Anyone else into Roomie Remote? Some early impressions.

To have A/V and Lights/Indigo accessible on desktop is relatively easy with lots of screen real estate being available. For A/V I use iRed2 and IRTrans modules.

To do that on an iPhone/iPad is a little more challenging but still quite doable using a control page and scroll/zoom etc.

Then I ran across Roomie here and it showed some promise to truly have an all-encompassing remote.
Having been spoiled by Indigo since way back (V3.x), Roomie proved a bit challenging at first.
One of the plus's over iRed, I like the ability to control IP AV devices directly. Makes for less clutter of IR emitters, keeping in mind that all my geek-playing has to NOT interfere with use of original/regular remotes as that's all my wife uses. Very important

No problem controlling Indigo Lights. Haven't gotten to Activities yet. I don't use dimming, just on/off.
Locks via VeraBridge are not perfect. Action lock/unlock is ok since they are just "lights" but status doesn't seem to follow same as real lights do.
Status of the light is correct when the Roomie Activity containing the light button is first loaded and/or changed within the Roomie activity. Changes made outside Roomie are not updated while one is in the Roomie Activity, or it could be I just haven't figured out the how yet. Roomie documentation is a bit sparse.

A temporary all-encompassing work-around is to load an Indigo control page via a Roomie button. Have to use Safari for viewing but only 2 button pushes needed to get back to Roomie, same activity as when control page button was pressed.

At the moment, it still shows a lot of promise but also requires more learning, hence the question if anyone else is using Roomie.

Quick update in case someone is lurking on the fence.

Thanks to the ht guys over at YouTube I found out how to load a control page with a Roomie button via Indigo Touch URL's and a button on the control page makes for a simple return to same page/remote in Roomie.
This allows me to make some customized control pages for tasks important when watching TV, etc.

Still learning but now more optimistic that it will be a good mix.

Would love to hear from current Roomie/Simple Control users. I am looking to upgrade my one way IR media control, and see Roomie as potentially the most user friendly. How is Roomie overall, and how is the Indigo integration? Is it as easy to set up Indigo actions as it suggests? If running Indigo and Roomie on the same device, can you easily switch to Roomie and back to Indigo?

Part of the motivation is to limit exposure of my entire Indigo setup on "public" devices, as Indigo controls water valves, pool, alarm, cameras, etc. Ideally Roomie would be able to handle the media stuff, but also through Indigo, address lights, whole house audio etc. Can Roomie access plugins etc? What is the workflow?

Thanks!

I have a large amount of experience with Roomie (now actually renamed to "Simple Control").

Let me tell you where I'm coming from, so you have a better perspective of my thoughts. In a previous home I installed a full on Savant System. I even wrote custom profiles to integrate it all with Plex and Indigo/Insteon for lighting control. It was very expensive, hard to develop for, but was very reliable. All of my AV equipment was racked in a 24U rack in a closet. Then in July I moved to a newer larger home. Funny enough though, the layout of the house didn't allow for closet to house the rack. Additionally, in each of the room there were built cabinets for AV gear for that room, so the value of having them in a closet and out of sight, was diminished. Also, the house was partially pre-wired. So I ditched my Savant System and went looking for something else, eventually landing on Roomie.

Roomie is really a solid product. The effort that has gone into it has been tremendous, device support is fantastic, but there are some downsides.

The user interface isn't really that great. Programming it can only happen on an iOS device (i.e.: there isn't a companion Mac OS app), though once you get the hang of the interface its not all that bad. I should qualify that by saying if you just "use" the app rather then program in it, the user interface is actually quite smooth. My wife and guests for example are always able to use it without much, if any explanation. Its just that its UI for programming bugs me.

The app does work for Indigo. It connects to Indigo using the builtin Indigo web server. This is reliable and functional for basic operations like controlling and viewing feedback of lights etc. work nicely. Complex actions such as action groups are supposed to work, but I haven't been able to leverage them. Triggers though don't work. The current version of Simple Control only supports triggers from certain devices (so far the Hue Hub is the only I have supported). So you can't trigger a trigger directly from Simple Control. There are a few work arounds I've come up with. You can create a virtual device in Indigo, and then toggle that device in Simple Control.

One last thing to understand is that Simple Control is charged per device. So my Tivo, Amplifier, and TV are all three devices. However Indigo only counts as *one* regardless of how many devices you have configured inside of it. So for example I only have 15 registered devices in Simple Control, but over 100 in Indigo.

Overall, I'm pretty happy with the solution. Yes, there is more work for Simple Control to do, but their support is really responsive and very helpful. There just isn't anything thats equally accessible and better. Trust me, I've tried most!

I'm happy to provide more detail or answer more specific questions, so please ask!

Thanks very much for your insight. I'll likely pull the trigger soon, as we have renovated some areas and will be adding Tivo to handle the cable side. Feedback really becomes essential then, and I'd rather not spread out control over several apps. Looks like Roomie can pull it all together.

If you get a moment, perhaps you could post some screen shots of your pages, and maybe a comment on how difficult it was to get to that point.

To be really honest, most of the default remotes for those like Tivo, the AppleTV, etc all work nicely with their default remotes.

Adding a few button sliders for Insteon commands is really very easy. If you get stuck with something, I'll post some screenshots and walk throughs.

I don't think you'll be disappointed

I have been using roomie too, now Simple Control. As koensayr says it's by far the most accessible app there is and I would also add, the easier one of the few apps that are available out there for remote controls. There is a learning curve but again much easier than the likes of iRule etc.

Indigodomo integration I found flaky so I use Home Remote which I start using yesterday and I must say I'm impressed. Very easy to use and seems solid so far.

I've also had good response and help from the support of Simple Control.

I would prefer a single app for all control but at the moment it's lacking. I am trying to integrate everything together for the sake of WAF and ease of use but it's taking a while.

Is it possible to have Roomie send a variable to Indigo? I have a whole house audio matrix switch that is controlled by serial scripts, one for volume and one for source for each zone. These are triggered by variable changes. If Roomie could modify the existing Indigo variables, I could control the WHA switch pretty easily without having to rewrite everything. Also, if it can read and display an Indigo variable that would be ideal.

I have been using the app for quite some time. It can control most things. I have simple buttons that can turn on the entire system and set to watch TV or movies etc.

What I would reallly like to see is that you issue a Siri command like "Siri turn on Living Room Netflix". This would send a command to Simple Control to execute the following commands (turn on TV, set HDMI input to appletv set appletv to netflix app) or "Siri turn on satellitle" and execute the following (tv on, set HDMI to Directv input, directv box on) Eventually you can even add in channel up /down etc.

has anyone figured out how to do this.

So I have been in contact with the simple control people and ask them about being able to view and change variables on a simple control page. They really don't know anything about it.

I subsequently emailed Matt and Jay. Jay states that the restful API exposes variables, and so they ought to be able to do it.

I followed up with the folks at Simple control, and they suggested I look in the DD K; I did so and did not see anything really obvious.

Has anyone used a variable with simple control before? Matt/Jay, if you are reading, is there anyway that you could point me in a direction that might help interface indigo variable control with simple control?

The restful API is likely the right answer as Jay said.

I would expect the DDK can call a URL with curl() or urllibopen() or similar in which case it just needs to call the restful URL from http://wiki.indigodomo.com/doku.php?id= ... stful_urls

The restful API allows both setting and getting variables.


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Just glanced at the DDK.

Open the Sample HTTP file and change the huge XML <script> contents to "POST URL" where URL is the API URL from my link above, eg:

Code: Select all

POST http://192.168.1.1:8176/variables/sprinklerDurationMultiplier?_method=put&value=1.23

I'm not guaranteeing that's exactly right but it should start you or other folk off.


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Much appreciated; I will give it a try.

We are using Simple Control, Alexa integration, Indigo 7 and I'm following up to the earlier question, "Is it possible to have Simple Control send a variable to Indigo."

We have a scheduled event in Indigo that turns on most interior lights at a time related to sunset, let's call this Interior Dusk.

Interior Dusk turns on every light in the living room, not conducive to watching TV.

As summer comes and it gets dark later, we will have already started an activity in Simple Control such as "Watch Apple TV." An hour into the movie, the Interior Dusk scheduled event happens and every light turns on in the living room.

I'd like to have a Simple Control activity such as Watch Apple TV or Watch Blu-Ray send a variable to Indigo so it knows to run an alternate Action Group at dusk such as "Interior Dusk Movie in Progress," which would set light levels appropriate to Movie Mode.

Any suggestions?

Is there some way to cause SimpleControl to do an HTTP request? If so, you can use the Indigo REST interface or my HTTPd plugin to set a variable.