Will Grasshopper ever support dashboards? I got to try my first Android client Imperihome and that is one feature I’m missing.
To marry that with the Metro interface, I would think you would need:
the multi sized tiles (8x8,4x4, 2x2, 1x2, and 1x1)
live camera feeds in the tiles
camera comes full screen if associated motion sensor goes tripped for that zone…or at least tile changes color
One thing that helped with the WAF was overriding different icons on a per device basis made things easier to find when a lot of virtual switches might look the same. I also think tiles should maybe change a whole other color when they are on (vs the white sliver).
the multi sized tiles (8x8,4x4, 2x2, 1x2, and 1x1) Its possible to build UI with multiple tile sizes mixed together. The limitation is that is still just a list control so you can’t so easily just move stuff around like the start menu in windows 8. This new control is only available in 8.1, so it might be a bit before i get to that.
live camera feeds in the tiles This definitely would be low on my priority list for the time being. It is most likely possible but the video icons would be so small unless you used a really huge tile. The other issue is i have a feeling it would make the UI look ugly. I’ve considered looking into building a camera page where you could have an option to see all the cameras at once. I’ve actually kinda wanted that so i can watch my dogs and not have to click back and forth between cameras. Now if they implemented a flip mechanism in the list control i’d definitely add the current camera images to that main page similar to how the tiles work.
camera comes full screen if associated motion sensor goes tripped for that zone…or at least tile changes color Not possible at this time since the app is written around polling and does not use push notifications. This would only be useful if it happened real time.
One thing that helped with the WAF was overriding different icons on a per device basis made things easier to find when a lot of virtual switches might look the same. I also think tiles should maybe change a whole other color when they are on (vs the white sliver). Having custom icons per device would be hard to do since the image files are scaled for different resolutions to optimize memory usage in the apps. This would mean i’d need to create lots and lots of icons. Probably wouldn’t happen anytime soon since it would be hard for me to justify creating creating 5 to 10 variations of a thermostat icon, etc. There has gotta be an easier way to give some flexibility without creating all those extra assets. The color of the icon idea is interesting… however the problem you run into is which color to use. The device category colors are changeable so you need to reserve a color and that color to be selectable by the user. You could use this also for the color of the sliver. I’ll give it some thought.
I’ll make a note of these and do a little more analysis when i have time. Thanks for the suggestions.
