User-friendly interaction via Indigo Touch and Pushover

Posted on
Sun Oct 04, 2015 4:54 am
jmdraper offline
Posts: 103
Joined: Sep 11, 2014
Location: Surrey, UK

User-friendly interaction via Indigo Touch and Pushover

Thought I'd share this as it seems to be working pretty well so far. It's a way of asking a user a question and getting feedback via Indigo touch that's very user-friendly.

First, my use case: like many, I have a houseIsAsleep mode variable - when it becomes true, everything downstairs is turned off and from that point onwards until it becomes false again, lights upstairs come on dim automatically etc. Making it false at the right time automatically is fairly easy as we get up at pretty much the same time every day. Making it true at the right time each night takes user input. So I put a single battery z-wave switch at the bottom of the stairs. Recently I refined this by getting the system to check whether any doors or windows are open downstairs before going into 'house is asleep' mode.

I then needed a way of telling the user if there was a problem. I do this using the Pushover plugin to send an alert to the iPhones of anyone who's home. That sounds an alert tone and shows a message telling the user that the house cannot go to sleep since it's not secure. They then need to go round checking doors and windows before trying again. But I wanted to go a step further and actually tell the user what's open that shouldn't be so they didn't have to go searching. I thought of writing a script to put that in the pushover message, but then I found a better (and for me, easier) way.

I created a control page showing the device statuses of all the relevant devices. Then in pushover, it lets you specify a URL to go with the message, and I used an http://wiki.indigodomo.com/doku.php?id=indigo_touch_urls to open the control page. There's a setting in the Pushover app on iPhone that sets it to auto-open URLs. So now I can trigger a push message from Indigo when the user presses the button but something's open, when the user taps on that message, the relevant control page is automatically opened showing the user what's up. The control page can of course also include any other buttons or interactions that you want to put there.

Posted on
Sun Oct 04, 2015 5:59 am
Shutter offline
Posts: 345
Joined: Mar 07, 2014
Location: London, UK

Re: User-friendly interaction via Indigo Touch and Pushover

Excellent explanation and ideas - especially the URL in the Pushover notification. I had been thinking along similar lines and had some ideas like this on my to-do list. One thing I thought of doing was to have the light turn on in the room that needed attention.

Anyway, nice one.

Simon

Posted on
Sun Oct 04, 2015 10:56 am
MarcoGT offline
Posts: 1091
Joined: Sep 11, 2014
Location: Germany

Re: User-friendly interaction via Indigo Touch and Pushover

Hi,

I do not know if I understood correctly, but when I set "not get mode ON" using wall tablet/indigo touch, server will speak, for example, which windows are open so I can close them without going around for the whole house :)

Posted on
Sun Oct 04, 2015 2:30 pm
Turribeach offline
Posts: 429
Joined: Feb 06, 2015
Location: London, UK

Re: User-friendly interaction via Indigo Touch and Pushover

Nice integration!

Posted on
Mon Oct 05, 2015 9:13 am
matt (support) offline
Site Admin
User avatar
Posts: 21411
Joined: Jan 27, 2003
Location: Texas

Re: User-friendly interaction via Indigo Touch and Pushover

Great workflow example. Thanks for sharing.

Image

Posted on
Mon Jan 02, 2017 4:59 pm
manonstreet offline
Posts: 7
Joined: Dec 27, 2016

Re: User-friendly interaction via Indigo Touch and Pushover

In general this is also a great way to putting training wheels on your home automation setup. Instead of automatically doing things, send a push notification under certain conditions and allow the operator to decide if they should take action by opening a control page. There are plenty of activities I can think of where I wouldn't want the system to execute an action automatically without human involvement. For example, is it rainy or windy outside and the garage door has been left open for more than 5 minutes? Might be a good idea to close it, or it might be really annoying, or worse yet, lock you out of your house.

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