HOWTO: Custom Device List Action Popups

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Sat Oct 03, 2015 9:53 am
RogueProeliator offline
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HOWTO: Custom Device List Action Popups

Quick Downloads: Application | Indigo Plugin

Devices List - Custom Action Popups
Browsing and controlling devices via the standard Devices List is an easy way to access and control individual devices while on a phone -- often more efficient and faster than attempting to utilize control pages on a small screen. Of course, this also saves the hassle of adding every new device to a control page (and renaming labels, re-arranging, etc.) The biggest drawback, in my opinion, has been that you are limited to controlling only those device types which include native application support:
  • Relays
  • Dimmers
  • Fans / Speed Control
  • Sprinklers
  • Thermostats
  • iTunes
DomoPad Indigo Client adds a few additional built-in devices supported (versus Indigo Touch):
  • Roku
  • TiVo
  • Indigo Plugins
  • Timers (v1.1+)
  • Schedules (v1.1+)
In order to make the device list infinitely more usable, DomoPad Indigo Client v1.1.0 introduces initial support for user-defined custom device popups! Here is one example of a custom popup for controlling my Office speakers:

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How It Works
The concept of how this works is actually very simple -- you create a standard control page that will be launched in a popup window when you click on the device. Some hints and guidelines for the control page:
  • Control page should generally be specific to the device in order to fit on a device screen easily
  • The page will be scaled to fit the device (up/down) so use appropriate sizes and graphics for your device(s)
  • Navigation between control pages is not supported
  • Keep it small with few (or re-used so they are cached) graphics so it loads quickly
  • This is YOUR dialog, so no device-specific information is shown; therefore you may wish to identify the device with a header (such as "Office" in the above example)

Assigning the Control Page to a Device
Assigning a control page to a particular device is accomplished using the Global Property Manager plugin originally created by Indigo Domotics. This does not ship with the base product, but may be found in this forum post.

Once installed, this plugin allows you to assign any property to any device (within a few restrictions listed in the plugin). To assign a control page to a device, open up the Global Property Manager's edit interface and create (or update later!) a new property of "DomoPadControlPage". The value should be the ID of the control page, which may be obtained by right-clicking on the control page in the list and choosing to Copy ID.
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Troubleshooting
If you assign the property and nothing appears when clicking, the first things to check are:
  1. Are you running at least DomoPad Indigo Client v1.1.0 (or higher)?
  2. Double check your property name in Global Property Manager - it must be spelled exactly as specified above
  3. Double check that the value is the exact ID number for the control page
This is a new feature and so probably can use some improvement and/or bug fixes. Please let me know your experience and/or suggestions!

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