Post Pics of Your Control Pages! (LOCKED - create new topic)

Very nice. I'm especially curious about the Plex icon called "downloads."

That, and your very specific lamp names.

Very nice. I'm especially curious about the Plex icon called "downloads."

Isn't there some rule along the lines of "Never ask a man about his downloads folder"?

Isn't there some rule along the lines of "Never ask a man about his downloads folder"?

Only if the path includes "Laissez les bon temps roulez"!

Only if the path includes "Laissez les bon temps roulez"!

You are confused, that is exactly when you DO ask about the downloads folder...

Very nice. I'm especially curious about the Plex icon called "downloads."

That, and your very specific lamp names.

Ah its not that exciting, its just an action group to turn on TV, change the HDMI source and select the correct sonos line in. As for the lamps, wife loves them so need someway to distinguish between all of them

Nice. I've only begun to work on integrating audio and video into my system.

Cheers,
Dave

Updated my control pages thanks to some of the ideas presented in this thread -- hopefully will do a seasonal change, but may need to learn some Photoshop scripting to make it easy! A true thanks to all those who have previously posted their creations - it continuously gives us ideas for improvement and most definitely inspired many ideas contained herein.

(Sorry for the illegibility of the text, had to shrink the image down to ~50% and save to JPG to post so it loses some clarity.)

Adam

@Adam, Very nice! I especially like your design and have used a few of your ideas in implementing my own screens. Could I ask about the recent call's section of the page and what you used to pull that together? I would be interested in the back-end phone system as well. Thanks for the inspiring ideas!

Here are a few shots of what I have implemented so far. It is still being tweaked a bit but feel free to comment/suggest improvements.

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Weather.JPG (178.16 KiB) Viewed 12464 times

@Krikee - I like them. (I likee?) A couple suggestions:

I would suggest moving your labels (the ones above the groupings) a couple pixels higher so that they don't contact the lines below them. You might even think about making them bold as well.

I'm not sure that someone other than yourself would know that the front door sensor is 73% battery as opposed to 73% locked.

I'd suggest putting your climate control on your "Home" page vs. the weather page, and I'd suggest putting the "Media" group on your A/V page as opposed to "Home"--but that's just me.

I'd suggest placing the current outdoor temp along with the day's forecast on the top of each page.

Obviously, most of this is personal preference, so don't take any of my comments as being critical of your designs. And hey--I hear that there's a fair bit of rain headed your way (the Bay Area that is) so keep your head down and be safe!

Dave

Thank you Dave, I really appreciate you taking the time to comment. The points you make are all very valid.

Regarding the climate control, Clicking on either of the setpoint items in the upper left of the screens pops up the client UI which allows me to adjust temperature from any of the pages. That of course is not obvious in the pictures.

The current outdoor temp is a *smack my forehead* moment. I can't believe I didn't put that on there...sheesh! That will be remedied tonight!

The battery levels were more of a lets see how this looks kind of thing. I was debating on using percentages as currently displayed or battery level icons. The jury is still out on this one. I may end up creating a separate "utility" page that will give a quick status of my sensors all in one place and just keep the clean look on the main page.

The media settings on the home page as you say are a preference, the three buttons along the top there are essentially activity buttons that allow my 8 year old (and now my 3 year old) to crank up the TV with minimal fuss. The wife likes it too since she doesn't have to hunt for a way to turn off the music quickly or fiddle around trying to get to the tv functions. 90% of the time, the home overview screen is up on the display so its the first thing they see and are comfortable with it.

Ill toy with the text alignments as well. I wasn't sure about it either and have had mixed reviews on it from visitors and family alike.

And finally, yes, we are hunkering down for the big storm...for the area I specifically live, I'm looking at 50-60 mph gusts and sustained winds between 20-40. Not horrible, but certainly unusual.
Thanks again for the comments and suggestions, it will provide me something to do as long as the power stays on.

My pleasure. Here's where I am with mine. Obviously, I'm going for a minimalistic look and feel. I also do a fair number of things that are invisible unless there's a reason to see them as well. An example would be the area above the weather map which contains information on severe weather alerts when there are any.

I honestly can't see myself getting to a point where I'm not changing them at least a little bit.

Home screen.

photo 1.PNG (75.59 KiB) Viewed 12438 times

Current weather.

photo 2.PNG (154.36 KiB) Viewed 12438 times

Battery life and power usage.

photo 3.PNG (76.22 KiB) Viewed 12438 times

I honestly can't see myself getting to a point where I'm not changing them at least a little bit.

That's the understatement of the year... I'm pretty sure if we were not tinkering, we would get bored and break something just so that we could tinker again... at any rate, nice pages, Dave.

Could I ask about the recent call's section of the page and what you used to pull that together? I would be interested in the back-end phone system as well. Thanks for the inspiring ideas!

Thanks for the nice comments, @Krikee... I use a piece of software called Phone Amego (yes, it is intentionally spelled that way) that is a telephony app that works with USB modems. Among other things, it can fire off events via AppleScript -- so whenever there is an incoming call it posts the Caller ID information to Indigo and then reads the caller ID name on the office speakers. I actually store a list of the 10 last calls, but don't have those on a display (yet!) I do have a big enhancement planned - Phone Amego can block/ignore calls that you blacklist, so I hope to kill off some of the telemarketing calls that we get continuously. Should have done it before the last set of elections...

Adam

That's the understatement of the year... I'm pretty sure if we were not tinkering, we would get bored and break something just so that we could tinker again... at any rate, nice pages, Dave.

Thanks Adam. I don't need to break something on purpose; it seems that I'm capable of doing that completely by accident!

Tweaking and tuning...
Dave

Hi Dave,

Your energy page is pretty much perfect in my opinion. I'm going to have to get to work on a similar page with blatant borrowing of your ideas. . I especially like the easy to see at-a-glance battery levels. I also have a septic system and I see that you monitor "something" there. Is it tank level or energy/pump usage? What sensors do you use to gather that info? The scope of my system has been primarily limited to the inside of my home (lights and AV equipment). Other than weather conditions and my irrigation system, I haven't looked much beyond my front door.

@Adam
Thanks for that application info. It looks like the software you mentioned will work well with my phone system. I have a VOIP setup so passing the call info to the software looks reasonably possible. I will have to download the trial and poke at it a bit. Should be fun and I know the wife will like it. (I never get any calls anyway).