Action tiles worth it? (UK)

Hey Guys,
So I managed to buy the Amazon Fire 7” tablet for £29.99 today which I thought was :+1: and I’ve seen many videos and posts on action tiles… are they worth it? Is there anything like that in the UK?
Your thoughts

Hay

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ActionTiles is very popular in the community. Since it’s browser-based, I believe it should work in the UK as well. (The developers themselves are Canadian.) There’s a free trial so you could check it out for yourself. :sunglasses:

See the following recent discussion of dashboard alternatives:

Sharptools , actiontiles or native ST app for your wall panel?

Tagging @tgauchat

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Check out our over 200 genuine customer reviews / recommendations on Facebook (and on the Play Store and Amazon Appstore). We’re proud we’ve earned our 4.9-:star: rating!

https://www.facebook.com/ActionTiles/reviews

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Be sure to check out SharpTools.io! Depending on how many devices you have connected, you might even be able to get away with the Free tier (1 dashboard with 15 tiles).

In addition to your traditional smart device dashboard, we have some unique features like being able to visualize your News Feeds and Calendars along side your smart devices… and some really neat features like Album Art Tiles for Sonos and Echo Speaks.

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Yep actiontiles are worth every penny. I started with 1 tablet and now i have several around the house + mobile phones. Now when anyone comes to my house they always ask, why do you have all these tablets stuck to the walls around the house with all these buttons :slight_smile: …and that is my cue to rave on about my smart home system :yum:

…jokes apart, try it and I am 110% sure you will fall in love with it.

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Thank you all for the feedback I have just signed up for the 14 day trial and loving it already that’s even before my Fire tablet has come in (coming tomorrow)

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Even though I author a somewhat competing product (HousePanel) I agree ActionTiles is an excellent product and worth trying out. If you want a turnkey solution with pro support and polish that just works, AT is hard to beat. Sharp tools is pretty good too. As JD likes to say, choice is good.

By the way, once your Fire tablet arrives, strongly recommend you install Fully Kiosk browser. Instructions are on their website.

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ActionTiles is easily the best and most reliable human interaction and quick status reference mechanism I have seen in the SmartThings ecosystem. This has been going on for years now and the folks behind it keep making it better.

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As far as I am concerned ActionTiles is not just worth it. It is a necessary item to have in my toolbox.

Tablet arrived today and have installed “Fully kiosk browser” thanks for the heads up I heard you can use the front facing camera as a motion detector so it knows if you’re stood in front of it… do you know of any settings etc that I need to adjust on the tablet or browser?

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Please keep in mind that the same settings applicable for SharpTools, also work for ActionTiles, of course.

Both are browser executed “web apps” (as pioneered by ActionTiles’s direct ancestor, SmartTiles).

We recommend making a few customizations to your Tablet as necessary, because extra modifications may result in sub-optimal performance and make it difficult to reproduce any issues you may experience. Send a note to Support@ActionTiles.com if you have specific questions or encounter unexpected behavior. Thanks!

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Just did the same thing with Action Tiles on an FireHD8, since it was on sale. Love it and I am using an app called WallPanel, just seems a bit simpler than Fully Kiosk Browser.

One note of hesitation on the FireHD - I have a few weather .GIFs for seeing radar along with my home Wyze cameras using TinyCam Pro… the FireHD tablets just don’t seem to have the processing power / RAM to function with all this loaded on it. Might want to stick to simple Action Tiles screens for the FireHD7 for the best experience.

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One drawback right now is that Actiontiles does not support the SmartThings Home Monitor (STHM) in the new app. The new STHM is very good and powerful given the new automation rules. I hope Actiontiles comes out with this soon.

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Unfortunately, we can’t do anything until SmartThings releases an API into STHM (no ETA has been given).

Ironically, SmartThings has never published the API for Classic SHM. It was simply discovered and shared in the Community.

Media Tiles certainly take a lot of processing power; so “the fewer the better” - as well as using infrequent refresh rates.

We avoid recommending specific hardware because performance is hard to predict, but it ought to be pretty obvious that the Fire HD7 is designed to be a cheap “content consumption device” (ie, reading, music, Amazon Video, Netflix, and simple games) - Sub-optimal for a complex,always-on, dashboard Panel App. We think HD7 is only practical for simple Panels (such as for particular regions of the home and probably no Media or animated Tiles). Even backgrounds slow things down due to the RAM usage. Definitely even worse if task switching (eg, to Hue or Sonos etc.

Of course, Amazon has also built-in the guts to run Alexa and Show Mode… But that’s their own Apps, so they can tune accordingly.

I’ll keep my fingers crossed.

Thanks!

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