Introducing Helios
If you have spent any time in the Home Assistant community lately, you have probably seen Helios. It is one of those rare dashboard cards that makes you stop scrolling: a 2.5D map of your home, the sun tracking across the sky, live flows between solar, battery, grid, and load, and a day timeline that turns abstract kWh numbers into something you can actually see.
We have integrated Helios into Check My Solar as-is, because it is already that good. For Fox ESS owners who want more than a static energy flow diagram, Helios is a perfect drop-in. Your inverter data, forecast, and weather all feed straight into the scene. There is nothing extra to wire up.
Thank you to Jérôme (ReikanYsora), the developer behind Helios, for making the project open source and for allowing it to be used in Check My Solar. It deserves a front-and-centre place in the app, and from today you can make it your default Today view.
Make your energy visible
Helios paints a real-time picture of what your home produces, stores, and consumes. The scene follows the sun’s arc across your roof, with weather that matches your location: sunshine that dims as clouds build, rain, snow, or storms riding the timeline. The sun sets behind your own horizon, worked out from the terrain around you.
Around the house, chips show the numbers that matter right now: solar production, battery state, grid import and export, house load, and more. Tap a badge to open its detail panel. Tap again to raise its curve around the home across the whole day. Production curves extend into the forecast; weather-driven series stay continuous across the window.
Despite how rich it looks, Helios is not a heavy 3D engine. It tilts a flat basemap in CSS and layers each element with the painter’s algorithm, so it stays smooth on modest hardware.
Zero configuration
Helios in Check My Solar requires no configuration. We ship the same experience Home Assistant users know, adapted to your Fox ESS data automatically. Your linked inverter, live telemetry, and forecast location are already enough. Turn it on and the scene appears.
Enable Helios as your Today view
- Sign in to Check My Solar with a linked Fox ESS inverter
- Open the sidebar and tap Customise Dashboard
- Under Today Dashboard, switch on Helios Solar Scene
That replaces the standard energy flow diagram on Today with the full Helios map, live flows, and day timeline. You can switch it off any time from the same panel. Your charts, totals, and the rest of the dashboard stay exactly as they were.
On past single-day history views, Helios is also available as a Helios tab alongside list and graph modes, so you can replay any day in the scene.
Built in the open
Helios is free, open source, and built by a single developer in full transparency. No Helios server, no separate account. The card reads your energy data locally in the browser and draws the neighbourhood from open map tiles and a physical sun model.
Learn more at helios-ha.org, explore the source on GitHub, and join the community in GitHub Discussions.
Try it today
Open Customise Dashboard in the sidebar, enable Helios Solar Scene, and head to Today. If you have questions or want to share how it looks on your system, join us on Discord or follow us on WhatsApp.