Home Automation Dashboard (HAD)

So for the last few weeks I’ve been having issues were my hadashboard has not been updating. Presence and mode will often no longer update. Contacts, weather, temps, motion seem to be updated though. Refreshing displays the correct values. I haven’t had a chance to troubleshoot it extensively yet, but I’m just wondering if anyone else has seen the issue too?

Any update @florianz ??

This is not a SmartTiles.click discussion. This is about a different web dashboard.

What is the difference bettwen SmartTiles and this dashboard? advantages and disadvantages?? :smile:

I am not impartial. Check it out for yourself. I for one, love my SmartTiles Dashboard.
Try it for yourself.

i set up SmartTiles as a test run, and have been using it for a week. I switched to the smart tiles. To @florianz, you did great work Sir.

I’m no programmer or coder, I did network security 15 years. I spent at least 10 hours setting up the dashboard thru the method developed in this thread. And I learned a lot.

The smart tiles takes 15 minutes to set up. If you know programming and want MORE customization, keep using the method in the OP, but if you don’t know git, etc, use the SmartTiles app. Will save you NUMEROUS hours running code.

just my opinion.

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I really think it’s pretty bad form to be pushing SmartTiles in this thread :-/

Just my $.02

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I actually don’t mind. The way I see it is that these projects are all about making the SmartThings community better. Both @625alex (SmartTiles) and I provide the apps including source code, as well as some support for free. I don’t make any money from this, and it’s probably the same for Alex. It’s not a competition, but as a SmartThings user you now have more options to interface with your devices!

SmartTiles is a fantastic project: It’s super easy to install, customizable, supports a wide range of devices, and it is under a lot more active development than my project. If you like SmartTiles, by all means use it! It’s awesome.

Due to a technical limitation of SmartApps, SmartTiles must repeatedly “ask” the SmartThings cloud if devices have reported any updates (switches turn on/off, temperature changes, etc.) That limitation can cause delays in the dashboard updating. Alex optimized this a lot, and in practice that delay may not bother you.

The delay bothers me. I wanted my dashboard to receive updates from the SmartThings cloud an update as soon as changes happen. To work around the limitation I had to offload the communication between the SmartApp and the web browser to a separate backend. This makes my dashboard much harder to install, though. I am still working on making that easier, but life has been busy recently.

As for reliability: I have had my setup running for over 9 months, now and it has been surprisingly reliable. You can hit the “Refresh” button as a first step, but mostly the problem is with the SmartThings cloud. For example, a week or two ago my dashboard did not update reliably, but after opening the SmartThings Mobile App on my iPhone I noticed that it also failed to update. If SmartThings is having issues on the backend, the dashboard won’t work correctly, either. It relies on a SmartApp for communication with the cloud.

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SmartTiles and HA Dashboard are two different project serving the same need. They went different directions, they appeal to different audience for different reasons and have their own advantages and shortcomings. This shows the power of SmartThings platform and gives user a choice. If neither of the available options are working for you, there more choice still. You can always build your own solution with collective knowledge of the community and the APIs.

I, personally, have never installed HA Dashboard, nor have I ever looked at the source code. The reason is… I wanted to keep my vision pure for better and for worse and I really wanted to figure it out myself.

I too think that SmartTiles discussion should be taken elsewhere. This thread belongs to Home Automation Dashboard!

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Your charger and USB cable (e.g. http://www.monoprice.com/Product?p_id=9762) must support charging at 2A. A lot of cheap cables and chargers will only provide 1A, which will drain your Nexus despite being plugged into the wall.

Nexus 7. Its off center so the camera can turn on the screen when someone walks by. I’d like to setup some kind of Sonos control but haven’t found a widget yet.


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Hey, that looks fantastic. Unfortunately, no one has contributed a Sonos widget, yet. It could be a fun project though, if you want to get your feet wet!

florianz, any chance you would be willing to share your ponoko.com template?

Ive been searching for a wall mount for my Nexus 7 for days and having no luck. I have to say your design looks slicker than anything I’ve found.

Hey, I just wanted to say that I have been working on a python version of the dashboard! I have to give lots of credit to @florianz for the work that they have done that has allowed me to do this so quickly.

I have added in support for Hue lights and changing colors and looking what else I would like to add in. [I would look at doing sonos… but I have enough problems with the sonos integration]. I also changed the dimming from little +/- buttons to a screen that you can choose the level you want, I found this better on a small screen…

I like hosting my own projects in my house and currently the way that it is configured requires you to host it yourself, for example I am hosting it on a raspberry pi2.

The code is on my GitHub: https://github.com/zpriddy/SmartThings_PyDash - I will say that I am still doing some code cleanup and more documentation… So if you have any questions or problems please let me know.

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This is what I have been hoping for!. Will be watching your efforts closely!

I am at work, and cant get access to github, do you break down what needs to be done for the Pi to host the service?

Right now all you need to do is have a raspberry pi with linux installed and install the required python packages (Flask, CoffeeScript, Requests) and then just run the main.py. The smartapp required is a slightly modified version of @florianz smartapp. The only file required to be modified is the main.html and you just have to put the device names that you want on the dashboard and the icons you want for each device.

That should be all you have to do to get it running.

Will this work on non pi systems as well? Are the jobs in the root directory?

Most of my testing has been done on my Mac and on an Ubuntu box, So yes it will work on just about any system. I did have an issue on ubuntu until I installed the python requests[security] sudo pip install requests[security]- After that it worked just fine.

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@zpriddy That looks really sharp. I’ve been monitoring closely waiting for a good point to jump in and I think I just found it. @florianz you’ve done a lot of great work thank you both. Again @zpriddy very sharp!

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