Pay for AltUI. Seriously.

I was a Vera Beta tester way back in 2008. It was more like being a Wright brother trying to get the plane to fly… without wings.

Over the years, I basically stopped trying to improve Vera, install new things or further customize it due to the absolutely ridiculous level of instability and gawd awful interface. I got it to some mostly-working/stable level and left it at that. The weekly Telnet and SSH sessions weren’t my idea of having “fun with Home Automation”.

The work on this UI is the furthest forward leap I have seen to date. Frankly, it is heroic.

The underlying instability and madness still remains, but at least with this UI I am sure that what I am clicking is actually responding. I can troubleshoot network/zwave issues visually, and the checkboxes/buttons/fields are well-explained and do something. OMG, I can view a legible log! Amazing.

Well done, my friend. Donating via PayPal in 3… 2… 1…

The Micasaverde guys should pay you a boatload of money. Seriously, a freaking boatload.

.//A.

[quote=“anthonyris, post:1, topic:191477”]I was a Vera Beta tester way back in 2008. It was more like being a Wright brother trying to get the plane to fly… without wings.

Over the years, I basically stopped trying to improve Vera, install new things or further customize it due to the absolutely ridiculous level of instability and gawd awful interface. I got it to some mostly-working/stable level and left it at that. The weekly Telnet and SSH sessions weren’t my idea of having “fun with Home Automation”.

The work on this UI is the furthest forward leap I have seen to date. Frankly, it is heroic.

The underlying instability and madness still remains, but at least with this UI I am sure that what I am clicking is actually responding. I can troubleshoot network/zwave issues visually, and the checkboxes/buttons/fields are well-explained and do something. OMG, I can view a legible log! Amazing.

Well done, my friend. Donating via PayPal in 3… 2… 1…

The Micasaverde guys should pay you a boatload of money. Seriously, a freaking boatload.

.//A.[/quote]

Anthony
thank you for your kind words, very well appreciated.

in fact I wanted (still want) this to be UI8 and offered in Jan 2015 directly to MCV ( florin & others ). this is still on the table if they want. it would have been a great way for them to leap frog as it was bridging smoothly the old world ( with current plugins compatibility and restricted JSON based user interfaces ) to a completely new API, fully javascript based which offers plugin authors much more freedom. Vosmont Rule Engine with its Blockly interface as an example of that.

not to mention the things UI7 did not and still does not have like icon display support in remote mode, the single view for multiple controller, the blockly editor for watches, the direct support of watches as scene triggers, the data storage provider integration to chart variable history without having to have any database , the fact the same application works equally well on a iPhone4, a tablet, or large screen PC thus not havnig to dedicate development teams to these mobile OS applications one by one which do not support custom plugin well still despite recent improvements etc… Too bad the speech reconition works only on Chrome PC/MAC :wink: but it is fun to say "turn of blue lamp’ and see it turning off

Despite the underlying backend weirdness and low cost approach to HW selection , from what I read in french forums it is really the UI that killed the OEM deal they had with Orange. People where just not happy with an early , cripped down version of UI7 ( imagine that ) and no way to install a plugin ( so they could not take ALTUI ). Orange will likely not renew that deal.

overall it would have been a great strategy for MCV developpment to get much more bang for the buck , get lots done on UI with less resource and invest to fix the backend scalability issues. I am still quite estonished by the deafening silence I got back from them after some initial contact we had when they said they would contact me back… seems they did not want to change strategy

Now akbooer with openluup and vosmont with the rule engine are opening a whole new world with a much more power full backend and rule / trigger engine… and altui works with it too transparently with one 2 or several of these things in the back of it.

I just hope the momentum continues, the community grows ( hoping people make noise about it in the other forums/threads ) and more and more developpers take benefit of the user interface framework that ALTUI brings to them.

amg0

I’ve just installed it, still getting to grips with it, can’t find simple thing s like install new device the yet but I can’t believe how much faster it is on my new Vera Plus. If the plus is thus slow with UI7 I can’t imagine how slow the previous models were.

I’m going to use it for a little while, get to grips with it the. If I can get to grips with it, I’ll certainly be sending a donation.

Keep up the good work/1

[quote=“CelticWebs, post:3, topic:191477”]I’ve just installed it, still getting to grips with it, can’t find simple thing s like install new device the yet but I can’t believe how much faster it is on my new Vera Plus. If the plus is thus slow with UI7 I can’t imagine how slow the previous models were.

I’m going to use it for a little while, get to grips with it the. If I can get to grips with it, I’ll certainly be sending a donation.

Keep up the good work/1[/quote]

welcome,
you will not find “administration” kind of functions as theses are not the heart of ALTUI’s vision & charter and are not used that often ( things like inclusion exclusion of devices etc ). but you ll find most of everything and much more than what the UIx is giving you, plus you can use it on your mobile as well

I’ve worked that out now :slight_smile:

Something I’m attempting to work out is can I change the home page so it shows favourite devices?

[quote=“CelticWebs, post:5, topic:191477”]I’ve worked that out now :slight_smile:
Something I’m attempting to work out is can I change the home page so it shows favourite devices?[/quote]

Normally favorites are shown as “tiles” on the default home page and tiles have a default action ( ON/OFF for switch, or opening the device panel for this device.

but you can also change the default home page using the url ( like adding home=pageDevices ) to open the device page as a default but I do not have an option to show only favorites. the pageDevices will open using your last chosen settings in terms of filtering. favorite is one of them

you can also create a custom page and open the default home page to be your custom page in readonly mode

extract of readme=>
UI5 & UI7 local access: http:///port_3480/data_request?id=lr_ALTUI_Handler&command=home#
optional parameter:
lang=xx for language ( fr,en,it )
home=xx where xx is one of pageHome, pageUsePages, pageDevices, pageScenes to force a start page
layout=lean for pageUsePages in case you do not want to see Menu & Message area
example : http://192.168.1.16/port_3480/data_request?id=lr_ALTUI_Handler&command=home&lang=en&home=pageUsePages&layout=lean

I’m going to give this a nice gentle bump, since I wholeheartedly agree with anthonyris.

The responsiveness and development speed of amg0 is better than an entire company’s (read Vera). Very impressive work!

Donation sent!

Please support this if you use it on a regular basis! Should we start a petition to Vera to make this UI8?

Totally agree. The UI7 web interface for me is practically unuseable. Not sure if it’s because I have so many devices or because there are camera feeds, but it hangs constantly and needs to think for a while as I scroll down. Alt UI is really just incredible, both from speed and accessibility standpoint. It’s remarkable that one person has been able to put this together!

yes yes :slight_smile:
thank you

that has probably to do with the fact I broke my achilles tendon and had recently a little bit more time to deal with my computer :slight_smile:

Just to get some awareness out there, please spread the word, contribute to Home automation blogs, and also you can put a review on MCV app store MiOS Apps

I was using this for the first time today and it is fantastic. I checked something and it said a new update was available. I updated. Now I have a nag screen asking me to register and buy a license. Should this have happened? I don’t mind donating, but I’m not sure about paying a monthly fee. I’m also in the US and the only donation is in pounds.

Oh, and after upgrade I no longer have any favorites. I’ll have to go back and select them all again.

[quote=“mostlychris, post:11, topic:191477”]I was using this for the first time today and it is fantastic. I checked something and it said a new update was available. I updated. Now I have a nag screen asking me to register and buy a license. Should this have happened? I don’t mind donating, but I’m not sure about paying a monthly fee. I’m also in the US and the only donation is in pounds.

Oh, and after upgrade I no longer have any favorites. I’ll have to go back and select them all again.[/quote]

Hello Chris. you can use it without donating. you do get the message and there is a littel cross on the right to close it once it has finished rotating. in unlicensed version in the future, some very small functionality like auto update will not be offered . cf the discussion here:
http://forum.micasaverde.com/index.php/topic,35139.msg279071.html#msg279071

Donation should be in Euro, not pound, if it pound let me know because it is an issue and can be paid in one time for 6 12 or 24 months.

If the donation and message is really an issue, you can use a version prior to 1504 ( you can retro fit to V1489 using the url http:///port_3480/data_request?id=action&serviceId=urn:micasaverde-com:serviceId:HomeAutomationGateway1&action=CreatePlugin&PluginNum=8246&Version=31226 but given the number of people using it and the work that it requires to keep up, you will understand it is hard to give support to old versions.

it is strange you lost Favorite selection , just click on the little stars on dialog or scene boxes to set your favorites.

I Hope this helps

Thanks amg0. I definitely don’t mind supporting it. So far it looks to be a much better interface than the stock UI7. Thanks for all your hard work.

I guess there will be some conversion applied when charging internationally but that’s small potatoes.

[quote=“mostlychris, post:13, topic:191477”]Thanks amg0. I definitely don’t mind supporting it. So far it looks to be a much better interface than the stock UI7. Thanks for all your hard work.

I guess there will be some conversion applied when charging internationally but that’s small potatoes.[/quote]
indeed, and then paypal eats very quickly the rest of the potatoes on very small amounts so it is better to group a little bit :slight_smile: thx !