How to Build a Custom Clicky Panel for Your Smart Home Smart home apps and voice assistants are convenient, but nothing beats the tactile satisfaction of a physical switch. A custom “clicky panel” brings tactile automation to your fingertips. It allows you to trigger complex scenes, control lights, and toggle appliances with satisfying mechanical switches.
Here is how to design, wire, and code your own custom smart home control deck. 1. Plan Your Panel Layout
Before buying components, determine what you want to control and where the panel will live.
Define Your Actions: Map out your buttons. You might want a “Goodbye” button to turn off all lights, a “Movie Mode” toggle, or individual switches for smart plugs.
Choose Switch Types: Mix and match for utility. Use mechanical keyboard switches for satisfying clicks, arcade buttons for quick slaps, or heavy-duty toggle switches for a retro, industrial feel.
Design the Enclosure: Plan your housing. You can 3D print a desktop wedge, laser-cut an acrylic faceplate, or hollow out a vintage wooden box. 2. Gather Your Materials
To build a standard 4-to-6 button panel, you will need the following hardware:
Microcontroller: An ESP32 or ESP8266 development board. These chips are cheap, powerful, and feature built-in Wi-Fi to communicate with your smart home server.
Buttons/Switches: Momentary tactile switches or mechanical keyboard switches (Cherry MX Blue or Green offer the loudest clicks).
Wiring: 22 AWG solid-core hookup wire or DuPont jumper wires.
Prototyping Board: A small soldering breadboard (perforated board) or a solderless breadboard for testing.
Tools: A soldering iron, solder, wire strippers, and a hot glue gun. 3. Wire the Electronics
Wiring a button panel is straightforward. Each switch needs to connect to the microcontroller so it can register when a circuit closes.
The Common Ground: Connect one terminal of every single switch together using a single strand of wire. Run this shared wire to the GND (Ground) pin on your ESP32.
Individual Signal Lines: Connect the second terminal of each switch to its own dedicated GPIO (General Purpose Input/Output) pin on the ESP32 (e.g., GPIO 4, 5, 12, 13).
No Resistors Needed: By using the internal pull-up resistors inside the ESP32 via software, you can skip wiring external hardware resistors. 4. Flash the Software (The Easy Way)
Instead of writing complex C++ code from scratch, use ESPHome. It is an open-source system that lets you control your ESP32 using simple configuration files, and it integrates natively with Home Assistant.
If you use ESPHome, your configuration file (clicky_panel.yaml) will look like this:
esphome: name: clicky-panel esp32: board: esp32dev wifi: ssid: “Your_WiFi_Name” password: “Your_WiFi_Password” # Enable Home Assistant API api: logger: binary_sensor: - platform: gpio pin: number: GPIO4 mode: INPUT_PULLUP inverted: true name: “Panel Button One” - platform: gpio pin: number: GPIO5 mode: INPUT_PULLUP inverted: true name: “Panel Button Two” Use code with caution.
The INPUT_PULLUP line tells the board to keep the pin digitally “high” until you press the button, which drops the signal to ground and triggers the action. Compile and upload this code to your board via a USB cable using the ESPHome dashboard. 5. Connect to Home Assistant and Automate
Once flashed and powered on, Home Assistant will automatically discover your new clicky panel.
Navigate to Settings > Devices & Services in Home Assistant and click Configure on the newly found ESPHome device.
Go to Settings > Automations & Scenes to create a new automation.
Set the Trigger to your binary sensor (Panel Button One) changing from “Off” to “On”.
Set the Action to whatever you desire—like turning on a media center, dimming the living room lights to 20%, or turning on a coffee maker. 6. Assemble the Final Enclosure
With the electronics verified and working, it is time to package the project. Mount your switches into your faceplate. Secure the ESP32 board inside the housing using standoffs or double-sided mounting tape. Drill a small hole or add a USB cutout in the back of the enclosure to run a power cable to a standard 5V phone charger. Screw or glue the chassis together.
You now have a fully customized, network-connected physical dashboard that adds a tactile dimension to your automated home. If you want to customize this build further, let me know:
What smart home platform you use (Home Assistant, Apple Home, Hubitat?) How many buttons or toggles you want to include If you want to add LED status lights or a mini screen
I can provide the exact wiring diagrams or code adjustments for your setup!