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

Hi all

Thought would post here my non-destructive tablet mounting solution - as to me seems ideal and haven't seen example before.

Basically wanted a way to mount and charge tablet without damaging wall (which has very low WAF) and also enable me to change/move later.

This is what I came up with...

Our light switchs use a clipsal design, which has main switch in middle and plate around the outside to hide screws etc - these plates are very secure and easily hold the tablets weight.

I replaced some single switchs (were I might want tablets) to a double switch, and in the second switch space inserted a USB charger adapter (which simply plugs in)

https://www.clipsal.com/Trade/Products/Electrical-Accessories/Electronic-Accessories/USB-Charger#.VL2fLtypnYg

Single Switch - replaced with double switch and USB Charger component added.

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My electrician was happy to run this off the light circuit as draws very little power - so 5 minute job to wire to power.

Next I bought some replacement blank plates - and mounted these to tablets. Now this actually took a while finding the best attaching plate to tablet solution. I tried a number of options, painting when done etc. The best by a wide margin was epoxyresin - http://www.selleys.com.au/putty/epoxy/knead-it-multi-purpose/

Blank plate attached to tablet with epoxy (havent painted this one as can't be seen given tablet size)

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Short cable from China

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This is clay like and sets quickly and hard - one tube managed both sides - although need to be careful clearing the cable mount - and making sure straight and right angle.

End result - fantastic mount - covers a light switch - but that the tablet can control! Simple to remove and return to wallswitch alone with replacement $2 blank plate!

Tablet on wall

DSC08119 - Copy.JPG (188.67 KiB) Viewed 16706 times

Hopefully this helps someone


Cheers

Glenn

Nice job Glenn.
It's a pity you have to glue the epoxy directly on your tablet.
A plastic tablet holder from e.g. Belkin Chambray cover is may be an alternative solution.

Thanks - the tablets were going to have no other usage - so was happy to epoxy straight on (also looks neater)

As it turns on the epoxy sets like concrete and its quite stuck - but I get the impression if I really force it - it will come off in one piece. But yet to test it!

Glenn

Hi!

(Duplicate post more or less from Images category but works here to I guess )

Started using Indigo a few weeks ago (run HomeSeer 2 for many years) and I must say that everything is better w/ Indigo. Especially the GUI editor.

Below is some of my Control pages and I have used a very nice program for making the buttons: Art Text 2.

Here is all the control graphics I made so far (including the original ones)

Entre iPad: Big button to "shut down house" and some info about occupancy and security. The trash bin goes red when it's "trash pickup day". And so on...


Master bedroom: Button to "shut down house" and to enable/disable the automatic roller shutter rollup in the morning.


First floor: Made some scenes and individual control of lights, the icons show dim level and status. Different symbols for dishwasher status and so on + the ability to activate Push message when they are done. Many of the smaller rooms use a Virtual device just to show status of the room, if any light is ON the icon shows ON and you can turn all lights off by tapping it.


Second floor: Under construction, need some more Love to be great but it does what I need for now.


Lights outside including control of the RGBW-strip.


iPod @ movie room: Fast switching of mode, Indigo events control projector, Denon AVR, XBMC, Sonos, roller shutters, lights and so on. We have about 40 kvm/430 sq ft of windows in the media area so motorised roller shutters are important I run this Control page in Safari (made shortcut on homescreen) to make it fullscreen. Works great!









Best regards, L

I am impressed with the control pages I see here in this thread!
I have just started to create my own control pages using the editor, and I have a few questions to you who have succeeded with such great pages.

- Are you guys only using the control pages editor to accomplish this (except for creating background images and icons/buttons)?

- How can I have the current date and time (a running clock) on a control page? Do you have a variable constantly updating?

- Can I have the Indigo log showing live on a control page, showing for example the last 3 lines?

Thanks!

- Are you guys only using the control pages editor to accomplish this (except for creating background images and icons/buttons)?

Certainly for my control pages they're all done using the editor. I've kinda put all work on hold for now though just to see what happens when the new Indigo Touch app comes out as don't want to be doing things that might be covered by default in the app in the future..

- How can I have the current date and time (a running clock) on a control page? Do you have a variable constantly updating?

Spot on.. a schedule every 1 min to update variables.. hopefully in the future there'll be a more refined way of doing it.. already on the wishlist i believe.

- Can I have the Indigo log showing live on a control page, showing for example the last 3 lines?

I do mine by way of an old applescript that updates every min, and also every time someone taps the button for 'event log' on my control pages. Writes it to a variable then that variable is displayed on the page.

Code: Select all

set AppleScript's text item delimiters to ""
set the ActivityLog to do shell script "tail -87 \"/Library/Application Support/Perceptive Automation/Indigo 6/Logs/indigo_log.txt\""
set the TotalNumberOfLines to the count of paragraphs in the ActivityLog
set the CurrentLine to 1
repeat while the CurrentLine is less than or equal to the TotalNumberOfLines
   set the TextOfTheCurrentLine to paragraph CurrentLine of the ActivityLog
   set the variableName to ("RecentActivity" & CurrentLine) as string
   if not (variable variableName exists) then
      make new variable with properties {name:variableName, value:TextOfTheCurrentLine}
   else
      set the value of the variable variableName to the TextOfTheCurrentLine
   end if
   set the CurrentLine to (the CurrentLine + 1)
end repeat

(This code wasn't written by me.. and you might find a python way of doing it which would be more efficient)

Someone suggested that I should upload some examples from our control pages. You'l notice that I've taken a more "cartoon" approach as it's easier for my kids and wife to understand. I love these icons anyway and it helps me keep the system "fun" rather than formal. Every room has a cheap, secondhand iPod touch (costs about £20 on ebay) and these pages display really well and quickly. I really like the flexibility of the control pages once I'd got the hang of manipulating them and updating images heuristically.

Hope you like the screens and if you'd like to know more about how they were made let me know

Just a few more…

I developed the pages using an Agile philosophy. Talking to my product owners (the rest of the family) they told me what features they actually wanted, which they used, those they didn't and we slowly iterated the layout and content of the pages from there. It works for me and makes the rest of the gang feel like they're involved in the whole process and "own" the automation system.

Mike

Very cool! I like how everything looks so very dynamically changeable.. As in if you want to squeeze something in you're not going to have to spend forever reformatting your control pages to do it (like mine.. I'm too much of a perfectionist!)

(Also you might want to amend the background as we can see basically where you live


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

Lol… a good point I'm not too afraid. You're right tho - I'll look at them tomorrow

Too late, I'm already in your house stealing your wifis

I though that said stealing his wife then!

So did I and I thought good luck with that

hehehe no no, i've already got a wife.. i don't think i could survive having two!

Last March user BigcSpecv posted his iOS 7 control pages and concept for an iPhone interface. Basically he modeled it after the iPhone Settings app on the iPhone. I was amazed and looked in the file library for the icons and implementation details. To my dismay it wasn't there. But I felt he was definitely on the right track.

So here is my implementation and I WILL post all the files in the file library and explain how to implement this interface.
This is still a work in progress so some of my explanations may not match the implementation images yet.
I have not implemented dimmer controls yet even though most of my light switched are dimmers. This will be in a future version.

The control page is setup for my iPhone 6 so its size is 750 x 1000 or 750 x 1200 depending on the number of lines I need. The background is set to white.

Icons should refer to the room or device being controlled, Family Room Couch, Table Lamp, Patio Lantern.
Colored icons should help denote areas or device types, as an example maybe all ceiling fixtures should use a light blue icon.

I used virtual device groups for each logical area that contains more than one controlled device like Floor 1, Floor 2, Family Room, etc. The virtual device group displays ON or OFF. This lets me see at a high level where lights are on and turn them all off with a single click at multiple levels.

If more than one controlled device exists in a given area like Floor 1, then a simple Right Arrow lets you know that there is more to see.

Turning a single device on or off is done with a standard iPhone slide control image.

On the Home page I break down the house into logical areas, First Floor, Second Floor, Garage, Basement, Outside. Then below that I have some items that pertain to the entire house like scenes, thermostats, music, etc. Since the basement has only one controlled device I placed the slider at this level. There is no need to drill down to a Basement page just to display a single light control.

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On Floor 1 we can see the rooms with a single light have a slider that shows its status and can be used to turn on the light. The slider has 3 images (slider+.png, slider+on.png, slider+off.png)
On Floor 1 the Family Room has multiple devices so we show the status of the virtual device group and a Right Arrow to drill down into the room. Clicking the virtual device group status turns the group off. You can turn a virtual device group off but not on.

iPhoneFloor1.png (74.19 KiB) Viewed 15551 times

Once we are in the Family Room we can see all the devices and turn them on or off.

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Building the page
Here I have added the grey top bar graphic and an orange icon row. These are both added as static images.

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Now we need an arrow to drill down to devices within this floor or room. Notice that the arrow icon is the same height as the row to make placement easy. Also its wide enough for a finger tip.

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If we needed a slider control instead we can use the device state of a light and the slider image. Again the image is the same height as the row for easy placement.

IconRowSliderExample.png (10.93 KiB) Viewed 15551 times

Now we add the text. I used a static image/caption 30pt text with 5 spaces so that I can line the braces up on the row icon but still indent the text a little.

IconRowNameExample.png (15.16 KiB) Viewed 15551 times

Now I add the icon. I got all the icons from the site flaticon.com They are all free. The icons are all white with transparent backgrounds. Again the icons are the same size as the colored square background for easy placement. This also lets you choose any color you want for the background color.

IconRowPictureExample.png (16.2 KiB) Viewed 15551 times

I will upload the files in a day or so. If you have any questions about implementation please let me know.