Feature Requests

[roussell]

First off, fantastic work on HousePad Adam. It's a great app, you should be proud.

Have you considered any features that would prove beneficial to a permanently mounted tablet? A couple of thing sprig to mind, forgive me if some of these are already on the app or in the works:

1. Auto-Start on a control page - a switch to allow the app launching directly to a control page, perhaps an auto-load of a user-defined CP, or if that is too difficult, simply loading one called "HousePad-Home" if it exists. An auto-boot into HousePad/Control page would be awesome, but that can be handled by rooting the device for those that really want it...

2. Wake on proximity - A screen blackout/backlight power-off that with maybe a simple camera based motion detection that samples pictures 1/second or so. You could have configurable options for last-touch time-to-screen blank, motion sensitivity threshold, and image sample rate.

3. Support for non-existent controls in Indigo - The thought here being that you can use an existing Indigo control (lets use a text field that displays a variable for this example) with specially-coded content to drive the behavior of the client. So if I place a text control somewhere on a page that displays the content of a variable, under normal circumstances the value of that variable is displayed, but if in that variable I place the string {Vslider, 0,100,57,LR_Volume} instead of displaying that string, the client would display a vertical slider control with a range of 0 to 100, set the current value to 57 and report any changes to a variable named "LR_Volume". It would be a great way to get around some of the UX limitations in Indigo. You could start by just using native controls for now, and then branch out to theme support later if needed. I see this being beneficial for sliders, numeric keypads, list boxes (music lists anyone?) and possibly several other control types.

I have others, but that's a decent start. I would love to hear your thoughts. Again, it's an excellent app. Since the next version of Indigo Touch won't support all of my original iPads that are permanently mounted on the walls, I've been considering a move to Android and if so your app will obviously play a huge role.

Terry

[RogueProeliator]

First off, fantastic work on HousePad Adam. It's a great app, you should be proud.

Thanks, Terry! I am just about feature-complete in terms of what I initially wanted as the "core" of the program and will indeed be branching out shortly into some of the more specialty areas such as console/mounted-style features and the like. I don't have any permanently mounted, but I do have two on stands that I use in the same basic capacity.

1. Auto-Start on a control page

Currently you can accomplish going straight to a control page via a home screen widget that launches straight to a control page. I do want to figure out how to launch that upon boot, but I am not 100% sure I can do that without root or a custom Android build. I will indeed look into this possibility, though.

2. Wake on proximity

Yes, I really want to get this going because I have a weather console that I built but it is not convenient to turn on (have to lift it to get to the power button, no tap-to-wake on this cheap tablet). My first go at this will likely be to dim the screen without user interaction (obviously will be a setting / user configurable time)... not sure what I can do with brightness, as there are some restrictions, but will look into turning down backlight or just overlaying with a near-opaque cover. This would wake on user touch. Once I get that working, waking on camera or proximately would indeed be a pretty darn sweet addition.

3. Support for non-existent controls in Indigo

I've thought about doing almost exactly what you describe -- my specific thoughts were sliders and WebViews (to simulate iFrames), but I have to be careful in doing this because I don't want to completely break the web control page. That isn't TOO big of a concern, can always have a HousePad specific versus web version, but also want to be careful to ensure it is not too difficult to migrate in the future should Indigo Touch / Indigo Control Pages get a revamp. I'm also kind of waiting to see if anything new comes out in the Indigo Touch update in this regards so I don't re-invent the wheel. Regardless, at some point I do anticipate a feature along these lines.

I have others, but that's a decent start. I would love to hear your thoughts. Again, it's an excellent app. Since the next version of Indigo Touch won't support all of my original iPads that are permanently mounted on the walls, I've been considering a move to Android and if so your app will obviously play a huge role.

Some of the other console-specific (or beneficial) features that I have on my list based mostly off my needs/wants but somewhat on others:

• PIN code protection (required to login to access pages or perhaps to LEAVE pages, so can lock into a specific page)
• Push notifications that popup above a open control pages -- for instance, maybe caller ID popups up a toast notification of the caller or an image from your camera when the doorbell rings.
• Backing up HousePad's configuration/settings to Indigo (to keep settings in sync across all devices)

I'm going to pull a Matt/Jay here and say "no ETA on these features" though! I have a few more stability and (memory) efficiency changes that I want to make and then get it ready to release to the Play Store so that people can more easily find it and use it without having to side-load. Once that is done, these are some of the next focus. All of this can change slightly and suddenly if the WAF requires that a feature be moved up quickly.

Adam

[durosity]

I'm going to pull a Matt/Jay here and say "no ETA on these features" though!

Gosh, the likeness is uncanny.. for just a moment i really thought you were Matt & Jay

I'll be watching this in the future.. like Terry i am thinking of getting a couple of cheap fandroid tablets as wall mounted control stations, so a lot of these features would be pretty swell .. particularly the proximity side of things!

[T-Power]

Much agreed on the features mention by Terry.
My rig is slowing moving over toward more Android based devices. I have a wall mounted iPad running Indigo Touch. It needed to be jailbroken in order to install a few Cydia apps like:
Turning off backlight.
Turn the screen on simply by touching the screen.
Have an app startup automatically.
Have an app restart automatically after a crash

With my Android devices I can what you say "Crack Out" the device even more using the Tasker.app.
Having the device rooted does open more options. Would be awesome to have a HousePad plugin that worked with Tasker.

While at the same time I can understand Adam with being the one man band having his schedule get full really quick!
Right now I am very pleased with HousePad. I think I will play around a bit with Tasker and see what else can be done, though my home setup is on the more streamlined side when compared to many on the forum.

Thank you ,
Toran

[RogueProeliator]

I'll be watching this in the future.. like Terry i am thinking of getting a couple of cheap fandroid tablets as wall mounted control stations, so a lot of these features would be pretty swell .. particularly the proximity side of things!

Just be careful - some of the cheap tablets have crap for screens despite the specs being pretty decent. You are better off, usually, getting an older-generation Google device for about the same price. The Nexus 7 continues to get updates and perform VERY well; I bought a 9" or 10" cheap tablet to use as a weather console and while it works, wouldn't be good enough to mount on the wall as a primary control pad. Lesson learned there.

I also am considering some sort of voice control / integration -- but I have mixed feelings on how useful that would be. Still, the ability to say "OK, Indigo..." would be kind of cool.

Adam

[RogueProeliator]

I found some good information on setting up a "kiosk-mode" on Android... basically, in the current state it is virtually impossible to do this. However, Android-L has some features that should enable locking the device into a single application. The problem is that pre-L there was not a true way to disable the status bar / notification shade which in general let people get to anything that they wanted.

This new feature, from the description, sounds similar to Apple's Guided Access that lets you do just what some have requested. The difference is that, since this is Android. we can also replace the launcher such that we boot straight into the application... SHOULD work slick and I will test it out once I can plan it. Have to be careful not to lock myself completely out of my device that has L on it, though!

Adam

[lochnesz]

Sounds great!
I tried a few kiosk applications, and they replace the launcher.
Would be awsome to have a dedicated tablet running only your app!

[rhanson]

This app continues to be awesome!

Some ideas:
- maybe swap the red/blue arrows on the thermostat adjustment page, since up==hotter, and therefore should be red, not blue.
- any way to get a 1-click power toggle for a device?
- possibly integrate with Nate's plug-in for Hue bulb control (some reasonable subset, not necessarily all commands)
- geofence - permit larger radius. I like to use concentric geofences, one with r=200 and another r=2000 or something. That way I can achieve multiple "levels" of presence.

[RogueProeliator]

maybe swap the red/blue arrows on the thermostat adjustment page, since up==hotter, and therefore should be red, not blue.

LOL, I kind of froze at this for a moment as I was pretty sure I didn't have it like that -- but HousePad supports 5 different screen densities and it turns I did indeed get them reversed for some (but not all). I'll get those fixed up, thanks for reporting/suggesting.

any way to get a 1-click power toggle for a device?

Yes, I received this suggestion just a short time ago as Indigo Touch does provide a means for this; so I plan to implement that pattern and allow clicking on icon itself to do a quick toggle without opening any dialogs. Funny, nobody asks about it for months and months and get the same suggestion twice in a couple of weeks!

possibly integrate with Nate's plug-in for Hue bulb control (some reasonable subset, not necessarily all commands)

I'm not quite sure how I am going to go about handling the GUI of a plugin -- I prefer to wait to see how Indigo itself (and Indigo Touch) will handle it as it is on the list of enhancements as per other forum posts. I have a couple of ideas that I may temporarily work through, but I don't want to do anything that doesn't scale well and/or would be difficult to replace with an official method later. So, this is a "under consideration, but no promises" banner.

geofence - permit larger radius. I like to use concentric geofences, one with r=200 and another r=2000 or something. That way I can achieve multiple "levels" of presence.

Sure. Truth-be-told, I didn't quote know how people were using this and what kind of validation to put in there so I just picked a number. I don't see any reason not to increase it, though, now that I know all is working well. I just will check to see if Android itself has a limit as all geofencing enter/exit is handled by the system - HousePad never looks at any location info for it.

Thanks for the suggestions - watch the forum as there are a bunch of enhancements coming out as soon as I complete some testing and then will be working on at least some of these.

Adam

[drixtab]

Fantastic app.

Can I request one thing? For now I have the Indigo port forwarded from my router to my mac. All the rest of my internal apps are exposed via a reverse proxy so I can do https and so is the web control page for Indigo. As such, I have to change Indigo's web root from "/" to "/indigo" to support a reverse proxied url of "https://my.domain.com/indigo". The Housepad app does not have a custom config entry to be able to do this. Is it possible to request this to be incorporated in the future?

Thanks again!

Drix

[RogueProeliator]

Fantastic app.

Thanks for the compliment!

For now I have the Indigo port forwarded from my router to my mac. All the rest of my internal apps are exposed via a reverse proxy so I can do https and so is the web control page for Indigo.

I'll note that as a feature request... one option you have on your end (to implement immediately) is to make a separate DNS entry for your Indigo and you won't need to use a directory. This is how I had mine setup for a long while; I had a "main" Dynamic DNS for most of my apps and an indigo.XXX.YYY subdomain (also Dynamic DNS) which I reverse-proxied to Indigo. That was actually the motivation behind the option to "Accept all SSL certificates" in the advanced setup.

At any rate, I'll note down that request -- currently I am trying to ensure all is stable and squash a few dangling tasks and isolated bugs, so won't be immediate that I can get to this for fear of introducing more issues. I want to clean up/simplify the settings at some point and may be able to add that in at that time.

Adam

[drixtab]

Thanks!

Will try and do the same thing you are doing.

[drixtab]

Thanks for the suggestion. Worked as you said.

[RogueProeliator]

Thanks for the suggestion. Worked as you said.

Awesome, glad to hear it! Feel free to make any more suggestions as they come up - they are always welcome.

Adam

[roussell]

Here's another request - how about an option to disable the slide transition between pages. I'd prefer they just appear or fade from one to the other rather than slide. The design of my control pages have never looked right sliding from one page to another.

Thanks!
Terry