Wall Display screen control

Try the device settings first

A Wall Display in a bedroom is bright at night, and that is the reason almost everybody ends up here.

Before building anything, check what the display already does. In its own settings there is Turn off screen when idle and Turn off screen only when dark. Between them they solve the common case entirely: the screen sleeps when nobody is near it, and stays off in a dark room.

Reach for the rest of this page when you need the screen to follow something Home Assistant knows and the display does not — an away state, a sleep scene, or a schedule that belongs with the rest of the house rather than on one device.

Why it needs REST

The Shelly integration gives Home Assistant the display’s relay, its sensors and its thermostat. It does not give you the screen. There is no entity to switch.

What the display does have is the same RPC interface as every other Gen2 device — reachable over HTTP on the local network. Home Assistant can call it with the built-in REST command integration.

See webhooks and HTTP requests.

The configuration

REST commands live in configuration.yaml. The File editor add-on from the Add-on Store is the easiest way to edit it.

rest_command:
  wd_kitchen_on:
    url: 'http://192.168.2.130/rpc/Ui.Screen.Set?params={"on":true}'
    method: get
  wd_kitchen_off:
    url: 'http://192.168.2.130/rpc/Ui.Screen.Set?params={"on":false}'
    method: get

Replace the address with your display’s, and name the commands after the room. With three displays you will have six commands, and wd_kitchen_off is the only thing that will tell them apart in a year.

Restart Home Assistant, or reload the YAML configuration, and the commands appear as services.

Using the commands

Once defined, they can be called from anywhere Home Assistant calls a service:

action:
  - service: rest_command.wd_kitchen_off

That covers automations, scripts, dashboard buttons and — through a script — scenes.

The useful patterns are the ones the display cannot do by itself:

• Screens off when the house is set to away, alongside the lights
• Bedroom display off at bedtime, on with the morning routine
• All displays off as part of a single goodnight script

Reserve the display’s IP address in the router. A REST command points at an address, and a DHCP change breaks it silently — see Wi-Fi and router setup.

Tips & best practices

• Test the URL in a browser first. Paste it into the address bar and watch the screen. A command that does nothing and an address that is wrong look identical from Home Assistant.
• Name commands by room, not by device model. wd_kitchen_off survives a display being replaced.
• Use the device’s own idle and dark settings for everything they cover. Fewer moving parts, and they work without Home Assistant running.
• More RPC methods are available than the screen. The same interface exposes the relay, the sensors and much of the display’s configuration — see the Shelly API documentation.
• Authentication changes the URL. If the display has a device password set, the form becomes http://user:pass@IP/rpc/….

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