Start with the room
The home setup brings Hue lighting, a small Zigbee sensor network, and selected network information into Home Assistant. The dashboard work is mostly about deciding what deserves to be visible.
The recent refactor made one room-oriented dashboard the primary surface. Older dashboards remain secondary while the useful controls and scenes are brought together.
Ownership matters
A physical dimmer should have one clear owner. When both the lighting bridge and an automation platform react to the same button, diagnosing the result gets harder than it should be.
The lighting and sensor networks also have different roles. Hue handles the lights; ZHA handles the separate sensor network. A dashboard can bring them together without pretending they are the same subsystem.
Unavailable is a useful state
A dead sensor should read as unavailable, not as a comfortable temperature. A switched-off fixture should not turn the entire dashboard into a wall of alarms. The interface needs to distinguish an actionable problem from a normal household condition.
Still to document
I still need to add redacted dashboard captures and document how the physical controls behave, including a few automation traces.