The Home Remote Integration

Hi, @cw-kid
we are currently building the system and adding functionality like dynamic list of devices in a tile itself with a FlowLayout and much more types of default tiles. That way all 4 requests will be matched soon. I will let you know about it.

I think you hit the nail here…The Dashboard is very sophisticated and as result it does require a learning curve.

I think this was the previous versions you tried. Latest versions have the Menu/Pages capability, that is why I would like to ask you again “What features are missing?” (which you can’t tell me until you use it, but you don’t use it because its too sophisticated to learn :slight_smile: …chicken and egg :slight_smile: )

Bugs are reality in software development, we’ll address them one by one.

You are wrong! You can.
You can create even better ones.
Like I said, your experience does not reflect where the Dashboard is today…
You are looking for a ready made dashboard where you can change the theme and basic settings…
what we have built is a totally custom dashboard where you can create anything…
As a result you are struggling to use this sophisticated platform, because you have the ability to create anything from scratch, you want more of a ready made dashboard with some basic settings…
You are conflating “capability” vs “effort” …because its totally custom capability, it does take longer to build things with our dashboard (that is why we have a community marketplace capability so that everyone can share their creations). So it does take more effort at the moment to create something, not because it doesn’t have the capability. (FYI: as @osman mentioned we are also bringing an easy to use dashboard capability where you get a ready made dashboard and have the ability to change theme/settings etc…which I think is what you are looking for)

That is why I am challenging you to tell us which features missing please that stops you from creating this basic dashboard :slight_smile:

Lets answer them one by one…

  1. First of all the whole framework is “Responsive”…so no matter what your design it, it will fit to the screen …
    But on top, the Dashboard also allows you to create a “Tile Matrix” of whatever size you choose…

it can be 3x3 (which means you can put 3 rows and 3 columns ) or

after removing the “scale lock” you can create any count for row or column

  1. This is a question of “Tile” Creation…A dashboard is made up of tiles…in our Dashboard framework each Tile can have “Multiple States”…
    and you can change anything in different states…

    You can click + to add more states to a tile …and you can change the icon, background or anything you have in the tile…There is a rule engine that allows you to navigate from one state to next (eg: under which conditions you show State 1 vs State 2 etc)…

a simple example of it is our “Thermostat Design” where the background is changed based on a “State”…
Heat shows orange background

Cool shows blue background


All of this is done by simply creating a “state” in a tile…
here is a screenshot of the “rule engine” that allows you to switch between states of a tile

3.Because software divides the screen to whatever you choose in terms of rows and columns, the sizes are exact…of course you can create different sizes by “Joining” cells…by pressing the + that exists between cells


4.Its totally custom tiles, you can call it whatever you want and you can link it to whatever you want, including a Tile that you can link to multiple devices if you want.

It is a sophisticated platform that requires a learning process.

Support for Ezlo hubs is coming.

3 Likes

You are a star @bill_v !

Let us know if we can be of any assistance at all.

1 Like

Will do. Thanks for the controllers!

1 Like

I am also waiting for some “pre-designed tile templates” for the most common device types.
I mean it is cool hat you can create custom tiles but I am not prepared to spend the time.

Why should I crate a tile from scratch when you @melih already have some real nice once? Cant you share your design?

With your shared examples maybe I would get encouraged to edit them to my liking and so on maybe one day creating one from scratch.

Br,
Tomas

I use The Home Remote for my A/V control - and being able to control the lighting and ceiling fan in my home theater on that same remote - like I do with The Home Remote with Vera Plug-in today - is very cool.

1 Like

It already is available to everyone…
just go here

Or download the MiOS app (for IOS for now).

@melih Well yeah, I have the Dynamic dashboard with some device tiles but I cant edit the dynamic dashboard, can I?

I now again created a new dashboard to see if I could find some predefined tiles and it all seemed that I would have to create them from scratch but then I noticed that when searching for tiles the default place to search was set to “My” and of course I could not see anything. But as I changed this to “public” a whole new world of possibilities opened up :smiley:

It stil feels very advanced and complicated to set up for the average user, maybe we just need to be educated a bit how to get started.
Could you make a youtube video about the general workflow to set up a simple dashboard?
Advanced customization of tiles could be a topic for another video.

Indeed it is. We had to first design the platform in full, before we crated easy to use flows…Now we are working on the easy to use flows…

There is an “Import” capability where you can take a file (attached…pls remove the .zip extension…its a json file) and import it into dashboard… its the Thermostat Tile with full “States”…You can then edit it to your liking.

prelinked_tile-thermometer-hvac.json.zip (16.5 KB)

We are working on ways to make downloading of public tiles and editing them easier etc…
It will be getting better literally every week now that we have the majority of the platform.

1 Like

In the HVAC example, there is a nice gradient colour background. Looking at the json, this seems to use a per-cell background option that is not exposed in the dashboard editor. Is that correct?

Tiles vs Dashboards are two different concepts…

A Dashboard is made up of Tiles…
A Tile can be modified…

Just wanted to make sure this was clear.

It appears that the Ezlo Dashboard will eventually have two modes of operation, similar to how Home Remote does today.

  1. Basic dashboard (out of the box) using Ezlo’s designed default device tile templates. This basic dashboard will have some basic customisations, like themes and menu structure etc.

  2. Advanced dashboard where the user creates his own tiles from scratch and creates his own dashboard pages and layouts.

I spent months learning Home Remote and designing my own device tiles and getting my dashboard pages and menu structures as I wanted them.

However in Home Remote using the default device tiles, you could very quickly put together a working dashboard page(s).

Ideally we’d like the basic out of the box default dashboard to work like Imperihome in its simple to use way etc.

Or if the user so chooses, to create his own tiles and pages from scratch using the advanced tools and features.

I will look at the Ezlo Dashboard again, but I am yet to be convinced that the Ezlo Dashboard creation tools can be used to create a functioning dashboard from scratch that looks half decent.

Great @bill_v that’s good to hear.

Do you need an Ezlo hub?

@melih has kindly stated they can send you one if required.

Options are good.

The more 3rd party Devs that also integrate into the new Ezlo hubs the better. It will sell more Ezlo hubs at the end of the day.

Users want choice, choice to either use the inbuilt native Meshbot rules engine and Ezlo Dashboard. Or if they wish to use a 3rd party rules engine and dashboard app.

I’ve used Vera hubs for over a decade and in all that time I have always used 3rd party integrations. Mainly because we had too.

Perphaps Ezlo will eventually provide good enough inbuilt tools, but options will make the Ezlo hubs better for everyone.

I exactly agree with this statement and this is how Home Remote works. All the supplied default tile template files, which are xaml files, can be copied and then edited.

This is how I created all my device tiles based off the default ones.

It sounds like we will also be able to do this in the Ezlo Dashboard. However last time I tried to use a default tile and edit it, it didn’t go so well.

Users want options, some users will be happy to use the default out of the box dashboard and tiles where as other users will want to create something more advanced and more customised from scratch.

The whole system is very alpha and very frustrating at the moment, but I believe they are generally heading in the right direction. Time will tell.

I think for the dynamic dashboard and their own tiles, they have used some hard coded things that the users cannot also do in the tile / dashboard editors.

This is why I cannot make my tiles the same size as theirs I think.

One thing that is a bit confusing also is that when I add a tile to my Dashboard I can link it to a device in my Vera Hub (I can even see the current value for the device) but this tile does not actually get any communication with the Vera Device (Value does not update and controlling does not work).
Linked Devices from the EzloPlus works as expected.

I am guessing that this is not yet supported but will be very soon?

Edit: I started to realize that my latest additions to this thread is beginning to get a bit of topic as the thread is actually about “Home Remote Integration”. Sorry, please move this post to a relevant thread if needed.

Hi, I created another topic just for feedback. We can use there .

I see the same thing you described, about being able to see and link devices paired to a Vera firmware hub, but they do not function in the dashboard.

Or you could use this existing thread about the Ezlo Dashboard stuff