I’m fairly new to home automation, only been automating my house since December of 2013, but I do have some ideas that I think would be nice to have.
First, a little background so you know where I’m coming from. This might help with metrics later on. I use my tablet (Motorola Xoom) more than my phone (HTC Incredible, the first one) to run my HA apps. My tablet goes just about everywhere with me and I’m in the process of mounting tablets on walls throughout my house. I managed to brick a Coby Kyros MD7015 (it was $25 on Woot, I bought it specifically to be mounted on the wall) so now I’m looking at rooted Kindle Fires for the walls.
Aesthetics:
I want a “dashboard” view for my application. I’d like the ability to put the scenes/devices where I want them, and I’d like the ability to either set the size myself or pick from different page layouts that best fit my needs.
I would like a way to either change the skin, or at least the colors for the app. The LCARS look is awesome, but the wife doesn’t care for it much (Star Wars fan…), but something like that, a theme for the app. Bonus points if people could submit their own themes to a central repository.
Features:
I’d like for the app to be able to switch to a specific screen either at a set time (like an alarm clock, or maybe just to a clock after so many minutes of being idle), or as the result of a sensor/camera being tripped (the app switches to a camera that’s detected motion, or to a page with controls pertaining to a room where a motion sensor is tripped. I think all of this can be handled by the scene itself, app agnostic). Not sure if this is possible in the app, or if this is system level, but have the app switch to another app, or launch another app, then return after that app closes. I think it’d be nice to be able to use the tablet as an intercom, so if I were in the basement I could “page” a tablet upstairs to have one the kids fetch me another beer (this thread is for wishful thinking, right?)
Using the front-facing camera to wake up the tablet is handy, but I’d almost rather see the tablet always on.
Cross-platform would be nice, but I know that’s not always possible or cost effective.
I’ve built a few Raspberry Pi Squeezeboxes so far and I have a Raspberry Pi running XBMC on OpenElec, so I’d like a nice widget/icon for control of music/movies.
TTS is another awesome feature I’ve been trying to play with lately. It would be nice for the app to always be listening so I can give voice commands, and it would be nice for it to speak alerts (like when changing pages to the camera as mentioned above).
Kudos for starting a thread like this. I know there are apps out there that already do some of what I mentioned above - I’ve been playing with Imperihome, AutHomation, Home Buddy and HAL and I love different things about each one.
