Rather than just list a series of categories and devices on the SmartThings app, I would like to see a graphical representation of my home and have icons which portray the status of different devices throughout. There should be a simple tool to build the floor plan of your house and then assign each device to specific rooms, doors, windows, etc. Example include showing the front door on the plan and tag your deadbolt and open/closed sensor to that door. Individual rooms could have switches/motion sensors, etc. assigned to that space and when motion is detected or lights are on the room itself could light-up with colors or icons that represent whats happening.
The way that SmartThings is designed now works fine for a few devices but once you surpass a dozen or so it becomes harder and harder to actually understand whats actually happening at any given moment. This new user interface might work best from the larger display of a tablet but it also could (and should) be adapted to the smaller screen of a smartphone.
This would be super cool. Have you seen anything like what you have described before? I wonder how many people would go through the process of creating a floor plan even if it was simple. I guess exact measurements would not be critical.
What do you think the average person would find more intuitive, an icon that represents a light (placed where the light is), or an icon that represents the switch for the light (placed where the switch is)?
ADT Pulse has a similar feature where you can draw the floor plan of the house and add devices at locations. When I did not have ST I did not use it because it was too much of a PIA at the time to sign into Pulse to work with lighting. I did play around with and it was pretty easy to draw the floor plan and add devices. But this would be a cool feature of ST.
Although I like the idea of a visual representation of my home I also wonder if that would be practical beyond lights, locks and thermostats. Just thinking of how many devices and scenarios are attached to only my basement. Perhaps if we could zoom to each room in addition to the whole home at a glance view?
Estimate has a very cool indoor mapping feature available now done with iBeacons. You place iBeacons (which can be moved again later) and then just walk around the room with a iOS beacon-capable phone and it does the mapping for you. Put an iBeacon on each device and you’d have it.
I know of at least two similar apps being designed for Apple’s HomeKit, but I don’t expect to see those on market until Summer 2016.
1 Like
tgauchat
(ActionTiles.com co-founder Terry @ActionTiles; GitHub: @cosmicpuppy)
8
This is a cool idea and, given the example of the ActiON Dashboard (i.e., SmartTiles.click), totally “do-able”.
I’m just too chicken to do this without funding (or committed partners?).
Here is a youtube video of the ADT Pule Home View app. It really is the easy to draw out the floor plan. You are also able to interact with Home View vie the iPhone app.
That’s pretty neat, @JDRoberts! Ryobi has a weird new line of measuring tools that attach to your phone, but they don’t seem to really do much more than the original tools already did. They have a laser distance measurer that I think would make a great home-mapping tool if properly equipped with software. I haven’t really checked to see if anyone’s been hacking/modifying/coding for these things. Would be neat if ST could utilize something like this or the iBeacons:
@pmusselman - Autodesk has a free webapp for drawing floorplans, too. I know it’s not attached to a HA system (and it’s a lot more complex), but this stuff can be done!
There are, of course, dozens of high-end Home Automation front-end vendors and user interface development kits. Would custom ST panel development be a service that people would pay for? Would it be based on a framework like SmartTiles.click@625alex or is SmartThings REST-API “enough” of a framework itself to use as the base for fully customized UI’s?
Crestron, of course, sells expensive home control pads (finger printer readers, etc.), which are now rather silly since a commodity tablet can be used:
Hey guys, I love this post! I started one a while ago. HERE I also think that ActiON Dashboard is the way to go but I agree with @tgauchat, we need some commitment
I see that this thread is from 2015. I’m interested in participating in this project.
Is there a current thread somewhere else? I sure hope that this one didn’t didn’t die on the vine.
1 Like
tgauchat
(ActionTiles.com co-founder Terry @ActionTiles; GitHub: @cosmicpuppy)
19
It certain is “dead on the vine” … not specifically due to lack of development interest, but, really, in any scope of the imagination, there’s totally insufficient interest from SmartThings Customers.
It’s easy to find a couple dozen “super-users” in a Community Forum that love this concept. It’s much harder to find a few thousand consumers willing to pay for a product based on this idea. ActionTiles has over 50% of the work done to accomplish this idea (at least in a bare minimum way…); but the demand doesn’t exist. A Tiled layout may not be as pretty - but it is very efficient.
I see you’re already participating in newer Topics related to this. You’ll see the progression of the comments; glad to see you join the discussion!
It’s unfortunate news. ActionTiles would have been the ideal creator and
delivery for this project. However, I certainly understand if your market
research resulted in negligible return on your investment. Alternatively,
I’m wondering if Samsung has this project on their sandbox since they are
now consolidating their SmartThings application.
Thank you for responding. I look forward to seeing enticing advances from
ActionTiles. Admittedly, I’ve not yet entered your campground. Can you
please recommend a tutorial or an alternate training that might facilitate
my journey with ActionTiles? Also, what hardware and adjunct software
might you recommend for a sophisticated (I tend to maximize my projects)
ActionTiles implementation.
to do this without funding 
(or committed partners?).
