Hi Everyone!
I am about 1 month into my Sharptools “tenure” and I think I’ve got some pretty neat yet simple dashboards set up that meet my needs. I am using brand new Fire 8 tablets to run the dashboards however I am running into an issue where there is slow response when going from dashboard to dashboard on the devices. After searching these forums and other online resources, here are the following things that I’ve tried:
Installed Fully directly from their website specifically the APK for fire tablets (did not load GooglePlay or root the device)
Followed the instructions here to set up Fully Set Up
Immediately on first use, I experienced the delay when going from dashboard to dashboard.
I then found another resource online that setting up the WiFi connection via DHCP. I then set up a static IP for the tablet using DHCP and DNS servers 1.1.1.1, 1.0.0.1 and set these settings in my router. I even prioritized the tablets as high priority in the Asus router settings.
I did not see any improvement in speed.
Next, I tried using solid color backgrounds instead of the editor pick images and no improvement.
Lastly, I used the Firebox Toolbox V7.1 to disable amazon apps, upload Nova Launcher and Swift keyboard. I did not download GooglePlay services but continued using Fully.
The tablet itself is noticeably faster (going to settings, and back to Fully) But once in Fully, Im still experiencing slow load times between dashboards.
When accessing the dashboards from my iPhone, I noticed the switch between each one is almost instant (with no lag). Is there something I may be missing here? Or have I maxed out all possible solutions to the Fire Tablet and maybe my expectations are a little too high? I started with 2 fire tab 8’s and was looking to expand maybe to 2 additional fire 10’s. However, if this is the speed I’ll be experiencing, I’m wondering if I need to get ready to cough up some extra $$ to go to Galaxy Tab A’s
Any help is appreciated!
Included a video link below (changed background to solid grey) Video Link
I think it’s mostly a factor of how powerful the Fire tablets are. They are an excellent bang for the buck, but they aren’t the most performant devices.
What year model Fire HD 8 are these? Amazon just announced new Fire HD 8 models that are supposed to be 30% faster and 50%-100% more RAM. I don’t think they’re going to be released until early June, but I’m curious how much better they are for dashboards.
Albert, Your dashboard links are actually faster than mine. I counted about 3 seconds mine is more like 6-8 seconds unbelievably slow and I’m using an iPad mini 2. I was going to post this same issue because it has me frustrated. I see in the demos Josh posted and it is so fluid and fast. What else can it be any help would be appreciated. I’m at the end of my trial period and reconsidering now. I like it much better than actiontiles but the lag is killing me.
@Robert_Figueroa, do you mind taking a video or screenshots of your dashboards? So we may be able to better help. iPad mini 2 only has 1GB RAM, so I’d probably expect it performs similar to my Fire HD 8, but may not 6-8 seconds slow. In general, the more tiles, media tiles (especially MJPEG ones) and high resolution background image can impact the performance on those devices.
Thank you @josh!
I stayed away from iPads in the beginning (have a bunch of mini 2’s laying around) as I understood in my research that you could not use features like motion detection to dim the screen.
@josh I actually received a Fire HD10 this weekend as a gift and it is noticeably faster! Very exciting and hope the newer Fire HD8s coming out next week are just as fast. Their processor specs look similar (minus the octacore vs dual core aspect).
It took a full 17 seconds to go from my Living room dashboard to my Lighting dashboard back to my Living room so I had to cut it in half because the file was too big! Not sure how to share videos on here but here is my attempt.
PT1- Living room to Lighting
PT2- Lighting to Living room PT1 PT2
Thanks for the videos. I sent you a PM to see if you could send over the dashboards IDs and allow us to take a closer look to see if there are any other suggestions we can make.
Edit: also copying part of the PM into the main thread in case it helps anyone else who runs into a similar issue and finds this thread.
I noticed that a smaller tile size was being used, so I’d like to take a look at the overall number of tiles on the main (Living Room?) dashboard. Specifically, if there are a large number of small spacers used, those could contribute to the switching time on much older devices like this that have limited processing / memory. If that’s the case, you might be able to make some tweaks like consolidating several small spacer tiles into one large spacer tile as this reduces some of the calculations that have to be done between transitions.
As James noted, you might also try temporarily simplifying your backgrounds to simple colors (no images or advanced effects) and reducing the number of Media tiles for troubleshooting purposes.
Edit2: Just an update that Robert was able to get that dashboard transitions down to ~2 seconds on his old iPad Mini by removing a large number of unused Spacer tiles.
If you are prompted to remove excess spacer tiles when saving your dashboard, in general you’ll want to choose the option to delete the excess tiles. Similarly, if you have a large number of small spacer tiles, it’s often better to use one large spacer tile where you can.
While it likely would not have any noticeable performance impact on a modern device, a large number of tiles can increase the time it takes to transition between dashboards on less powerful devices. (In this case, it was something like 80% of the tiles were spacers, so this made a big difference on this 7+ year old device)
Does anyone else have additional tips and tricks for improving performance on the fire tablets?
I’m down to 1-3 sec transition but I’d like to improve it if possible. I’m looking for all ways to slowly tweak out that extra little bit to speed it up.
What I have done currently:
Removed as many little spacers as possible and made them large blocks. (increased the performance loading by about 1-2s).
Reset the Fire device and did not sign in to Amazon services (increased performance about .5s)
Verify all the services were stopped (while disabled)
can anyone else think of modifications to both fully (fire version) or a Fire tablet to help speed it up? I have fire 7, 8, and 10 but most of my testing is on the 10. (all latest versions)
The only other options I seem to have are to reduce total tiles on the dashboard. Reducing the amount of tiles by 50% increase the load to about 1.5s instead of 2-3s.
I really like having the fire tablet option, but would like some faster loading panels.
Hi @Christine, how many tiles do you have in each dashboard and what year of the Fire tablet models do you have?
My dashboards have 25-32 tiles each and it takes about ~1 sec to navigate on my 2017 Fire HD 10" (7th gen). I disabled other Amazon services, and do not side load Google Service/Store.
Taking a video may also help us understand the setup better as well. Thanks.
fire HD 10, 9th generation. did not register with amazon services, updated to the latest fire OS. Using Fully 1.143.1-fire
I’ll work on 2 dashboards. first is “downstairs new lights” and it has 88 tiles. (might be part of the problem). I can drop that number to about 50 by combining the labels and action tile.
