Standby and Battery - dckiller51/astrion-custom-dashboard GitHub Wiki

How the remote saves battery while its screen is off, without missing anything important. The defaults suit most homes. Adjust them in builder › 5. Standby & battery. (Since 1.2.5)

What drains the battery

The screen is off most of the time, so the battery goes mostly into keeping the remote awake for the network:

  • Home Assistant's chatter: a busy Home Assistant sends hundreds of state changes per minute, and each one wakes the remote's Wi-Fi and processor.
  • Polling by the integration: without push, it asks the remote for its state every 10 seconds.
  • Wi-Fi forced awake: the Keep Wi-Fi awake setting.
  • Motion wake: the motion sensor stays on.

Astrion handles each of these.

The settings

Setting Default What it does
Wake the screen when picked up — for how long after it goes off 5 minutes Picking the remote up wakes the screen during this time after it went off; after that, only the keys do. Off = keys only, Always = old behaviour (uses the most battery). Never on the dock.
Go quiet with Home Assistant after the screen is off for (seconds) 30 After this delay, the remote stops receiving every state change and catches up the moment the screen comes on. -1 = never quiet. Not applied on the dock.
Entities kept live while quiet none Things the remote must react to with its screen off. "Find my remote" doesn't need to be listed.
Screen timeout the remote's system setting Keeps Android's screen timeout at this value (10 s to 5 min). Also in Settings › Display on the remote.
Dock detection delay (seconds) 5 How long it must charge before it counts as docked, so a remote put down crooked doesn't flicker.

Recommended setup

  1. Turn on the push webhook in the Home Assistant integration. The integration then polls every 5 minutes instead of every 10 seconds. That's the biggest saving if you use the integration.
  2. Leave Keep Wi-Fi awake off (remote's Settings › Connections). Turn it on only if Home Assistant fails to reach the remote while its screen is off.
  3. Keep quiet mode on (30 s), and list only what really matters in Entities kept live.
  4. Keep motion wake at a few minutes, or Off if you always use a key to wake it.
  5. A short screen timeout (15–30 s).
  6. Give the remote a fixed IP and a good Wi-Fi signal. Frequent Wi-Fi reconnections cost battery too.

What still works with the screen off

  • "Find my remote", page changes and Activity commands from Home Assistant: they go through the remote's web server, not the quiet connection.
  • Entities listed in Entities kept live while quiet.
  • Pressing any key: the screen comes on and everything is up to date immediately.

JSON

"power": {
  "motion_wake_minutes": 5,
  "screen_off_filter_seconds": 30,
  "screen_off_entities": ["input_boolean.find_remote"],
  "dock_debounce_seconds": 5,
  "screen_timeout_seconds": 30
}

Every key is optional: motion_wake_minutes 0 = keys only, -1 = always; screen_off_filter_seconds -1 = never quiet.

Checking battery use

  • The Battery level sensor of the integration gives you a history graph in Home Assistant.
  • With adb: adb shell dumpsys batterystats gives the detailed picture, useful in a bug report.

See also: Dock screen · Settings · Home Assistant