I made Kid Watch: free parental controls for Home Assistant using AdGuard Home, your TVs and Plex (beta)

I wanted one place to see what the kids are actually doing in the evening, without paying for a cloud parental-control app that sends everything to someone else's server. So I built Kid Watch: a custom integration and card for Home Assistant.

What it does

(1) Each child gets a tab: what they're on right now, screen time today against a budget, and a timeline of their evening

(2) It reads your AdGuard Home query log per device, so it knows "TikTok on Emma's iPhone" or "Roblox on the iPad"

(3) TVs too: it watches your media players (Plex, Apple TV, Samsung and so on) and shows the show, the TV and the age rating

(4) If a show is above a child's age limit (say a 15 on a 12-year-old's TV), you get a phone alert and the card pops up the TV with Pause / Turn off buttons. Optionally it stops the show by itself

(5) One-tap controls through AdGuard: pause the internet, bedtime, SafeSearch, and block TikTok / YouTube / Roblox / Snapchat etc. per child

(6) All set up in the UI (add a child, tick their devices and TVs, pick an age limit). Everything stays on your own network

What it can't do (being honest)

(1) DNS only shows which apps and sites, not the pages, searches or YouTube videos inside them

(2) Mobile data is invisible (it only sees your Wi-Fi)

(3) You need to block DoH / iCloud Private Relay, or devices can go around AdGuard

The video uses made-up kids and devices, but it's the real card. It's a beta: tested against a real AdGuard Home and HA 2026.9 in a lab, not yet in lots of real homes. Installs as a HACS custom repository:

https://github.com/spikey1965/ha-kid-watch

If you try it, I'd love to hear what works, what breaks, and what you'd want added. Issues on GitHub or comments here are both great.