Accounts and access

On a Nomad Appliance, Sensa sets up a small set of logins so the right people can do the right things.

The logins

• hab, cab and mobile. Everyday logins for the tablets around your van (for example one in the habitation area, one in the cab, and your phone). They see the day-to-day dashboards (Habitation, Cab, Mobile and Intelligence), and on a unit we supplied they see Settings too. From Settings you can change the other logins' passwords, restart the system, set the units, time zone, country, currency and location, choose the theme, and manage updates and backups. Country is worth setting rather than leaving: your system uses it to work out sunrise and sunset and to price your energy, so it is not simply a label.
• admin. A unit we supplied no longer comes with a separate admin login, because the everyday logins can do everything it could. Units built earlier still have theirs, and it carries on working exactly as it did.

There is also a hidden Sensa support login. It exists only so we can help you if you ask us to, and its password is never shared.

Change the starting passwords

Your unit arrives with each login set to a starting password so that you can get in on the first day. Replace them in Settings, under the System tab and then Passwords. Each login gets its own password there, and you can change any of them again whenever you like.

Do it before you rely on the system. Your unit will not open remote access at all while any login still has the password it was built with, because that password is not a secret and remote access puts the login page on the internet.

Admin Lock and the Settings PIN

On a unit we supplied, Settings is open to every login. Go to Settings from any tablet or from the app and you are in. You never have to log out of your everyday account and back in as somebody else just to change a setting, which on a phone meant the Home Assistant app setting itself up again every time.

If you would rather Settings asked before it let anyone change anything, switch on Admin Lock. It is off to begin with, because a solo traveller, or a couple who are never apart from the van, gain nothing from typing a PIN every time. With it on, Settings asks for a PIN, and the rest of this section applies.

You will find the switch in Settings, under the System tab and then Passwords, at the start of the Settings PIN row. Switching it on does not lock you out of the screen you are standing on: you stay in until you leave.

Once you have typed the PIN, you can do everything Settings offers, including changing the other logins' passwords and restarting the system. What the PIN does not do is turn an everyday login into a Home Assistant administrator: the Home Assistant sidebar, its developer tools and its own configuration pages stay shut, as they always were.

The same PIN also stands in front of the router and Starlink dish Power, Restart and Sleep controls on the Network tab, so nobody can take the van offline without it. It also guards the Reset Offsets and Calibrate buttons for the van's level, and turning on Design Mode. While Admin Lock is on, every control that will ask for the PIN has an amber outline.

The unlock does not last. It ends fifteen minutes after you stop using Settings, when you tap Lock at the end of the tab strip, when you leave Settings for another dashboard, and whenever the system restarts. Five wrong tries and the keypad pauses before it will take another, for longer each time.

If your unit has an admin login from an earlier build, it is never asked for the PIN. It gets straight in, as it always has.

Choose your own PIN

Your unit ships with the PIN set to 1234, so Admin Lock works the moment you switch it on. That is not a secret, and while Admin Lock is on, Settings shows a banner saying so until you change it.

Change it in Settings, under the System tab, in the Settings PIN box: four to eight digits, typed twice. Changing it signs out anyone who is already unlocked, including you, so if you are changing it because somebody learnt it, that is enough on its own.

Choosing the look

You can pick a theme that applies to everyone. Choose it in Settings, under System. Sensa Light is there alongside the dark themes if you prefer white screens.

The theme you pick reaches every login, including one that had chosen its own theme on its Home Assistant profile. The screen you picked it on reloads to show the change.

If you bought through a dealer, their theme is switched on for you the first time it arrives, and you can change it afterwards. Your dealer may instead offer only their theme, or fix it so it cannot be changed, in which case the Theme row is not shown at all.