I agree... Mine shows status as log as nothing weird has happened... I have a 7 inch Fire Tablet as a control panel in the kitchen, and it gets the status right every time. I suppose it queries the items as it "starts up from a closed tablet position. I mounted the tablet cover to the end of a cabinet, so the screen would turn off by closing it. When in use, the tablet cover hangs below the screen and allows easy access, but you do have to "open, Swipe, and wait a few seconds" at least for the tablet to wake up and do it's job... It's the slowest option I have, but was pretty cheap.
I tried to find an easy controller app to change the Fire Tablet to, but no matter what I tried it got too difficult and time consuming for me to dig into, and most of the results described have no better response times. I could be wrong as there are several options available. All of it still beats buying, building, and programming your own Raspberry pi or Arduino...