Quick Questions for Josh

Josh,

These are absolutely being asked for no other reason that pure curiosity. You guys consistently impress the hell out of me whenever I log into this board. By post much any measures of quality, efficiency, and development, Sharptools manages customer questions, facilitates discussions, and responds to issues is so far above what the norm has become in almost every sector.

I’ve been a customer service junkie since I started my first job scanning groceries, am frustrated FAR more often than not as a consumer, and always try to make a point of letting those people/companies/organizations who even just make an effort, but you guys are WAY beyond that. All that said, I’m curious about what types of individuals/organizations manifest such a culture.

  1. Is Sharptools part of a larger business or a standalone entity?
  2. Are you the owner of whatever that type of entity it is?
  3. Are the other moderators employees/ friends/ volunteers?
  4. How did Sharptools begin and evolve into what we see and experience today? What’s the historical narrative?
  5. Why does your profile picture make me think like you’re just about to kick my butt?

Thanks for everything you guys do!!

Pete

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Pete-
Thank you so much for the kind words!

SharpTools is a standalone entity cofounded by myself and @James. We’ve been amazed by the community - awesome questions, great support for each other, open dialogue - all the things we could have hoped for.

SharpTools originally began as a set of Tasker plugins and widgets that I designed for my own use several years back (circa 2014 I believe). A friend suggested that I post it publicly as he thought it would be helpful for other people to use, so I did and tens of thousands of people have downloaded it. Over time, the app continued to evolve and improve based on customer feedback.

We felt like there was still this fundamental issue with Home Automation where you had to bounce around several different apps to view, control, and automate your home - so about a year ago, we decided to extend some of the work we had done on the Android app into a full fledged solution for viewing, controlling, and automating your smart home from a ‘single pane of glass’ and that has manifested itself as SharpTools.io.

Oh, and the profile picture is a fun wild-west themed picture I took at a company event years back when I worked in the corporate world. The funny thing is I’ve worked with @James over the past decade or so and he is in the uncropped version of the photo! I’ll have to see if I can find the original photo sometime. :stuck_out_tongue:

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How does my profile image look now?:cowboy_hat_face:

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Outstanding!!! Awesome story! I love it! And if you can just reach one person, right?

So I’ve not used Sharptools to its full potential this far, but am pondering the purchase of an Android tablet to serve as a dedicated Sharptools controller to doing all the cool stuff I see on here.

More questions!

  1. Is there a specific tablet which provides the best performance for the dollar when Sharptools is the only thing running?

  2. Or Should I just go find a used one that is working?

  3. Do most folks run a straight wifi setup, or is there some value in having some 4G data capability?

  4. What’s the earliest Android version I should go for?

Thanks!!!

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For SharpTools.io dashboards, we’ve found that a lot of people really like the Amazon Fire tablets (8" or 10"). They pair up really well with the app Fully Kiosk Browser to make for a dedicated dashboard device. :grin: