Best Hardware to display control pages

Posted on
Fri Feb 10, 2017 3:14 am
mat offline
Posts: 769
Joined: Nov 25, 2010
Location: Cambridgeshire - UK

Re: Best Hardware to display control pages

With the Ipad set to always on, could you do something with a heuristic image, one 1x1 pixel image (off) and one black one full screen size image (on). Then display the image based on a variable, with it set to the highest z order..

During the day the small image would be displayed giving you full access to the controls on the control page.

Set the variable to off at a certain time, and the black image is displayed, covering the controls. If the screen(black image) is touched the variable is set to off for x minutes to allow you to use the underling controls on the control page before being dimmed.

I'm not sure how bright a black image would be without testing, but have thought of implementing this a few times.

Late 2018 mini 10.14

Posted on
Fri Feb 10, 2017 5:01 pm
Londonmark offline
Posts: 509
Joined: Feb 29, 2012

Re: Best Hardware to display control pages

Mat - I did not exactly this for a while and it works pretty well. Since then I've modified it to pick a random photo as a screensaver. I have about 3000 photos all saved as PNGs with sequential file names. Works a treat.

Posted on
Sat Feb 11, 2017 3:38 am
Nine offline
Posts: 78
Joined: Feb 15, 2015
Location: Zurich, Switzerland

Re: Best Hardware to display control pages

mat: that's a great solution :D will give that solution a try!

Nine

Posted on
Sun Feb 12, 2017 5:15 pm
Busta999 offline
User avatar
Posts: 714
Joined: Mar 30, 2016
Location: Wales UK

Re: Best Hardware to display control pages

FWIW

I bought a slack handful of the 7" Amazon Fires on Black Friday for £29.99 each.

Tweaking them to add the Play Store and the really good Indigo App for Android and I now have a series of HA controllers around the house.

I've just finished my first two Control Pages and they work great on the Fires.

Posted on
Tue Feb 28, 2017 7:43 am
Professor Falken offline
User avatar
Posts: 289
Joined: Mar 29, 2015

Re: Best Hardware to display control pages

How is the black level on the Fire tablets (especially the 8HD)?

I am looking to use a tablet running an alarm clock control page as a souped-up bedside clock, driven by indigo and DomoPad.

But I don't want to have that soft grey glow from a poorly "blacked" display shining in my face all night. I think I read that DomoPad can dim based on time or command, right? So I suppose if the black level is good when dimmed (as long as I can make the clock numbers readable) then that will probably work.

Thanks for the advice.

Posted on
Tue Feb 28, 2017 8:08 am
roussell offline
User avatar
Posts: 1108
Joined: Aug 18, 2008
Location: Alabama

Re: Best Hardware to display control pages

Professor Falken wrote:
How is the black level on the Fire tablets (especially the 8HD)?

I am looking to use a tablet running an alarm clock control page as a souped-up bedside clock, driven by indigo and DomoPad.

But I don't want to have that soft grey glow from a poorly "blacked" display shining in my face all night. I think I read that DomoPad can dim based on time or command, right? So I suppose if the black level is good when dimmed (as long as I can make the clock numbers readable) then that will probably work.

Thanks for the advice.


It's "not bad", it's better than the 7, which I have several of...

I have a Fire 7 as my bedside clock, and while it's much brighter than a conventional clock, it doesn't bother me. *BUT* I can sleep under pretty much any lighting condition so your mileage may vary. On the 7, it doesn't go completely black, instead keeping that grayish background, although the clock app I'm using could be responsible for some of that. In any case, the 8 is definitely better, quality-wise I'd rate it close to the discontinued Google Nexus tablets. I'll take a photo of the two together in the dark tonight and post to this thread.

Terry

Posted on
Wed Mar 01, 2017 7:33 am
roussell offline
User avatar
Posts: 1108
Joined: Aug 18, 2008
Location: Alabama

Re: Best Hardware to display control pages

Here are a couple of photos of a kindle 2015 Fire 7 and 2017 Fire 8HD in total darkness. On both tablets, the device brightness was set at 50% and the apps brightness was also set to 50%. The app is "Alarm Clock HD - Free" from Impala Studios in the Google Play store. The photos were taken with and iPhone 6+ and the brightness/contrast was adjusted slightly to best reflect what I was seeing in real life.

In the head-on view photo, there doesn't seem to be much difference between the 7 and 8HD, however in real life the 8 was slightly darker. The 7 is on the top and the 8 on the bottom.
FullSizeRender 51.jpg
FullSizeRender 51.jpg (61.6 KiB) Viewed 2459 times


Off-axis is where the difference in bleed-through is really apparent. Again the 7 is on the top, 8 on the bottom. The 7 does seem to have more of the supposedly sleep-harmful blue light.
FullSizeRender 52.jpg
FullSizeRender 52.jpg (58.1 KiB) Viewed 2459 times


As I mentioned earlier, I've been using the 7 as a bedside clock for close to two years now. I haven't had a problem with the brightness (but light-levels don't seem to bother my sleep patterns . In fact, I usually have the brightness turned up considerably more than the 50% used for the photos, just to make it more readable during the day. The 8HD should definitely be better though.

Terry

Posted on
Wed Mar 01, 2017 8:45 am
Professor Falken offline
User avatar
Posts: 289
Joined: Mar 29, 2015

Re: Best Hardware to display control pages

Wow, thanks, that's very helpful.

At the cost of the device, it's worth taking a flyer on it to try out. If it was a real issue, I could probably affix a tinted transparency cling to the screen.

I posted in the DomoPad thread some more specific questions about that app's functions to see if what I am thinking about doing is even really all that feasible. I'll have to see what comes back, but I am leaning towards just getting it to fiddle around with.

Thanks again for the photos/investigation.

Posted on
Wed Mar 01, 2017 9:10 am
roussell offline
User avatar
Posts: 1108
Joined: Aug 18, 2008
Location: Alabama

Re: Best Hardware to display control pages

Glad to be of help. DomoPad is fantastic, it's actually superior in every way to the official iOS Indigo Touch app. I missed your other post, but I'm sure you'll have no problems. When you install the Play Store on the Fire, don't bother with the methods that involve connecting to a PC through a USB. Simply enable developer mode, then download & install the appropriate APK files (4 of them I think) and it works just fine. I might have linked to them earlier in the thread but if not, or you run into any problems, give a shout and I'll be happy to help. The entire process takes ~5 minutes.

Terry

Who is online

Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 0 guests