Ambient Mode

Ambient mode

Available from version 1.4.0.

The ambient mode turns Thread Pulse into a calm, always-on display for a wall tablet: only the pulsing mesh, on a dark background – no toolbar, legend, list or ticker.

How to switch it on

Where	How
Dashboard card	ambient: true (visual editor: Ambient mode for wall tablets)
Standalone page	/local/thread-pulse.html?ambient

type: custom:thread-pulse-card
ambient: true
height: 100vh

For a real wall display, put the card alone in a panel view and hide Home Assistant's header and sidebar (e.g. with the kiosk mode of your tablet app or a kiosk add-on). The live animation and the traffic heat run as usual.

Slow automatic zoom

To avoid burn-in on tablet screens, the view moves slowly by itself: every 25 seconds it glides (over 8 seconds) to a random router, the next time back to the whole mesh.

• It pauses for 60 seconds after the screen was touched, and while a detail panel is open.
• Switch it off with ambient_motion: false (card) or ?ambient&still (page).

Touching the screen

• Tapping a device opens its detail panel; in ambient mode it closes by itself after 15 seconds.
• Double-tap on empty space fits the whole mesh again.

Screen stays on

Thread Pulse asks the browser to keep the screen on (Screen Wake Lock). Browsers only allow this on HTTPS connections. If your Home Assistant is opened via plain http://, the request is ignored – use the keep screen on setting of your tablet app (e.g. the Home Assistant Companion app or a kiosk browser) instead.

Colours

The ambient mode always uses its own dark colours, independent of your Home Assistant theme. Device colours, link colours and badges are the same as on the normal map – see Reading the map.

Errors

If the map cannot be loaded (e.g. no administrator rights), the error message is shown even in ambient mode – see Troubleshooting & FAQ.