[asp] Rover (free web interface for handhelds, slow links, old browsers, etc.) Discussion

[Hunter Green]

I went to your site to try to figure this out. Look at the device page and you'll see that the dev.misc field does not have the flag &h40 set telling HomeSeer that it's a thermostat. As far as HomeSeer and thus Rover know, it's not really a thermostat, just a non-dimmable device.

It apparently uses a plug-in to emulate a thermostat, duplicating all its controls. I'll assume HAI has a good reason for it to do that rather than using the extant thermostat mechanism in HomeSeer.

Supporting full-blown plug-in devices is going to be a bigger project than I want to delay the full release of v2 for, so I'll just amend the documentation to say "except plug-ins with custom controls" for now, and consider this for v2.1.

[Skibum]

No big deal.. Thanks for looking.
Rover is great!

[gelessor]

Will Rover work with a Blackberry?

[Rupp]

Will Rover work with a Blackberry?

Does the BlackBerry have a web browser. If so then yes.

[Hunter Green]

I haven't ever seen a Blackberry -- out here in rural Vermont, there's not much coverage for them. But as Rupp says, if it has a browser (that can do HTTP and HTML) then yes.

I just confirmed it works beautifully on PSPs. Default settings are just fine for it.

I'll probably put it into the Updater within the next couple of days.

[Hunter Green]

I've submitted Rover v2 to the Updater. Assuming I got the Updater setup right (by no means a sure thing!) it should be up pretty soon.

[jstaab]

Can the events be listed by location just as the devices are? While initially you'd have to probably select what you want to view, events or devices, but other then that, it would function the same. I have greater then 64 events, so I bumped the number up to 200 (I have 108 events) and the page loads instantly.

I can't imagine a list of events is much use to someone with 180. Perhaps I can develop a categorized list of some sort, but it seems like overkill. You'd probably just want to use Snippets for your events if needed. Are you seeing a big slowdown in the page loading, though, while it builds the list of the first 64 events whether you need it or not?

[Hunter Green]

Events don't have locations. I could maybe do it by groups, but that's a lot more complexity than I think is needed. The events list is meant to be a last-ditch thing. Events you want to use should be in your snippets for normal use.

[jstaab]

I'm sorry, I meant groups

[Hunter Green]

Been very quiet since I put v2 out. Anyone have comments or suggestions? Needs in a new version? Anyone want to complain about the little dog icon? Anyone even using it? Bueller?

[TrOjAn]

Been very quiet since I put v2 out. Anyone have comments or suggestions? Needs in a new version? Anyone want to complain about the little dog icon? Anyone even using it? Bueller?

I use it Mr Green and it works fine.. me and my PDA are happy with it, neat job thanks

[snedecor]

IPAQ IE: no dim bars?

Frank,

I recently got an IPAQ PDA, which runs Windows Mobile 2003 and has IE web browser and WiFi. I installed version 2.0 and tried it.

Everything works, except that I don't have the icons showing up for dimmable devices.

If i navigate to a dimmable device using a PC and IE, I get an Off icon, ramped dim icons (looks like 8-10) and an ON icon. Clicking on the intermediate dim levels correctly dims the device.

If I do the same on the PDA, I only get the OFF and ON icon, with nothing in-between. Same on the individual device screen, where the Type entry shows dimmable, but the controls entry only has the OFF and ON.

No error messages on the Homeseer log screen. Am I missing a setting somewhere?



Thanks,

Gayle Snedecor

[Hunter Green]

That's bizarre. Does the iPaq browser allow you to View Source? I'd like to confirm that they're there in the source. Perhaps there's some "feature" that hides images under some circumstance, perhaps based on size.

[psampson]

Thanks heaps for the Rover. We nicknamed it doggy when you added the icon. Actually my wife was very Ill in hospital recently, and I found it extremely useful on my PDA to watch the house via GPRS as I stayed six nights at the hospital.

Between Rover and the MSN plugin I had a very low bandwidth way to keep an eye on things at home.

Only problem I had was I could not display/trigger any events as I got the message "you have too many events". If I could see all my events that would be my greates wish for the next version.

Thanks again,

Phil

[Hunter Green]

Only problem I had was I could not display/trigger any events as I got the message "you have too many events". If I could see all my events that would be my greates wish for the next version.

I think I will up that limit, but the events list is not meant to be the primary way to handle events at all. It's not a very efficient one, particularly as you have a lot of events. The primary method is to put events into snippets so you can associate them with locations, and only list the ones you'd need, not the jillions of little "upkeep" ones HomeSeer needs. Go to the About page in Rover and then from there to the user manual and you'll find directions on how to set up snippets.