tgauchat
February 18, 2015, 8:33am
7
Discussed already in many variations…
NB: Like Windows and Linux, the latter discussions mention that Thing should have the ability to appear in multiple places via Shortcuts (soft tiles), with a view selectable for each shortcut. This is but only one possible way to implement the ability for a Thing to be in more than one Group. Meanwhile I also discussed the functionality that Group Tiles could provide, especially if they contain Things of all the same type, like the current half-hearted implementation of Dashboard Shortcuts.
I’m looking ahead to when I might have a lot more zwave switches in the house. Currently, I have them grouped in room groups in the Things view. However, as we know, the groups are not controllable as a whole. This makes it more difficult when setting up something like the Hello Goodnight action.
So, the request is to have the ability to create “actionable groups of the same device type” that can be called in a hello mode. For example, in he Goodnight action, I would want to turn off lights in all the downstairs rooms and the upstairs hallway. If I were to swap out all my switches downstairs for zwaves, that would be a lot to choose in the action. Being able to say “all devices in the kitchen, dining room, living room, etc groups” need to turn off would be simpler and also more logi…
To be clear: I support the concept of “Groups”, instead of “rooms”, because “Groups”, theoretically, are more flexible. I can choose to group by any criteria or reason that makes sense to my home, habits, or brain-waves.
The problem?: SmartThings is hard-coded to only allow a Thing to be in a maximum of ONE Group. Secondary problem is there is no concept of “Sub-Groups”.
[The persistent, repeated complaint / issue of lack of Labels could be very easily resolved with an App Settings option or on/off toggle switch in the top area of any tiles screen. This change is only front-end related and should be absolutely trivial to implement. I hope we are being heard!]
*The concept of Soft Tiles (shortcuts, ability to put a Thing in multiple-groups, ability to see multiple sub-tile views of th…
I’m glad to see some momentum behind the idea of soft tiles (or whatever term makes the most sense…).
It will help if we grasp the usefulness of this in various contexts, but also if the fundamental concept can be as simple as possible.
But I’m not ready to try to write a formal semantic specification yet; just offering these bullets for discussion and/or confirmation:
Any Thing’s Tile and/or Sub-Tile should be able to be “copied as shortcut” (i.e., replicated as a soft tile) that can be placed in any Tile Group. This should be a n:m relationship (i.e., many-to-many relationship: A particular soft tile can be placed and appear in many tile groups and a tile group, obviously, can contain 0 to many soft tiles. This is in contrast to the current UI which,in Thing View, there is a 1:n re…