[RELEASE] ActionTiles, the homepage for your SmartThings home!

@Nezmo: Thanks for the tag.

Please, please, please, please, please, please :pray:ā€¦

If you have any problems with ActionTiles, the most expedient way to get Helpā€¦ get support is:

#http://support.ActionTiles.com

ST Community, Facebook, Twitter, Google+, Instagram, Snapchat ā€¦; we love to have communication to and between our customers, but it is unrealistic for those to be support channels. Iā€™m going to have to add that URL as a signature on all my posts now.


For the fastest available assistance; ActionTiles Support, FAQ/Knowledge Base, and Feedback/Ideas, please visit http://support.ActionTiles.com : Responses may not be provided on any other channel. Thank-you.

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Thanks for the idea. I just got my new Wink relay.

For my information, what is the advantage to having the web type interface such as action tiles, and apparently the new core coming along. Versus the previous smartapps which I assume run on smartthings servers.

Hope that question makes sinceā€¦

Iā€™ll throw my 2Ā¢ in on this oneā€¦

In my honest opinion, it is infinitely easier to create & maintain dense and/or complex displays/rules/logic flows using a large monitor(s) (mine are 27", 27" & 55") with a keyboard & mouse versus fat-fingering many levels of granularity on a small screen/input device.

The ability to use the resulting views on a convenient, small form-factor device is great.

But, being able to create and/or maintain these complex screens/rules (Pistons) on a PC/Mac is nirvana!

[END random-thoughts]

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  • SmartTiles did run 90% inside a SmartApp and ā€œover-leveragedā€ the abilities for a SmartApp to provide a web-services API (REST, etc.). That API is generally meant for just specific Command integrations; e.g., so an internet connected service can notify a SmartApp or Device Type Handler of an Event (like perhaps a temperature change event from a thermostat which provides a cloud service ā€¦ like Nest).

  • The SmartThings cloud was not meant to run entire websites inside a SmartApp (though ā€¦ SmartTiles did it!).

  • So to build a more powerful web view & control (dashboard Panel) interface, we moved the web page logic outside of SmartThings Cloud and install and link to a much simpler web-service SmartApp to communicate events and commands from and to SmartThings. Thatā€™s the new foundation architecture of ActionTiles and a few other apps.

As for the benefits of having a custom web-app in addition to just the SmartThings ā€œnativeā€ mobile App; wellā€¦ thatā€™s something we find hard to put in words and hope everyone uses the 14 day free trial of ActionTiles to find out! :blush:

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I understand what both of you are saying and agree. Using a large screen is a lot easier to set things up. I do that with a number of things.

And ActionTiles being a display system running in a web page of course makes sense as to how it is handled.

But I guess what I was trying to understandā€¦ Smartthings runs on some kinda server somewhere and does its stuff. So then we have ActionTiles which is running on some other server to allow us to have a great display. I am using that by the way and really like it. And will happily pay for it once the trial is over.

And it looks like Core is going to a web based system also which I assume would be another server somewhere. I have quite a lot of Core pistons and like that functionality.

So now we have the Smartthings server, ActionTiles server, Core server. All that running in different places. So that means someone has to maintain those and pay for the hosting, I assume. Now Smartthings being the main body, one would think it would be the most reliable in terms of longivity??? So is it possible that sometime in the future the others could stop being supported and thus we lose that functionality?

I may be totally wrong on all of this and please tell me if I am. Iā€™m not trying to second guess why things are done the way they are, just trying to understand the reasoning. And that mainly cause Iā€™m curious, not cause I doubt the reasons or anything, just like to understand it all. (Which will probably never happen anyway).

Iā€™m guessing that these methods are more reliable on a day to day basis, faster, etc.

Thanks for the replies. As I said Iā€™m just curious. Certainly not trying to second guess anything.

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still waiting on my activation codeā€¦ :wink:

Weā€™re essentially ā€œcaught upā€ on Invitations, unless youā€™ve subscribed in the last day or two.

Everyone: Pleaseā€¦

  1. Be sure you have confirmed your Subscription to the Reservation List. If you didnā€™t receive the Confirmation email (and click the Confirmation Link in it), we canā€™t send you an Invite. It could be that you made a typo in the subscription request.

  2. Be sure to check spam filters, folders, etc.; white list: ActionNews@actiontiles.com (and support@actiontiles.com)

  3. You can subscribe again on the website and you should receive some sort of responseā€¦ either a confirmation link or an ā€œalready subscribedā€ message.

  4. If all that doesnā€™t work; then please contact Support@ActionTiles.com

Thanks!!!

Thanks,
requesting a resend of confirmation. never got it. have been checking spam almost every day too. sbcglobal is the worst.

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Itā€™s difficult to discuss an entire business model in a forum post, Jim; but I appreciate your curiosity and insightfulness.

So Iā€™ll just offer a few points that might be enlightening:

  • Thanks to the competitive ā€œcloud hostingā€ market, the cost of hosting (servers and maintenance) is a rather small proportion of operations cost / business expenses.

  • SmartThings doesnā€™t host their own Cloudā€¦ they use Amazon Web Services; i.e., one of the competitive cloud hosting providers, just like ActionTiles does.

  • It would be interesting if SmartThings themselves offered (sold, rented) hosting of more than the Device Type Handlers, SmartApps, and their own App; this is not uncommon in the industry but Samsung/SmartThings is not substantially in this line of business. Wellā€¦ Actually, they are to some extent, in a different division: Samsung Artik Cloud (a specialized cloud for IoT that SmartThings may eventually switch over to); though even that may not be the ā€œrightā€ hosting platform for a consumer facing web-app.

  • SmartThingsā€™s ā€œroad-mapā€ is very fuzzy. They have (from time to time) indicated that they want to be an ā€œIoTā€ Cloud, including, perhaps, providing the ability to host a broad range of user interface apps, like ActionTiles, owned by 3rd party companies. So far, they only do this in a very limited way. It is even possible that this could become the primary revenue source for SmartThings! Selling hardware, building an maintaining their App, and providing consumer customer support is very expensive. SmartThings could instead focus on just providing the infrastructure. Thereā€™s a whole spectrum of possibilities. Look-up ā€œiControlā€ for example.

  • For compare & contrast, consider the Amazon Alexa (Echo, Dot, Tap) ecosystem. As mentioned, Amazon is already a very competitive broad cloud services provider (storage, networking, processing, ā€¦). If youā€™re a developer and want to build an ā€œAlexa Skillā€ (an interactive voice control app for Alexa); you develop and host that skill on Amazonā€™s cloud, paying for the resources the skillā€™s users use. That is actually one way Amazon makes revenue from Alexa.


In other wordsā€¦ Itā€™s an exciting industry with lots of risks and opportunities for existing businesses and entrepreneurs, and, as a result, lots of wonderful products and services that will be created and sold to consumers. Like any industry, there is no ā€œmost efficient business modelā€: Having lots of options will let the industry figure out which arrangements work well and which donā€™t.

3 Likes

I just glanced at the logā€¦ Your confirmation was emailed to you (s********s@***global.net) at 14:42:46 PDT.

should be here by now. and not showing. inbox or spam. i hate sbcglobal. happens often. and i confirmed the address was correct.

Hi All,

Is there a way to jump straight to the tiles screen? If I bookmark the page and then return, I land at the login screen. Is there a way to avoid this?

URL im using is:
https://app.actiontiles.com/panel/xxxxxx

Thanks,

D

You may want to add ActionNews@actiontiles.com to that list, since this is the email address I received initially (I believe).

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Thanks, David!

That form of URL should not make you login again unless you have logged out, or are in incognito mode or not allowing cookiesā€¦

What device, OS, browser?

I can only suggest using a different email address. Gmail is freeā€¦

Thanks for the quick reply. I was using ā€œKiosk Browserā€ - I rechecked the settings and it was configured to clear cookies on page reload - so Iā€™ve stopped it from doing that and now all is working!

Many Thanks!!

1 Like

I see different discussions about URLā€™s and browsers being used for Blue Iris. Has anyone been able to display their streams in Fully Kiosk browser?

The ActionTiles Forum has onr (or more!) active Topics that may help: