Always playing around & enjoying the design layout flexibility of SharpTools …
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Super huge thanks to @josh @James @Michael and everyone else who’s helped! I feel like I’ll forever be tweaking but it feels good to have a version on the wall (that’s really like version 8 at this point). Still a lot of functionality to integrate but love it. Now to get myself and the family to use it more instead of just looking at the pictures on the screensaver. This replaced an old iPad Mini ver 1 that we had in the wall that would crash constantly and we used to look at Cams around the house. Nice to have all the automations and apps all in 1 Browser page and able to select between everything. I’m using Fully Kiosk Browser and the Fotoo app as a screensaver to have a digital photo frame when it’s not in use for the automation. Now to get the rest of the automations, voice alerts, sound system and everything else to talk to each other (and the 1 Wyze that keeps dropping)
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Hi Michael,
One more question: How do you make your dashboard to display the album cover as the background image for your entire dashboard? The song changes, the Sonos tile is very straightforward to display album cover, but I can’t figure out how to get the transparent album cover to be displayed in the background as well. Thanks in advance.
It’s a static ‘background’ image. There’s currently no way to dynamically change the image.
You can however set a background image opacity, blur, and gradient by turning ‘Advanced’ on in the Dashboard Settings (upper right corner).
I see. Got it. Thanks for the clarification. It would have been cool that we could have this feature. It would be a nice showcase for friends and family.
There’s a feature request open to support variables in Media Tiles (and by extension, dashboard backgrounds) which you can cast a vote on here:
This would open up dynamic media and background art for number of interesting use cases. (Though for this particular use case, it would require that the ‘Thing’ expose the album art URL directly in an attribute)
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Thank you for the pointer!
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@Jason_Clemens How did you add your external cameras - they look like they might be Hikvision? There’s been so much discussion on the forum regarding adding CCTV and I’m yet to find a decent solution for cameras that use RTSP and user:password@ipaddress in the url. Tiny cam app wouldn’t work for me, transcoding the streams with vlc fails after a short period and setting up a separate machine to run Blue Iris is overkill. Currently I’m having to just link the CCTV tile to open Hikvisions app which isn’t ideal as I’d like some of the cameras displayed permanently.
Your dash looks great BTW
@John_Williamson Thanks!
I tried all of the things you suggested. I made a tile to launch our Hik-Connect app. I didn’t like having to switch apps for that as it was easier to have the cameras on the page. (For our Home Theater Direct sound system I have no other choice but to launch an app as I can’t control it via SmartThings). I tried TinyCams and it was ok but slowed down the tablet and didn’t want to have another device such as a Shield drawing power.
In the end, I settled on BlueIris as I have a HomeServer in the house already. I didn’t want to go this route either as I didn’t want to have it use a boat load of resources on the PC. Eventually I learned to turn off ALL recording for each camera (I already have a HikVision NVR) which saved a lot of resources. I also run it as a service in Windows instead of the full app. I have my dashboard on the Home Screen most often so the cameras aren’t up. If the cameras are up it uses more pull on the server but still not that much. I’m currently running about 1.5G of RAM (out of 16) and it’s about 10% usage when the cameras aren’t on screen. One other useful trick with BlueIris is if you have more than 6 cams you want to show you can set up internal IP and your external IP with a port forward to access the 8 Outside cams that we have all on one page. (Browsers limit the number of streams per page and per IP so it’s a good cheat).
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Thanks so much for the response. I’m in an almost identical situation, in that the cameras are all recorded by the Hikvision NVR and I am currently using a link for iVMS-4500 or Hik Connect to access the cameras. It works OK but I’d like the front door camera in the centre of my dashboard permanently, so I can see at a glance who’s there while watching TV. Also I don’t like having to click “Confirm to log out” in the app after pressing the back key. I did briefly try a trial of Blue Iris but I didn’t spend much time on it. I found I was getting all of the menus etc around the camera image rather than just the converted stream. I’ll have to have another look at it.
@John_Williamson Yeah you’ll find Blue Iris works great for what you need then. The NVR works great with the app for looking at the cams on my phone or directly off the NVR at the monitor it’s connected to or via IP.
I did 2-3 trials as I wanted to verify I liked it before shelling out the money for it. I bought the license last week.
For me my coding per camera is this:
http://192.168.3.x:800x/mjpg/Cam3
Just substitute your IP and port and whatever short name you give it in BlueIris. And the resources for having 1 cam up all the time will be so small compared to all of them.
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@Jason_Clemens Thanks again. I’ve just e mailed support and asked for an extension to the trial. As usual I was quick to download and install a trial then didn’t spend the time to test it properly before it expired.
Hey guys! I’ve had an Alexa Echo Dot, plug, Sonos Speaker, TV, Xbox and a Phillips HUE light for a couple years now but never got into SmartThings or SharpTools until today!
Sorry for my noobness but I’d like to eventually turn my whole house into a smarthome with cool looking dashboards like everyone here. My next device will probably be a ceiling fan for my room.
My questions are: What devices can use this ‘‘dashboard’’ ? I don’t have a tablet or anything yet but I do have a decent windows gaming PC with multi monitors. Can I get it on that for now? Is there an install guide?
I’m assuming you can color the tiles and everything too? If so, what about the Android mobile version? I downloaded it today mainly for easy access and to get widgets on one of my home screens but I can’t figure out how to change the widget colors on them. I’m assuming that’s the same thing as tile colors? Essentially they are tiled like I’ve seen in these dashboard pics.
Thanks!
Hi Jason, what’s bandwidth (Mbps) for 1 camera feed from Blue Iris?
@rog889 I can tell you that it won’t be much. My BlueIris that’s running a dozen cams through it is using 8mb locally on the LAN so 1 cam would be less than 1mb. You can dial it into what ever settings you want, it depends on if you are using Main Streams, Substreams, codec, video size etc. But it really isn’t much. But mine is all internal and not put out to the outside world.
@SmarteePants, welcome to the community. SharpTools Dashboard is a web app, and you can run the dashboards in any modern browsers, such as Chrome and Safari, on your PC, Mac, Android or iOS devices. So you can absolutely start creating your dashboards on your PC, and there is no need to install anything on your PC. I often times have a small browser window opened running my Office dashboard when I am on my 34" monitor to give me quick control/overview of my stuff. 
Yes, there are lots of customization flexibilities when designing a dashboard and you may want to check out Themes & Styles feature first so you can take full advantages of it.
The “SharpTools Tasker Plugin & Widgets for SmartThings” Android app is specially designed for Tasker and widget integration, and is different than SharpTools.io (Dashboard & Rule Engine).
Please note that you can also add your SharpTools dashboards on to your mobile devices’ home screen so they be opened like a native apps. See below for details:
Hi mate,
The tile in your first pic which shows your location and weather in said location…how do you do that…do you have to have another piece of equipment…I’ve read on here about doing something in smarthings…
my set u is fairly basic, only have life and hue lights no additional smrtthings router… I just have the android app on my phone…
I have essentially that same Tile @Tom_Smith
It’s created in SmartThings - Weather Tile & Dashboard Examples - #18 by Carlos_Juarez
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nice dashboard,
do I need the SmartThings hub to do this??
the smarting hub never really “took off” here in the UK, I’m just using the app on my Samsung s20…does it work on that…cant figure out how tot do it
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No, just the app and samsung account
I primarily use Smarthings for my Security system - converted an old Wired system to a Smart’ system by panel called Konnected - it’s pretty popular in UK too
So I have links to other dashboard with all my door/window sensors and another for my various Lighting Controls
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