-capped-right - similar to the bullet, but capped on the round side; same column restrictions apply

YAML	Result
show_name: true show_icon: true type: button tap_action: action: toggle entity: light.bathroom card_mod: class: button-capped show_name: true show_icon: true type: button tap_action: action: toggle entity: switch.built_in card_mod: class: button-capped-right

10. bar bar-right bar-large bar-large-right - standalone header-type bar; only intended for and tested with Markdown cards

YAML	Result
type: markdown content: '# bar' card_mod: class: bar type: markdown content: '# bar-large' card_mod: class: bar-large type: markdown content: '# bar-right' card_mod: class: bar-right type: markdown content: '# bar-large-right' card_mod: class: bar-large-right

Make your own color themes

Custom themes can be created down at the bottom of lcars.yaml. Or, search for "===THEMES", which will take you right there. To create your own theme, copy the LCARS Default section to the bottom of the file and change the lcars-ui-* and lcars-card-* variables to your liking, using the color references at the top of the file, The LCARS website, or define your own.

Noise and gradients

If you're not feeling the subtle noise and gradients that this theme added, let me know by raising an issue. I am still working on an easy method to enable and disable them. You can remove them yourself by searching for "base64" and "-gradient" (you should find 3 entries each) and commenting/deleting the entire CSS blocks that contain them. Feature request here.

Tips and tricks

If you have anything to add here, create a PR with your tip and I will review it to add to this list.

• Make use of Vertical Stack cards. Whether in this theme or any other theme, they are invaluable for keeping dashboards organized. In LCARS, a Vertical Stack card should contain a Markdown card first with the title of the group and the header class applied, then any number of middle class cards and button class single buttons or in horizontal stacks or grids, and then finally a footer class applied to the last card in the vertical stack. You can see this formation in all of the screenshots at the top of this page. Here's an example Vertical Stack card and all of its contents:

YAML	Result
type: vertical-stack cards: - type: markdown card_mod: class: header content: '# Climate' - type: weather-forecast entity: weather.home card_mod: class: middle - type: thermostat entity: climate.dining_room card_mod: class: footer

• You can create a blank header or footer by creating a Markdown card and putting ##   in the Content field, and change the size by modifying the number of #. It looks like this:

Known issues

• Font and sidebar and header CSS styles only load when a dashboard has been loaded first. If you navigate directly to a non-dashboard page without loading a dashboard first, things will look pretty awful, though still functional. Simply load a dashboard and hit the back button. This is a quirk of the card-mod addon on which this theme relies, so it's outside my ability to fix.
• card-mod classes do not work with Vertical Stack and Horizontal Stacks cards (though they do work with the cards they contain). This is a quirk of the card-mod addon on which this theme relies, so it's outside my ability to fix. There is, however, a hacky workaround I have identified though have opted to not include at this time. Please submit a feature request if you would like to see this included.
• Collapsing and expanding the sidebar or zooming the interface will jack with the noise and gradient overlays. A simple refresh will set everything right again. I hope to find a way to make the pseudo elements that contain the textures to dynamically adjust with the DOM. PRs are welcome. Bug here.
• Menu pages like Development Tools and Profile are functional, but not great. Unfortunately, there's not much I can do to address this as card-mod does not provide a method to change these pages. Issues raised for anything comepletely broken and unsuable that I may have missed are welcome, as are PRs to make to make things better.
• Sometimes when a dashboard loads, not all CSS styles will load and all or most cards will end up looking like the button-large cards. This is more prevalent on large dashboards. Try reloading the page, and if that doesn't work, load a smaller dashboard and then go back to the offending dashboard.

Acknowledgements

• Thanks to @JHuckins for color theming support and testing!
• Thanks to @csanner for the new classes and additional fixes and tweaks!
• Thanks to @Anthrazz for the bar classes!

Links

Discord: https://discord.gg/gGxud6Y6WJ

LCARS Resources: https://www.thelcars.com