I recently mounted a small tablet on the wall to display ActionTiles. I really wanted the screen off all the way when not in use, and to come on when it sensed motion via the camera, so, the Kindle was not an option (cannot disable lockscreen). So I bought Fully Kiosk Browser, and a $50 RCA 7" tablet from WalMart.
Guys…this tablet is BAD. I uninstalled everything I could, disabled everything else, and it still lags just bringing up the notification shade. So so bad. I used the 50$ kindle – this is not even comparable. Don’t buy this for anyone you love. So bad.
Has anyone else used Actiontiles with a super underpowered tablet? Any suggestions to help it out?
I’m afraid once I get a video doorbell set up, the video feed will make the poor thing unusable.
I need to be less of a cheapass, but I was not expecting something this bad.
Yep! Thats the one. And here is an update after 5ish months…
The tablet is powered off of the old alarm panel wiring, and it stays charged with zero problems.
I disabled every app I could on this tablet, and it helped. (a LITTLE). This is still a terrible tablet and I would never recommend using it for anything else. But it serves its purpose as a glorified lightswitch
I use actiontiles on the FullyKioskBrowser – there is an issue where actiontiles “reloads” when the screen turns on after its been off a while. Something is timing out, but I cannot figure out what. The tablet isn’t turning off wifi or anything. It is a delay of ~3 seconds. Annoying but not a dealbreaker. I have not tried other tablets or browsers, so I don’t know what to blame this on.
I have the screen turn off after 30 seconds, and use Fully to a)turn on the screen when the camera detects something [works well] and also b) turn on the screen when it detects noise. My tablet is in a dark corner, and the camera doesn’t always pick up motion. Tapping on the screen makes enough noise that it turns the screen on.
actiontiles is great, but the button layout is a pain. Its like embedding an image in Microsoft word…one tiny change and the screen is scrambled. I wish it offered a cell layout where you could manually order things instead of trial and error.
If you don’t want the screen to ever turn off, I would suggest a amazon tablet. But the screen always on thing was a dealbreaker for me.
Yes, this is super annoying. For me this started about 2 months ago, it never used to do this. Clearly ActionTiles changed something on their end. I see the dreaded “connecting” and spinning AT emblem, totally pointless.
I am not completely convinced it is action tiles …I would need to try a few different browsers first, and maybe a different piece of hardware. I have just been lazy and not too impacted by it to delve into that rabbithole of testing. That tablet is just so damn annoying to use.
And for me it has been happening since day 1, which is about 5 months.
I’m using a higher end tablet and I still see this ActionTiles refreshing issue 10 times a day, whereas on other websites it doesn’t happen. Which reminds me, I’ve been meaning to post on the their thread, doubt anything will change.
Only when the screen comes on, 50% of the time. Fully and Chrome are the only 2 apps running, I’ve made them Android priority apps, and disabled battery optimisation.
tgauchat
(ActionTiles.com co-founder Terry @ActionTiles; GitHub: @cosmicpuppy)
9
The layout is definitely deterministic (not random), but @625alex and I agree that there is no way to be truly intuitive without editing on a grid. We’ve got a major initiative going in this regard; but we can’t neglect the demand for new features just to improve the builder / editor…
tgauchat
(ActionTiles.com co-founder Terry @ActionTiles; GitHub: @cosmicpuppy)
10
@625alex will assure you that we didn’t change anything - Network disconnect timeout detection functionality has been in place for nearly 2 years.
tgauchat
(ActionTiles.com co-founder Terry @ActionTiles; GitHub: @cosmicpuppy)
11
This won’t happen on “other websites” because they do not require a constant connection to the Cloud to be sure to receive the latest SmartThings updates. We display the connecting status in order to prevent displaying stale Tile status.
Just checked out recent records, and we had a customer report that they resolved this by upgrading Android Webview on their Tablet (Lenovo).
I’m not sure if this is applicable in your situation, but worth a try.
You might also test the Fully Settiing “Power Settings - Set Wifi Wakelock - on”. Based on your description, this should not be required, but, I don’t think it can hurt.
An update for the OP, as well as @tgauchat
Sometime between the last post on the thread (where webview update was mentioned) and last week, the “reloading” issue has gone away. I cannot pinpoint when, because I had grown used to it and it was not much of a bother. But now it is gone…if something changed, it was an automatic update on that tablet, because I have not exited the smarttiles screen in month.
So I am now able to more strongly recommend the RCA tablet+Fully browser+ActionTiles combination.
