Home Assistant

ZerryBit Engine is a Home Assistant add-on that turns your Home Assistant entities into crisp 1-bit dashboards for e-ink displays. It includes a built-in visual Widget Builder, and everything runs locally on your Home Assistant.

This guide installs the add-on, starts it, and opens the ZerryBit panel in your Home Assistant sidebar. It takes about 10 minutes. Physically connecting an e-ink display is covered separately in the Self-Host guide.

Before you begin

You'll need:

• Home Assistant OS (HAOS) - the standard Home Assistant install that supports add-ons.
• Administrator access to your Home Assistant instance.
• (Optional) The ZerryBit device. It's not required to install the add-on or design dashboards, only to show a dashboard on real hardware. Device setup lives in the Quick Start guide.

Step 1 — Add the ZerryBit repository

1. In Home Assistant, go to Settings → Add-ons → Add-on Store.

2. Open the ⋮ menu (top-right) and choose Repositories.

3. Paste this URL, click Add, then Close:

   https://github.com/ZerryGit/zb-ha-app

Step 2 — Install the add-on

1. Back in the Add-on Store, find ZerryBit Engine. It appears under its own ZerryBit Add-ons heading — you may need to refresh the page for it to show up.
2. Click it, then click Install.

Step 3 — Start the add-on

On the add-on page:

1. (Recommended) Turn on Start on boot and Watchdog so the add-on comes back automatically after a reboot or crash.
2. Turn on Show in sidebar for quick access.
3. Click Start.
4. Open the Log tab and confirm it started without errors.

Step 4 — Open the panel

Click ZerryBit Engine in the Home Assistant sidebar. The Widget Builder opens right inside Home Assistant. There's no separate login, because it's authenticated through your Home Assistant session.

Step 5 — Build your first dashboard

From the panel you can:

1. Pick the Home Assistant entities you want to show.
2. Open the Builder and arrange text, shapes, and graphs on the canvas.
3. Click Deploy to render your dashboard.

That's the whole loop. For a full walkthrough of the Builder — sources, bindings, graphs, and more — we will make a video here showing the use.

Connect your e-ink display

To show a dashboard on a physical device, point your e-ink display at the add-on's image endpoint:

http://<your-ha-ip>:8000/image.bin

The Builder's Settings tab shows the exact URL for your setup. The full device walkthrough is in the Self-Host guide.

Configuration (optional)

The defaults work out of the box, so you can skip this. If you need to change something, open the add-on's Configuration tab — for example to move the image port if 8000 is already in use, set an automatic re-render interval, or restrict which external hosts the add-on may fetch from. See the full documentation for the complete list of options.

Troubleshooting

The add-on doesn't appear in the store. Refresh the Add-on Store page. If it's still missing, reload the page or restart Home Assistant, then look under the ZerryBit Add-ons heading.

The log shows "Dockerfile is missing". Open a terminal and run ha supervisor reload, then reinstall the add-on.

The panel won't open. Make sure the add-on is Started (Step 3), then check the Log tab for errors.

It won't install / says add-ons aren't supported. Add-ons require Home Assistant OS. See Before you begin.

Next steps

• Self-Host — connect and configure your e-ink display.
• Full documentation — endpoints, payload format, and the configuration reference.
• Report an issue — found a bug? Good. We would be happy if you let us know.