I have been a long time user of ST back when I was on Android. Purchased AT long ago but never took the time to build a Dashboard. I went the Dakboard route. While that was fine (it’s only a display) - the price point increases for Dakboard and the lack of functionality had me looking to move to building out a touchscreen.
My challenge is, we moved from Android to Apple a while back. It wasn’t until I came across this mounting solution that I really decided to dive in:
With that said, using the Apple App tKiosk, I was able to integrate the Kiosk as well as a screensaver function (which I still use Dakboard for the screen saver - free mode)
I use “Willy Weather” for the Weather Alert
My cameras are UniFi Protect hosted, you can achieve a feed by simply calling the snapshot.jpg URL by camera IP and refreshing - which is fine for me - otherwise I would need to deploy a RSTP to MPEG solution, which I’m not ready to do - yet.
I actually built out this exact dashboard in both ST and AT.
AT allows the pulling in of “scenes” or “routines” - but ST can replicate with Rules.
What really brought me over fully to ST?
The iframe HTML code (for weather alerts) - custom tiles.
I enjoy the themed calendar (even though you can do the same using Google Calendar Agenda View).
Another huge win is the complete flexibility on icon states / theming. Although, it’s usually enough, AT only has four potential icon “intentions”.
Also, the grid creation UI of ST is outstanding - most importantly, being able to span rows with a tile, without moving all rows below the single tile you are spanning.
Two items I do miss from AT - the “paneling” which allows for labeling of blocks of similar icons and the integration of sensor battery level integration without needing to use “hero” tiles.
Only thing I am missing at this point is integrating my “whole house audio” system which is running on Home Theaters Direct (HTD) equipment using HTD Gateway.
If anyone knows how to work with the HTD Gateway API, I’d love to hear about it.
I’d also like to hear from anyone in Smarthings beta and the “edge” / “matter” migration. Does this potential impact our dashboards? I understand all DTH apps will no longer work (unless recoded)?
I’m considering a move to Hubitat - but with 94 devices, not looking forward to the readding of every device to a new hub.