A Hisense Canvas TV rewired as a plane-spotting wall display

Difficulty

Beginner

AI-buildability

5/5

It's software on a TV you already own, with ADB and a coding agent doing nearly all the work.

Time

A weekend

Cost

$0

Estimates based on the original write-up. How AI-buildability is scored. The maker built this with AI tools: more vibe-coded builds. Building with an AI assistant? Connect it to Afterware (free MCP server).

Hisense's Canvas TV runs Google TV, which is just Android with a TV skin. Turn on ADB, point a coding agent at it, and the bloatware goes, a custom launcher goes in, and the TV starts working for you. The art mode stays on as the default, so the set looks like a picture on the wall until something needs your attention.

Home Assistant makes the decisions. When the doorbell rings, the camera feed pops up. A Stream Deck pulls up dashboards on demand, including a live feed of the chickens. The handoff is simple: Home Assistant tells the TV over ADB to open a page in TV Bro, and the TV renders everything locally, so no phone or computer is casting to it.

The part worth stealing is Overhead, the author's own app. When a plane passes over the house, it takes over the screen with the live view, then hands control back to Hisense's native Art Mode once the aircraft is gone. Any TV with ADB access and a web view can do the same trick.