Home Automation Dashboard (HAD)

@mattjfrank Thanks for responding but it looks like I’m in way over my head in trying to get the Dashboard setup. Would you or someone else in this community be willing to help me set this up? Possibly through remote desktop via WebEx.

I may have some free time later today or tomorrow.

What part are you getting stuck at?

Sorry for being MIA. I’ve been too busy at work and home.

Sounds like you may have entered the wrong heroku credentials (username or typo in password or two-factor authentication code). There currently isn’t a way to “log out” after an unsuccessful log-in attempt, other than clearing the session state for the webpage via your browser settings. Using a different browser and entering the correct credentials will also solve them problem. I’ll ad an issue to the github tracker for future reference.

Will do, but will definitely need a few days like you said. Thanks!

Thanks for helping him out. @randy_r: Any thoughts on how I can make that clearer in the instructions?

Thanks, I will make sure to add those tags to the layout file for better compatibility with iOS devices.

Check out line 16 in this file to change the number of widget columns: hadashboard/assets/javascripts/application.coffee at master · FlorianZ/hadashboard · GitHub

@mattjfrank Thanks for offering to help! My schedule is pretty open so just let me know what time works best for you. If you shoot me an email I can send you a WebEx invitation.

@florianz I’m not a programmer so to be honest I’m not exactly sure what I’m doing wrong. On Step 2 where it says to clone the repository everything seems to work fine except when I type in cd hadashboard in Git Bash nothing shows up and there’s nothing for me to copy to the SmartApp . @mattjfrank sent me the file to copy and I was able to move on to step 3 but can’t move on to step 4.

@aimc I formatted the tiles to fit my gen2 and iPad mini (1024 x 768). The best combo I found for me was a 5x4 tile layout and I changed the x,y ratio in the application.coffee file to 165,145. That seems to work perfectly. iPad Air and retina displays have the same ratios, so the above will work with auto-sizing which I referenced in the earlier full screen code.

So I have a question… What advantage does this Home Automation Dashboard give me over the ActiON dashboard (Web Dashboard 3.0)?

They look very similar so I want to understand the limitations of each. I feel confident that I could manage either one. I did get the ActiON dashboard installed within about 20 minutes and was able to have a working dashboard (albeit lacking thermostat control for my Nest) so I’m hesitant to spend the time and effort for this one but I want to make sure the time I do invest is done so wisely.

I look forward to a comparison if anyone else has gone down this route.

Thanks!

They are both amazing dashboards. Web Dashboard is easier to setup and get running, it lacks a few things but I’m pretty sure Alex is working on those. It’s also super quick and easy to deploy multiple versions.

Home Automation Dashboard takes a bit more skill to setup and working, it has some drawbacks because it’s more than just installing an app and selecting which objects you want to show. It’s currently though a lot more customizable.

I use both. Home Automation Dashboard is my main go to dashboard and runs on my tablet mounted on the wall and on a computer screen in my office. It’s also always open on my computer web browser.

Web Dashboard initially I setup for easy deployment for my wife and visitors to control selected items. I now have it on my phone too, it’s many times way faster then trying to load the ST app. The same can be said for HAD but I have over 35 tiles on mine so it’s a bit slower.

For me they work hand in hand. Some people will prefer one over the other.

Thanks @mattjfrank I was starting to think along the same lines. I like the flexibility of the ActiON from browser-to-browser as far as screen sizes are concerned, though I don’t know if HAD has this because of the time commitment that it will be to setup. I’m thinking that I’ll have HAD for my Nexus 7 and then use the ActiON for the less technical better half and for when I need to quickly access something from my phone. :smile: It looks to not care too much about how many rows for icons, so no scrolling over or back-and-forth.

Can you elaborate which things that HAD has that ActiON does not (and vice-versa, if applicable)?

The big thing for me is the moveable tiles on HAD, being able to put them wherever I want. This is actually doable with actiON too. I favor HAD as a dashboard more only because I’ve gotten deep and dirty into it, added functionality etc. This is all actually possible with actiON too, but from a novice actiON is just easier to get up and running.

Both look good for me on the screen, my mounted tablet is a 7" Nexus, HAD was built for a 7inch tablet with 7x4 rows, but I’m greedy and want more tiles. :slight_smile: I also modified HAD to get rid of all the colors, everything is gray by default, green is on for switches, and orange is an alert (motion, open contact, unlocked door, etc).


Overall their features and abilities grow constantly. So as far as what they can integrate with with ST, the door is open to whatever the developer or someone else adds the ability.

HAD, moveable tiles, Instant Updates, energy meters,

actiON, has dimmer capabilities, deploys easily

@randy_r are you on windows? I’ve never actually done it on windows so I may not be the right person to help you. Have you looked in explorer to see if the directory exists?

@mattjfrank Yes, I’m on windows. Will that make a difference? I looked in the Explorer directory and found the hadashboard files. I’m just not so sure on how to edit it.

Thanks for the comparison. I like the idea of the super customized main tablet interface then having the ActiON as my “basic/try-it-out” flashy stuff.

What did you do for the energy meter, like what is the physical device that is tied to?
(I’m starting to wonder if I can figure out how to grab the daily data that my electric co-op puts online for me to view my daily graph of energy consumption. this would be wicked if I could add a tile to it which could help me with my energy consumption habits…!)

hey @florianz have you updated the master branch yet?

I still have the issue where the presence sensors are not updating automatically. . . .was this resolved?

Also, any update on adding moisture / smoke alarms?

Working great! Thanks!

Aweseome, thanks @retlas!

@florianz - Thanks, I’ll play with the numbers until they fit or maybe get a Nexus anyway since I’ll get more on the screen.

Now I have another question - I am having trouble with tile refreshes. I swear it worked right out of the box but at some stage it stopped and since then no joy. I have zeroed out all my changes, re-installed the app all to no effect. The tiles are all correct when I refresh but no pushes are occurring. I have verified that the ST side of things is working as expected - adding debug statements I can see the notifyWidget calls happening, however on the Heroku side I don’t see the corresponding POST events in the log.

Anything initiated from the Dashboard performs as expected, but the subsequent updates of tile state do not. For example, if I am in Day Mode and press the Evening Mode tile, ST is notified, executes the phrase, turns on lights etc, but the Mode widget on the Dashboard does not change, and the corresponding mode switches don’t reflect the changed state. After a refresh all is well.

I have tried this in multiple browsers - any clue would be welcome!

Hm… that’s odd. Have you tried re-authorizing with SmartThings? That process with make sure that the API key is synced up with the SmartApp.

I wasn’t even aware that this issue existed. I am not using the presence widget in my personal setup. It was a submission from @bmmiller: Any thoughts?

AFAIK, no one is working on a widget moisture or smoke alarms.

Also, if anyone has feature requests or bugs to report: Please, use the GitHub issue tracker if you can.

It’s becoming increasingly harder to keep up with this lengthy thread, and the issue tracker allows us to prioritize the work, and give users a chance to vote on which features they would like to see implemented sooner rather than later, and which bugs are hit most frequently. Thanks!

I kind of tried it - it would’t let me at first then I uninstalled the client and reinstalled, still no luck but I was able to set devices in the app on my iPhone - thinking about it you are probably right. When I get home in a couple of days I’ll try running through that part of the setup again - thanks for the hint.

@seanvree, I actually haven’t had any trouble with the presence sensors updating? Are you certain they are actually reporting the correct value from within SmartThings? Given the recent issues they were having, it’s certainly possible the problem lies there.

@bmmiller Yeah, they are reporting in the app just fine. We are just using our phones as sensors, not sure if that has anything to do with it. I have to refresh my dashboard to get them to update.