Firstly, well done! Ive come from actiontiles to check this out after seeing a post on the ST facebook group. Cant wait to try out the rules engine. Very excited if this sorts out the lag issue I face with Webcore.
There a few things I’d like to see added to SharpTools:
The ability to set a theme, I have a mix of Fire 7, Fire 10 and Lenvo 8" tablets that I use for various interfaces in my house. But Ive noticed that I have scaling issues with the buttons. Unfortunately using the zoom in Fully doesnt seem to solve this. If possible I’d love to see the ability to set custom height/width in px for the tiles. In this it would be great if you could also setup default colours that could be applied to the theme.
I read somewhere that this might be in the works, but the ability to set custom icons would be awesome! Or even a catalog.
Im not sure how difficult or even if it can be done, but would solve a lot of issues with virtual buttons if a tile can be created with an up and down button built in. The up down could then be used by the rules engine to control TV volume/amplifiers/thermostats etc via harmony. Anyone interested in this: Search KukuHarmony on the ST forums.
Keep up the good work, cant wait to see the rules engine!
Can you clarify what you mean with item 1? The ability to set color themes and a baseline tile size per dashboard for is on the hit list, but I’m not sure if that’s what you’re looking for or something else?
Custom icons are available for most tile types today. When you are editing a dashboard, click the … overflow menu and choose edit. From there, you’ll see a list of options you can customize for that tile which typically includes Label, Dimensions, Color, Icon and sometimes Layout (eg. on thermostats).
That’s a cool idea on the virtual tile layout. The current design maps a single device to a tile, so if you had a device that had multiple commands which you wanted to map to each button, I could probably add that template today.
There are plans to add a tile to trigger rules as well… I’ll have to think through how that would work where you might want to map different rules on a single tile.
Regarding the icons, thats awesome! sorry i just saw the pic of the shuttle and assumed that was it, I just realized after you said that, clicking on it gives me a host of options. Sorry feel kinda dumb now
Regarding a theme: Because I have different size tablets with different resolutions, Ive had to create themes on AT in order to fit different things in. This might mean having the tile sizes 80px x80px on say the fire 7, while the fire 10 has tiles with 100px x 100px. Same for spacing between tiles. Having a theme set for the different devices means I can quickly outlay a template per device rather than individually having to do it to each button.
This would also include colours for tiles. Info tiles are green, default colours, and active colours etc. Typically I keep it fairly simple for a clean display where I only need 3 colours (Active, Default and Info Tile). Also the ability to set the background colour? This might already be there? I havent had a chance to go through all the menus yet.
On point 3, I really only want it for a volume up/down and channel up/down. Personally I feel that more than that on a single tile is going to get too crammed, but thats not to say someone else wont want it.
The tile to trigger rules is really what Im after… At the moment Im having to do this through webcore, but Ive found that it adds a massive input lag due to it going from AT->ST->Webcore->ST->Harmony. If you can get that right Im sold!
Josh. I think he is reference the challenge I ran into that was ‘kinda’(created other issues) solved by me using the zoom feature in fully to get the tiles sized right on my FHD8 and then my FHD10. On my 8 i have fully zoomed to 100 i think and on my 10 its out to 80. I think you are already working on fixing this in the update soon if I am reading Gilberts question right as I too adjusted things in AT the way he is describing.
@Tommy the problem I mostly found with this is that the fire10 zoomed didnt adjust the resolution, so I had tiles sticking out the sides that you then had to scroll to reach. It might be that I havent played around to get the prefect scaling, but allowing being allowed to set the px size for the grid seems to be a much better solution universally rather than scaling the zoom.
I didnt even think of that as a side effect of zoom.
@josh the above thermostats are exactly what Im looking for regarding volume and channel up/down, but need them linked to the backend logic to call the functions through ST.
Thanks for the feedback and clarifications guys! I believe I understand what you are looking for and dashboard configurations are on the short-list. As of right now, I was planning on the ability to adjust the baseline tile size and adjust the colors for the tiles. I’ll look at adding a background color adjustment as well.
@Gilbert_Tunmer how do you define ‘Info’ tiles? The current design has ‘Active’ and ‘Default’ statuses… light on, door locked, contact open, etc.
Looking at Tommy’s screenshot, I probably need to consider some font-size adjustments too. Perhaps at the dashboard configuration as well as on a per-tile basis. For example, on the garage doors and modes/routines that appear to be using 2x2 tiles, it would be nice to have the option to make the icon larger.
Info tiles are simple a “reporting” tile, so something like the weather or a clock. Might also be nice to be able to be able to set the colour and font for the titles? But that really is me being pedantic hehe.
@josh any way you can make a button to resume the last playlist from spotify? Would be a nice option rather than the URL link through Fully to launch the app as this is always a little slow on smaller devices like the Fire 7’s that just dont have the processing power.
@josh
I think the adjustment of tile size would keep you from getting into font and icon size adjustment… @Gilbert_Tunmer Can you share a screen shot of AT adjustment your talking about?
What kind of device is Spotify playing from - the Fire 7 itself or is it being ‘cast’ to another device? The new Music Playback tiles support resuming playback on some devices. For example, I just picked up a Sonos for the office and even if the Sonos was previously playing something from Spotify and is paused/stopped, I can tap play and it will start playing music.
Perhaps I can look into adding Spotify as a supported direct connected platform?
Thanks for the clarification. I’m trying to better understand the use case here as I feel like having too many options displayed by default could be confusing.
I’m also wondering if just showing Default and Active color options in the Dashboard configuration as the standard would keep things simple for most users… then an ‘advanced’ switch could be flipped which would show additional options like the ability to customize colors per tile ‘type’ for power users.
Alternatively, a default tile color could be set (which the clocks and weather would pick up) and then the individual tile’s color could be overridden if it’s not what is desired.
Text-color is probably a good idea! If you end up picking a really light tile color, then the default light text color won’t work. Fonts are something I may need to think more about… not sure that’s a can of worms I want to open at this point!
At the very least, I can see how it would be helpful in some of the tiles… like when a 1x1 tile with an icon has the dimensions adjusted to 2x2, it would be nice to be able to increase the size of the icon to take up more space if desired.
I have made a URL link to call the app in Fully- but this launches the app and often then takes 10 to 20 secs to load the up. So a simple resume button will negate the need to actually launch the app. But I think to answer your question, yes it would be local to the tablet.
This is more just to be able to customize your tablet to your liking. Some like a darker theme, others want monotone etc. Right now I would likely prioritize function over this, but I am very sure that you will ultimately have a lot of users request this. Its kinda like painting your house. Everyone wants a different colour, but is absolutely useless to function
I know AT stayed away from font selection, Im assuming that this is because its a lot more complicated than it appears to someone that knows nothing about this stuff (Like me haha), but if you have the ability to change the tile colour, you will likely have to implement text colour at some point.
got to say, Im massively impressed with how quick you have been to reply. Ill set up a whole bunch of rules tonight and try test tomorrow (likely will run out of time to do it all tonight) and Ill give you feedback soon as.
Ive tested the rules engine on one virtual button for volume and its working great!
Absolutely fantastic job you have done here!
Thanks for the clarification. As far as I can tell, there aren’t any official Spotify integrations with SmartThings other than those through devices like Sonos. I’ll take a look at adding Spotify as a direct connection, but to be transparent there are a number of items on the hitlist which will probably get prioritized first as the impact a broader audience (eg. dashboard level configuration of colors, sizes, etc).
I can understand that and I definitely think having a default and active color setting at the dashboard level is required. I’m just questioning if a ‘Info’ color is needed since it seems kind of arbitrary.
If anything, I might lean more toward having an ‘advanced’ setting where you could override tile colors per tile type (eg. clock, weather, thermostat, switch, lock etc). I want to keep the initial set of options a bit streamlined so as not to overwhelm new users, so I might hide these extra settings by default and uncover them when you flip an ‘Advanced’ switch.
I wonder if you could automate keeping the Spotify app open in the background with something like AutomateIt (so it isn’t slow to load) and then use a Hyperlink tile to send an intent to Spotify to play rather than to open the app?
I’m pretty sure it can be done with Tasker, but Tasker isn’t available on Amazon Fire Tablets unless you have Google Play sideloaded. AutomateIt seems similar to Tasker though, so it might be possible.
Ive shied away from Tasker, for no particular reason though. Ive just tried to limit the amount of different apps that have access to everything. Im probably just being paranoid though.
Haha I really hope someday one platform finds a way to incorporate all of this… At the end of it its why I keep thinking about going back to control 4. nice easy GUI, almost no lag but paired with the down side of a hefty price tag and limited enterprise hardware…
Ok so I got a good look around last night and I thought I’d update the feature requests. Wasnt sure if I should update the initial thread or just post below. I figured below to keep consistency of the thread.
Scaling of buttons: This for me has to be the top priority. Unfortunately using the scaling feature in Fully lands up making the text almost unreadable as Tommy pointed out. Also the scaling doesnt work in fullscreen mode. It also means you cant design tile sets for specific devices. In a lot of the instances Ive found that you could almost quarter the size of the buttons. I know completely custom specs for tiles could be an absolute pain in the backside, but maybe just an option for small (quarter), medium(half), large (normal size)? This is probably the main reason I’d battle right now to switch from the other guys…
Icons: There is quite a big repository for Icons, but after going through a lot of them I found that a lot of the icons are almost irrelevant for home automation. I’d like to see more Icons for lighting as an example, icons for recessed lights, lamps, pendants, chandeliers, outside lamps etc. If possible, Id love to see icons imported for apps like Spotify, Plex, Netflix, FireTV, Harmony - although I do understand this might get messy around copywrite.
Ability to set and apply a theme that would set the general defaults for a page. Size of tiles, Default and Active colours, text colours.
Virtual Buttons to call logic- The rules engine is fantastic, and frankly faster than webcore. You have done a fantastic job setting this up. Its amazingly easy to use and fast to set up, IMO one of the failure of Webcore. But what I noticed is that there is no way to create a “virtual tile” to call on functions. This means that you still have to create the virtual button in ST and link to a tile here which isnt a massive issue, but it does make the ST app look like a dog show. Any way that a virtual tile can be set up to be used to call logic from the rules engine? If you need clarity on this let me know and Ill go into more detail.
This would probably include a tile that we spoke about yesterday with 2 buttons on it to act as a volume up/down (like the thermostat buttons)
The last thing I’d love to see, but also understand why it likely wont happen, is a little bit of storage to load images for media tiles to rotate pictures. It doesnt have to be much due to the fact that the tiles are small, so no one is going to be uploading full HD pics. but maybe like 50MB to allow for a few pics to be uploaded and shuffled?
Overall Im massively impressed. The addition of the rules engine is going to give you a rock solid product.
Scaling of Buttons: It’s on the short list (already scheduled as part of this sprint)!
Icons: I totally agree about adding more icons and was hoping I would hear some requests in this space. The specific examples are helpful!
Theme (Dashboard Config): Part of this is planned as part of item 1 - some of it is planned for a future release.
Virtual Buttons: A dashboard tile for triggering rules is definitely on the list. First pass will probably just be to trigger a rule, but over time I’d like to look at other options and integrations (for example as we add variable support in rules)
Storage: Never say never! One of the feature requests from my wife is the ability to view photos. This will probably come in the form of a connection to Google Photos / Dropbox, but I can see an option for adding storage.
