Getting started

Ten minutes from download to a hub page on a phone, if the cameras can wait. The cameras are the only part with anything to install by hand.

Would rather not do any of this yourself? Start with nothing but Claude is the same journey with Claude Code doing the typing — installing the plugin, the camera tools, an MCP server and Tailscale, and then building the pages you actually want.

What you need

  • Indigo 2025.2 (Python 3.13). The pages are served by Indigo’s own web server on port 8176.
  • An Indigo API key. Every page reads live data through Indigo’s REST API with a Bearer token, so a browser has to hold one. Make a key on the Authorizations page of your Indigo account, or create a local secret in the install folder’s Preferences/secrets.json (Indigo’s Web Server documentation covers both). The plugin never writes the key into anything under /public/, a browser is given it once and keeps it locally.
  • Device folders that mean rooms. The room pages are built from Indigo device folders. With nothing configured the plugin uses one house’s folder names and yours will produce no rooms — so the first thing to do after installing is tick your folders on the Settings page.

Everything below is optional, and every page that depends on something says so rather than showing an empty chart:

Optional piece What it unlocks
ffmpeg and go2rtc (Homebrew) The camera grid, the hub’s camera strip and the cameras on room pages. Both are required. Without either the plugin logs a warning and shows no streams. See Cameras
SQL Logger plugin (ships with Indigo) The Timeline (all four views), the hub’s Home Insights check, the Mains page’s trust figures and the Meter page’s history
PostgreSQL behind the SQL Logger Supported as an alternative backend to SQLite. Reads go through the psql client, so Postgres.app or the postgresql client package must be installed. Use Plugins → Dashboards → Test History Connection before relying on it
SigenEnergyManager plugin The Energy page (with its When to run it card), the Cost page and the hub’s Energy · Now card. Without it the menu drops both tiles, the hub leaves out its Energy and Solar cards, and a bookmark to either page opens the hub. The Mains page still lists every meter, without the trust figures that are measured against the inverter
EvoHomeControl plugin The heating page’s boost and force buttons. Zone temperatures and setpoints work with any thermostat device
UniFiHealth plugin (v0.2.0 or later) The Wi-Fi pages
OpenWeatherMap key The hub’s weather card forecast and sun times
Pushover plugin and a user key Alert rules sent to your phone (3.47.0). Without it a rule can still email you, through Indigo’s own mail settings, or raise a browser notification. See Alerts
Pillow and qrcode Camera thumbnails and setup-link QR codes. These install themselves from requirements.txt the first time the plugin starts
The companion scripts in scripts/ The Timeline’s Nights view, the hourly error watch behind the Alerts page and the hub’s needs-a-look check, and the laundry half of the Energy page’s When to run it card. Copy the ones you want into Indigo’s Python Scripts folder. The plugin picks them up on its next tick and logs which are missing at startup. See How it works

Install

  1. Go to the Releases page and download Dashboards.indigoPlugin.zip
  2. Unzip the downloaded file — you will get Dashboards.indigoPlugin
  3. Double-click Dashboards.indigoPlugin — Indigo will install it automatically, and asks whether to enable it
  4. Cameras only: brew install ffmpeg and brew install go2rtc (or download the go2rtc binary and set its path under Configure). The rest of the plugin works without them.
  5. Enter credentials under Plugins → Dashboards → Configure — at minimum the Indigo API key, plus the camera user and password if you have cameras. See Configuration for what each field does and for the IndigoSecrets.py alternative.
  6. Open http://<indigo-host>:8176/public/dashboards/index.html — or pick Plugins → Dashboards → Open Dashboards in Browser.

Using Claude Code? It has shell access and can install both camera binaries, install the plugin and fill in the credentials for you — no other plugins or MCP servers needed. See Claude Code and MCP tools.

Pairing a browser

The pages themselves are public files. What a browser needs is the API key, and there are four ways it can get one:

  • A one-time setup link — the usual way. Plugins → Dashboards → Generate One-Time Setup Link (+QR) writes a link (and a QR code) into the log. Open it on the device, or scan the QR with the phone’s camera, and setup.html stores the key and burns the token, so the link cannot be used twice. Unredeemed links expire on their own. Do this once for each of your own devices.
  • The Connect form. A browser that is not paired lands on the hub’s Connect form, which says how to use a setup link and also takes the key typed in by hand.
  • Auto-seeding on the LAN. With Auto-seed the API key to LAN browsers ticked under Configure, a new browser on the home network or the tailnet pairs itself on first visit through the plugin’s own port 8177. It is off for a new install from 3.46.0, because it hands the full key to every device that asks, a visitor’s phone on your Wi-Fi included, and that key controls the house. Installs from before 3.46.0 keep the setting they had, and the plugin logs once to say so.
  • Guest pairing. For a wall tablet or a visitor’s phone that should only look, Plugins → Dashboards → Show Guest Access Info logs a pairing URL. The device gets a guest token instead of the key, so it cannot switch anything, and it reads only the device states and the variables you allow (see Guest devices). Home network and Tailscale only. With auto-seeding on, a guest device could simply ask for the full key instead, so a guest link only means something with it off.

The footer of every page carries a Reset connection link that forgets the stored key.

Which networks are trusted

Auto-seeding, guest pairing and live camera video all go through the plugin’s port 8177, and from 3.60.0 that port answers only these:

  • the Indigo Mac itself
  • Tailscale — any device on your tailnet
  • the network the Indigo Mac is plugged into — worked out from the Mac’s own network settings, and checked again every five minutes, so a change of address is picked up without a restart
  • any network you add under Plugins → Dashboards → Configure → Extra trusted networks

Every other network in the house is refused, an IoT network or a guest Wi-Fi included, even though it is just as “private” as the main one. Before 3.60.0 the port trusted any private address, so with auto-seeding on, a smart plug or a visitor on the guest Wi-Fi could have asked for the full API key.

If your own phones and tablets are on a different network from the Indigo Mac, add that network in the Extra trusted networks field, written like 192.168.2.0/24, with commas between several. Leave it blank if they share the Mac’s network, which is the usual case. Should the plugin ever fail to work out the Mac’s network, it trusts only the Mac and Tailscale until it can, and says so once in the event log, naming that field. A one-time setup link works from any network, so it is always the way to pair a device that is refused.

The first five minutes

  1. Rooms. Open the hub, tap Settings (or the Settings card), and on the Rooms card tick the Indigo device folders that are your rooms. Save. Rooms appear on the menu straight away.
  2. Cameras. On the Cameras card add each camera’s address, name and make (ten makes are in the list, and other takes the camera’s own RTSP address — see Camera makes, which also lists what catches people out with each), and tick the ones for the hub’s strip. Then, on the Indigo Mac, open Plugins → Dashboards → Configure and press Save: that approves the new addresses for the shared camera login (see Cameras). Camera changes need a plugin restart. The card says so.
  3. Check it. Plugins → Dashboards → Test Dashboards Setup runs every check in one go — API URL and key, camera credentials and list, room folders, the SQL Logger history, the public pages folder, the liveness stamp, and whether SigenEnergyManager is present — and logs a verdict per line. An optional piece that is absent is a SKIP, not a failure.
  4. Pin it. On an iPhone or iPad, open the hub in Safari, tap Share, then Add to Home Screen. On a Mac, Safari’s File → Add to Dock…. The dashboard then opens full-screen like an app, and links stay inside it. Chrome’s and Edge’s install icon only appears on a secure (https://) address, which the usual http://…:8176 one is not, see Notifications and install need HTTPS.

Upgrading

Download the new zip and double-click the bundle as before. Indigo replaces the old one. The plugin mirrors its pages into Indigo’s public folder every time it starts, so there is nothing else to copy. After upgrading past v2.70, reload any dashboard tab that has been open for days — a wall tablet running old JavaScript can poll a restarting plugin in a way that stalls the web server for about five minutes, and the newer pages know not to.