Star Trek LCARS Style Android Smart Home Control Dashboard.

Welcome dear reader.

I have had custom launchers on my phones for a few years now which you can find out more about in my Custom Android Launcher UI Instructable. So I waned to take the opportunity to share how I designed and implemented my setup to help other to achieve their own custom smart home control dashboards with a Star Trek theme and my own personal designs. Please note, this is for Android devices only.

The Project:

To extend the use of my custom launcher UIs, I added custom smart home dashboards, both set up in my home and on my phones, which I have been using for over 4 years now (at time of writing) and I couldn’t be happier with the setup. Although the initial setup and figuring out how to put it all together was a month long slog I don’t mind telling you, but the convenience, security aspect and cool factor was worth it. So by popular demand, I will guide you through the process of making and setting up your own smart home dashboard. No coding, programming or expensive hubs involved, just a little creativity and installing the right apps and setting them up correctly, I will guide you through the process.

The Inspiration:

Because I like my gadgets, I started getting more and more smart home devices, which for physical control meant more and more apps or a very boring looking Amazon Alexa dashboard. Notice I said "physical control", that's because I don't really use voice control because...

1. it is sometimes quicker to tap a button,
2. I was getting fed up with the 'always listening' false Alexa activations.

I am also a big Star Trek fan and had an LCARS (Library Computer Access/Retrieval System) style launcher UI I made for my phones and wanted to make my launchers smarter than just opening apps etc. So I set out how to find out how (if possible) I could make a custom smart home dashboard and have it looking the way I wanted, and function the way I wanted. Once I figured that out I purchased a couple of used Android tablets and set them up, drawing new LCARS page designs and making them control my smart home devices.

As you can see in the above photos, I still use the LCARS UI on a tablet mounted on a wall, another fitted to a kitchen cabinet door and another that sits on my living room coffee table. But for my phone I have drawn and used my own UI designs just to change things up a little.

The Making:

To make it all work, I used a launcher app called Total Launcher (which I will refer to as TL from now on) which is used as the user interface to control our devices, and Tasker does the heavy lifting i.e. sends to commands to control everything. The other app used for the setup is Amazons Alexa (I believe Google Home can be used too) which is essentially the middleman, receiving commands and sending them out. Tasker also has a plugin called AutoVoice which is needed to make it all function properly. AutoVoice essentially sends a pre-written text message to Alexa which replaces speech to control smart devices. The user interface on the launcher was drawn up on my laptop using a draw/paint program which was then added to TL, tasks made in Tasker for the smart devices, then adding functioning buttons to the UI to control everything. The whole process is a lot more cost effective than other options available and requires no programming. Depending on how much you add, the process takes a little time, but once it's done, you'll be pleased you did it.

Lets get to it.

1. An Android phone and/or tablet
2. Total Launcher app
3. Tasker app
4. The Tasker plugin called 'AutoVoice'
5. Amazon Alexa app (I believe you can use Google Home as well)
6. Your smart home devices with their associated apps.
7. And a PC with a draw/paint program to design and make your dashboard.
8. OPTIONAL: Broadlink IR Blaster and app. This acts as a universal remote control that can be linked to Alexa to control many remote control devices and their options. Try to get the blaster that controls both IR (Infrared) and RF (Radio Frequency) remote control devices. This can make non-smart devices, smart.
9. There is also a Total Launcher Star Trek theme app you can purchase, which has a working LCARS interface which is editable, all you have to do is add your own apps and functions, but following the steps below, you can make your own without paying for the theme app and make it how you want it.

Before we get busy with the designs, we have to get TL up and running and give ourselves a blank canvas to work with which gives us a starting point to lay out the elements we will use such as widgets, areas for buttons, bar graphs etc. There are two editors that will be used...

1. A main edit option you toggle On and Off to edit your TL interface,
2. and an element edit where you can change the properties of any buttons, widgets, images and so on.

When I refer to "elements", this means the things you can add to your UI with TL. These are either buttons, images, widgets, text... anything that can be added to your screen. This assumes that you have TL already downloaded and installed on your device and have smart devices and the Alexa app installed.

For this example, we will use the phone and will start by holding the phone in portrait mode.

1. Open the Total Launcher app, then press and hold on an empty space until the page shrinks down. Click on 'Edit Off' to toggle it On.
2. While the page is shrunk down, if you only want to use the one home page, swipe across to the others and tap the bin icon to delete the pages you don't want. If you want to use multiple pages and want to add some more, tap the "New Page" tab at the bottom of the screen.
3. One by one, press and hold on all of the default elements on the screen and tap the delete bin icon to start with a blank canvas. On some of the default elements such as the app search widget, don't tap and hold on the app icons, but on a blank area nearby. This widget is a square with invisible/transparent areas which is where you need to tap and hold to turn the element editor On. The widget (and anything else you select) will then have a yellow chevron outline around it meaning the element editor is active. To turn the element editor off and save the changes you make, tap the 'Back' button of a blank area on the screen. NOTE: You can also press and hold on one element to highlight it, then tap on other elements to highlight them also, then bulk delete them all at once.
4. Swipe across the screen to the other pages and do the same. As I mentioned in Step 1: Design, I only use the home screen page on my phone (I use two pages on my car tablet), so instead of deleting all of the unwanted elements, I deleted the unwanted pages instead by tapping on the bin icon under each page.
5. Press and hold on an empty screen space until the page shrinks down again, and while at this stage click on the middle square icon (looks like a little mountain) and click on the portrait image. Click on 'Colour' and then choose black with the transparency slider on the bottom (transparency Off) of the slider bar.
6. Click on the blank picture then select 'Stretch to fit screen' then name it "Home" or whatever you want. To add a second page to add more apps etc., swipe across the screen, make a new page, name it 'Page 2' and again set the background to the colour black. Then click on it to bring the screen forward.

At this point you should now have a blank canvas to work with, with just your screen showing a plain black screen. We will change this after we make our design in the next step.

One thing to note is if you choose to have more than one page, you can select which one is the 'Home' screen page. With the main screen shrunk down again, tap on the little house icon at the top of the launcher page, then click 'OK' to confirm. You can also rename the pages by clicking on the cog icon then typing in the new 'Label' name then tapping 'OK'. It's a good idea to do this because it may come in useful when you set up your new launcher.

This is where we can have some fun a be creative by keeping the designs clean and simple, or being as extravagant as we like. For my phone I made clean futuristic looking design and for the smart control dashboard I made a design that would be used in an overlay window in TL which I will explain how to do below. For my wall mounted and table top tablets which are dedicated to smart home control use, I went full on Star Trek LCARS using Voyagers colour scheme as inspiration using mainly different shades of blues, and following reference pictures to make my LCARS design. Two different designs, but both made and used the same way.

There are two main ways to make your UI designs...

1. You can design and draw a simple background using you paint program, then draw separate buttons and add images and text etc. within Total Launcher.
2. Or make the background to include ready made buttons, text etc. (the LCARS design already kinda gives you this with its borders). in your draw/paint program. This technique is what I tend to use now as it is quicker to put together and what I will use as the example below.

If you think you will be moving things around after the you finished and are using your new setup, then the first option might be better for you. If you think you will stick with your design but just add new apps from time to time, or if your device has a low amount of RAM (say 3 to 4GB), then the second option may be better suited.

So lets begin.

1. To start, add some widgets and/or GIFs you think you will use and place them where you would like them. Tap the Plus icon (+) on the top right corner of the screen then tap 'Widget' and here you can choose pre-installed or app widgets. Using the Google calendar app, tap 'Application Widget' then tap on the Google calendar widget to add it to the screen. with the widget highlighted tap and hold the widget to move it around the screen, or tap/hold the sides to resize it (See Top Tips below).
2. Take a screen shot of you devices screen and send it to your PC. We use this to make the UI the correct size/resolution for the phone or tablet.
3. Open up a draw/paint program and open/insert the screen shot. Use the 'Crop' tool if needed so all that is on the drawing area is the screen shot. This will be for the smart home screen page or window.
4. Fill the screen shot with a solid colour (for my phone I used black), then draw your design. I started with the outlines then added buttons, leaving space to add the calendar and any other widgets I wanted.
5. Now draw in some buttons or button areas. You will see in the above images that my phones home screen uses both buttons and button areas (the sphere and lines). Equally space and size them using the Copy/Paste tools.
6. When you have your design finished, cover the widgets on the screen shot with black boxes or pen tools to hide them, as we will be filling the areas with the real things later.
7. You can now add text to your buttons if you choose, or do that later in TL which is what I did.
8. When you're finished, make a new folder in 'Pictures' on your PC, name it 'Smart Home UI' or whatever you like, save the background you made to the folder and name it 'Home Screen'. Now send the dashboard screen picture you made to your phone or tablet.
9. Press and hold on an empty screen space until the page shrinks down again, and while at this stage click on the middle square icon (looks like a little mountain) and click on the portrait image. Click on 'Image' > '+' (at the bottom right of the screen) > tap in the background image in your downloads or recent folder on your device then tap 'Select' to add it to your TL library, then tap on the background image again.
10. Tap on 'Stretch to fit screen' then name it "Home" or whatever you want.

Now when you tap on the background image it will make it full screen and this is what you will see when you use the device. Tap and hold the widgets and GIFs on your screen to highlight them and move/resize them into position if needed.

You can then follow the above process again to make and set the landscape orientation screen. This is where I set mine up different, my phone in portrait only as I have a 'car mode' UI in landscape, and the tablets in landscape only as they will always be in that orientation.

Top Tips:

To make simple designs I used MS Paint to draw them. But for more intricate shapes and colour gradients, I used Paint.net as it has more tools to use. Paint.net is also a better option for drawing the LCARS 'elbow' boarders.

So there are two main elements we can use for custom buttons, 'Image' and 'Text' (although pretty much any element can be used as a button). One button can have five operations by a single tap and swipe up, down left and right. so essentially you could open five different apps for example. As an example, for my under counter kitchen lights I can swipe up on a button to turn them On, swipe down to turn them Off, and tap it to open the smart lights app.

When making your designs, you probably will want to future-proof it a little. By this I mean adding some spare buttons for when you install new apps. You can also make a new window to add further apps and features without changing your original design layout.

We have Total Launcher set up which we will use as the dashboard, and now have our main dashboard design background set and ready to add some working buttons and widgets.

1. To start, download the Tasker app and complete the setup by excepting the permissions needed.
2. Now download and install the AutoVoice plugin app installed on your device, signed in to it and linked up to Tasker, and have the AutoVoice skill enabled in the Alexa app and connected to AutoVoice.
3. Now we need to make a 'Switch On' task and a 'Switch Off' task for our smart switch to control our table lamp. With Tasker open, Tap on the + icon, then Create, and name it “Table Lamp On”, tap the tick icon then tap the + icon.
4. Scroll down and select Plugin and tap AutoVoice then scroll down and select Trigger Alexa Routine. On the Configuration field tap the pencil icon, then tap Create new Device.
5. Name it 'Table Lamp On' then tap OK, then you should get a notification saying that “Table Lamp On is Connect to Alexa”. Leave AutoVoice exactly as it is, tap your home button to take you to the launcher then open the Alexa app.

1. Tap on Devices to make sure your “Table Lamp On” device is visible. If it’s not, drag down the screen and release to refresh it and it should now become visible.
2. Now tap on 'More', > 'Routines', > the '+' icon in the top right corner.
3. Tap on the 'When' > 'Add an Event' section then select 'Smart Home', scroll down and tap on 'Table Lamp On', then tap 'Save'.
4. Now tap on 'Alexa Will', 'Add an Action' section, then 'Smart Home', then tap on 'Plugs' (this is where your smart plug should be located by default when it was linked with the Alexa service from your smart plugs own app).
5. Tap on your smart plug, then by default it should already be highlighted 'On' (you will need to tap on the 'Off' selection when you make the table lamp off task later). Tap on 'Next' in top right corner, then tap 'Save'. You should now see a message pop up saying “Routine successfully Created”.

1. Tap your Recent Apps icon on the devices navigation bar to go back to AutoVoice, the tap on the tick icon in the top right corner.
2. Tap the back button, tap the Icons square at the bottom center of the screen and choose a relevant icon to use. You must add an icon or you won't be able to add the tasks to your buttons.
3. Now tap on the task test icon and the smart plug should now switch on.
4. Tap the Back button the tap the tick icon, then the back button again to exit Tasker.
5. Now, follow Steps 3, 4, 5, but this time naming everything “Table Lamp Off” and choosing the 'Off' selection in the Alexa app I mentioned earlier. Finish off by pressing the back button to full back out of Tasker.

As I mentioned earlier, there are two main elements we can use for custom buttons, 'Image' and 'Text'. As we have already included buttons to our dashboard background, we will use the 'Text' element to make our buttons function. So for our first button we will make it turn a table lamp On and Off that uses a smart plug, swiping the button up for On and down for Off.

1. Click on the top right Plus icon, select 'Graphic' > 'Text' > 'Default' then drag it over to one of your background buttons you made. Resize it to fit over your button the click the 'Cog' icon at the top of the screen. Here you can name it to the app of your choice, change typeface, text colour and size, alignment and more, then finish off by saving your changes.
2. Now click on the Play icon and scroll down to 'Swipe Up' area. Here you click on 'Action' and then scroll down to 'Task Shortcut' and choose the “Table Lamp On” task we made.
3. This is also where you can add audio feedback so when you tap a button a sound of your choice will be heard. Download or file transfer some sound effects to the tablet, then tap on 'Sound' then the plus icon. Choose the sound effect saved on your tablet, then find and tap on it again, then tap the back button a couple of times to exit the editor. Now when you tap or swipe the button you will hear the sound.
4. When you have finished adding the action and the optional sound, follow the same process for the 'Swipe Down' option to add your “Table Lamp Off” task.
5. Tap the back button once to get back to the main launcher UI screen, then tap back again to exit the element editor. You can now use your button.

Follow the above process to add more buttons, or when the button is highlighted, tap the 'Copy' icon (to the left of the scissors 'Cut' icon), then tap the '+' icon then tap 'Paste', then you can edit this button by moving it and adding a new action, sounds etc.

For more details on how to use Total Launcher, click here to have a look at my Custom Android Launcher Instructable to see how to add widgets, GIFs and dynamic images and text.

There are also several websites that offer free and paid GIFs if you don't want to make your own. And if you're going for the LCARS look, there are a few resources to down load matching GIFs, like this website here.

Earlier I mentioned about making spare buttons just incase you wish to add new smart devices or website links and apps or more. But with Total Launcher, you can also add overlay windows which you can resize, add backgrounds and add anything you like. It is like an extension to your main page and using one of your home screen buttons, you can use this to open the additional overlay window to access your additional content without having to swipe across multiple pages. These work great with both my phones UI design and the tablets LCARS designs too. To do this...

1. Click and hold on a blank area of the main TL page > 'Menu' > 'Launcher options' > 'Resources' > 'Window' > '+ (plus icon)' > Name your window then click 'OK' > click the 'Back' icon (near top left corner) three times > click anywhere on the main page > '+' (top right corner) > 'Graphic' > then click on any element you want, here I will use 'Text' as an example.
2. After you tapped 'Text' > tap 'Default' > 'Play icon' > 'Action' > 'Window' > click on your new window name > then click the 'Back' icon > then the 'Cog' icon > then name and edit your text element > then 'Back' icon twice.
3. Now click on the text element > Click and hold on the blank window > click on any of the blue simi circles and drag to resize the window > click the 'Cog' icon > 'Background' > 'Image' > choose your background > 'Back' icon > then click anywhere on the main page, not the window > the click the '+ (plus icon)' in the top right corner to start adding elements like additional buttons, widgets etc.
4. To make a custom background to match the main UI, follow the instructions in Step 2, but when you have resized the new window to the size you want, take a screen shot of the UI with the window open, then open the screen shot in your paint program and crop just the window. Then you can design it as you want, save import and add it as a background to the new window. Edit the window's settings to add enter and exit animations, sounds etc.

I made all of my windows on my phone so they are in categories making it easier to find the apps etc. and have a dedicated window for the smart home controls. I also did the same for the tablets, but this time the categories are separated into 'Lighting', 'Heating', 'Media/TV controls', and 'Security'. These windows are also the areas where I leave some blank buttons for any new devices, apps and features I might add in the future. If you do fill up all of your buttons, you could always make a new window.

There are a number of website that offer free and paid sound effects that you can preview, download then use in TL for your button taps and swipes. You can also use audio editors/creator programs such as Audacity to make your own sound effects. Do a web or YouTube search to find out how. If you intend to use a Star Trek style interface, click here to preview and download free Star Trek sound effects.

Something else to note, you don't have to be stuck with the included text fonts in TL. On your device, do web search for reputable sites that offer free or paid typefaces and fonts, find one you like, download it, go to your downloads folder and extract everything.

In TL, tap and hold on a text element to highlight it, tap the 'Cog' icon, tap 'Typeface', then the '+' icon at the bottom of the screen and select the new font you downloaded and extracted. Now with the new font on your TL library, tap on the new font to select it.

For Star Trek fonts, I found that 'Oswald' worked quite well, and I discovered 'Antonio' which more closely matched the LCARS style font. There are a number of different ST fonts here.

To finish off our new smart home dashboard, there are a couple of last jobs we need to do.

First off is to back up our dashboards. The backups needed are for Total Launcher and Tasker.

Then we need to set Total Launcher as the default launcher.

We are now finished with our phone, but for the wall mounted tablets, I got a couple of cheap rubber/silicone tablet cases, screwed them to the wall and kitchen cabinet door, insert the tablet and connect them to a permanent power supply. I traced the wire so it was hidden, for the wall tablet I used wire trunking, and for the cabinet door, I drilled a hole through the door and fed the cable through.

All that's left is to use our new smart home dashboards.

**Please note, the placement of icons, buttons and menu options of the apps I have mentioned and used were correct at the time of writing this 20/12/2025, and are subject to possible changes due to updates, redesigns and new features added, made by the developers of the apps.**

So that brings us to the end of this highly requested Instructable. Figuring out how to do this smart home dashboard setup took me a solid month to figure out (I mean all day, every day, seven days a week). There are various options to do this that requires expensive equipment/services or a lot of programming, but I was so happy and relieved when I cracked it. And when people saw my dashboards in action, they asked me how I managed it which is kinda difficult to explain, so was the perfect opportunity to document it here.

On all of the devices I have used my smart home dashboards on and for the years I've used them, I have had very little issue with function. Once and a while, Amazon in their infonaut wisdom, tends to knock saved devices off the Alexa service so I have been left scratching my head wondering why something stopped working. Finding the issue simply meant adding the device again and all was well. Thankfully it has only happened a handful of times.

So I hope you found this Instructable useful and informative, and if you have any questions or if you decide to make your own smart home dashboard, please leave a comment.

Thanks for reading, and happy making.