I’ve been experimenting with the Guition ESP32-S3-4848S040, a 4-inch 480 × 480 capacitive touchscreen based on the ESP32-S3, with 16 MB flash and 8 MB PSRAM with a view to using it as a display for Home Assistant (HA).
I bought the board from AliExpress. It can become a surprisingly capable little HHA display with the right software (so much so that by October 9, 2026 I now have THREE).
The first firmware I installed was EspControl, creating a basic but nice ESPHome-based smart-home control panel for Home Assistant (HA). The Guition 4848S040 is one of the boards specifically supported by EspControl (up to 10″ – but the 4″ is just-sub-30 euros – it just increased from 25 Euros on AliExpress this week). It worked, and I could control HA devices from the screen – and compared to my Tasmota-modified Sonoff NSPanel (original), way better and easier, but I wanted something rather more flexible. We’ll leave the NSPanel Pro out of this discussion as it is Android and NOT easy to mod.
I then moved the same hardware to Tessera, the new name for ESP Screens, by Max Gramser. It provides a drag-and-drop interface for building HA touchscreen pages without having to write the display configuration in YAML. The project supports CYD and Guition ESP32 panels (and others).
And I have to say, I very much like it. When I started in the morning, I’d never heard of Tessera – by lunchtime I had a working display with one page and a couple of working panels – by evening – it was boxed. in my bedroom at the bedside cabinet. replacing the Sonoff NSPanel and achieving far, far more already – See main images at the top for the current working unit.
Note that the screen is an unbelievably good size fit to replace the original NSPanel controller.
The Guition becomes a proper little Home Assistant control panel, with tiles for lights, switches, sensors, weather and other entities straight out of HA. The current firmware supports multiple pages and, in the latest releases, considerably more than the original 3 × 3 arrangement – with an icon top left and optional time/date/forecat etc top right. At the very bottom, simple touch page switching. I used the 3*3 arrangement (plus heading and footer if multiple pages are used) here for my first unit – but read on…
One particularly useful trick I’ve discovered is to create combined Home Assistant template sensors. For example, rather than using separate tiles for temperature and humidity (you only have max 9 tiles per page to work with on my particular 4″ screen if using the 3*3 format), I created one entity which displays:
21.4°C · 48%
That’s a great way to optimise the use of a tile or in my case the header area.
On the top header area, I’ve also used a simple template entity whose state is just “-“ as a spacer — a surprisingly effective way of getting a little more breathing room between items on the screen.
The next stage was to put the display into a Sonoff NSPanel Pro enclosure. I’m currently still using USB power but looking to power the Guition internally from a small isolated 230 V → 5 V supply, using the board’s internal power connection (8 way connector – not the 3v7 battery connector) rather than having a USB cable hanging out of the side (present situation).
There was also a Wi-Fi wrinkle to sort out, as different parts of the house use different access points. The good news is that the Tessera author has confirmed that multiple Wi-Fi networks and firmware updates are supported, so that should be straightforward. (It is – I’ve now used multiple access points in a group)
While operating in the bedroom, so far the combination of the inexpensive Guition hardware and Tessera software looks extremely promising. My first board is now running by the bedside 24-7, the second one will also be in a desktop box in my office, the third will sit on a white wall junction box cover provided I can find room inside the junction box for a tiny sealed 5v supply.
Note that in the above, given a working HA setup – there is no coding involved in getting this display up from scratch. See the current pages (dark scheme) in the lead photos for this article.
State of the art right now: my bedside panel – note that the editor does not show the dark theme of the actual panel.
Update October 9 – 2026
My latest panel below – note I’ve moved to 3 wide by 4 high format which you can do on the fly. Same width for text, slightly less wasted whitespace vertically which each panel remains large enough for clumsy fingers.
Capacitive touch – isn’t that LOVELY – and there’s no reason I can’t have several pages. I took this panel out of the box late this afternoon and by mid-evening I was blogging THIS. Meanwhile as it’s so easy to change live – I may set two of the three displays to this format – the display next to the bed can stay at 3×3 – as I generally don’t have my glasses on in bed 🙂
This could go on but time to stop for now – I have some new Meross and Sonoff gadgets to review.