I’m waiting for people at work to get back to me so I thought I’d take a moment to throw out an idea I was thinking about this morning.
The tile view in Things looks pretty but doesn’t scale beyond a few devices. You end up with a sea of icons and many of them look the same. While you can shake the pone to get the names this doesn’t stick and the name soon vanish.
I’d like to suggest an alternate list view. This would show the name and a thumbnail icon. For me it would probably be the more useful view.
Tile shaken text description should optionally persist, such as if you are touching the screen. Not disappear in 0.6 seconds . Makes me want to shake the baby
Text lists are good too - I’d go for that - grouped same as the Tile Groups, multi-sort on name/ type/ something.
@Linda, @tslagle13 Agreed. This is one feature I’ve been asking for since January - give me the option of text or icons. Even during the Android beta program we’ve been asking.
I have worked around this by creating my own device type modeled after the original source, and only adding “canChangeBackground: true” to standardTile to mine. That allows me to use a png picture, and the picture is really just dark grey text on transparent background:
Also, I can go back to the standard ST device type after I add the picture, like a zwave switch, and the image is retained, just as in the image above.
My assumption is that they’ve hired a team for a complete redo of the UI to go along with the new hub. Unless they catch up with Wink in terms of design, I can’t see SmartThings lasting long in the consumer marketplace.
