What's new in Kiosk Satellite 2026.8.94
The kiosk can now dim its own screen from its ambient light sensor and the Screenshot entity is back beside the device camera.
New Feature: Adaptive Brightness
- Adaptive brightness (#343): the kiosk dims its screen from its own ambient light sensor, on the device, so the mapping keeps working with Home Assistant or the network away. It is a page of its own under Screen & Audio: the switch, the sensor's live reading, Minimum and Maximum brightness, and the Dark room and Bright room light levels the curve runs between. The light levels are typed rather than slid, because sensors disagree wildly about what a lit room reads (an Echo Show 8 says about 50 lx with every light on), so set them against the reading shown right above them. Both pairs are checked against each other, so Dark room stays below Bright room and Minimum below Maximum.
- The brightness follows the log of the reading between the two light levels, the way the eye judges light, so an evening living room sits halfway rather than parked at the floor.
- While the switch is on, Default brightness stands down and a session starts at Maximum brightness dimmed for the room. The screensaver's brightness and the Dim level keep their meaning as the level in a bright room and dim by the same share, so a clock at 20% by day sits at a few percent at night with the slider untouched.
- Offered only on devices with an ambient light sensor; where one exists the switch is also an Adaptive brightness switch entity on the ESPHome and MQTT devices, so an automation can turn it off ahead of a scene that wants the panel held exactly where it puts it.
- A new Panel brightness diagnostic sensor on the ESPHome and MQTT devices reports what the panel actually shows, in percent, following every step of the curve.
Changed
- Home Assistant's Screen light, the remote admin's Overview slider and the JS API now turn the setting that governs the level: Default brightness, or Maximum brightness while adaptive brightness is on. A write sticks instead of being undone by the next light change, reads back as written, is refused below Minimum brightness, and one made while the screensaver shows lands when it ends instead of lifting the screensaver. Default brightness also applies live from those surfaces with Set brightness on launch off.
- The ambient light sensor stream passes changes down to 1 lx (from 5 lx), so the dark end of the adaptive curve has something to work with.
- A slider value the device refuses in the remote admin now snaps back to the value the device kept, with the reason under the row.
Fixed
- The Screenshot camera is back on every ESPHome device, beside the device camera where there is one. The screen capture used to share one camera entity with the device camera, on the belief that ESPHome allowed one camera per device, so a kiosk with a camera only got the Screenshot camera while the camera was switched off, and v2026.8.93 took that away too. The limit was the ESPHome firmware's, not the protocol's: Home Assistant assembles camera frames per entity, so both cameras now exist at once and a fetch of either refreshes both. Last screenshot moves when the Take screenshot button captures and when the remote admin's overview page fetches its preview (which now also refreshes the Screenshot entity over ESPHome and MQTT), never on a fetch of the camera entity, and it and Last camera snapshot keep their stamps across restarts instead of reading unknown until the next capture.