Web interface for WebPads / PDA's

[ghutton]

Is there anyway to have HomeSeer pages that look like this?


Images

[This message was edited by ghutton on Friday, 05 April 2002 at 06:10 PM.]

[Rupp]

I believe you left off the link.

-Rupp

[Hunter Green]

It'd be a lot of work, and the resulting page would load and work a lot slower than it would need to, giving you less information and less control in any given screen. But I bet it'd impress the hell out of the real estate agent!

A few people have done pages that are stylistically somewhat similar, plus there's TouchBase. So you might not have to start from scratch.

Nucleus Home Automation

[ghutton]

Hunter,

You say it would be a lot slower. Is that due to HomeSeer design/Web Server? The screen shots are actually from SYS 1.5 by Premisesystems and actually their interface runs as quickly as a say a Pronto remote. The standard HomeSeer web paradigm is not terribly conducive for touch screen Web Pads and PDA’s or for non-tech types.

What is TouchBase?

Regarding the real estate agent. Remember. Sell the sizzle – Not the steak.

-Glenn

[mattz]

Ghutton - I think there is a lot of interest in a easy to use, customizable GUI for Homeseer. It seems to be the Holy Grail of HS home automation. I'd be willing to pay for a good system - one that was easily customizable, web-based, and integrates seamlessly with Homeseer. There are several options available that can be used now - Ultraview, Touchbase, control panels, Master Control Panel, and others. One of the great things about this hobby is how much people are willing to contribute to further the cause - many good utilities and add-on functionality have been created. I continue to look for the one that does it all - but I'm not willing to give up Homeseer to get it!

MattZ

Here's the link to Touchbase. It comes close, but isn't Web-based. Development seems to have stalled, and questions sometimes go unanswered on the bbs.

[Hunter Green]

It's not HomeSeer that would make it slower, it's those big, cumbersome web pages and graphics. It'd be exactly as fast as this SYS 1.5, but still much slower than what most of us using HomeSeer are using.

Your point about selling the sizzle is well taken. So far, HomeSeer has gotten most of its sales by being by far the meatiest steak on the market, and picked up customers by appealing to those who prefers steak to sizzle. Someday, for it to keep growing, it'll need to start expanding into the sizzle market. But I suspect that by that time, other sizzle-oriented products will have such a head start that it will be too late to conquer much of that market. Fortunately as HA is a growing field, we can probably go for quite a long time just selling the steak.

Nucleus Home Automation

[Kiwi]

I am currently using TouchBase and am delighted with it. I have received emails from the programmer and he certainly hasn't stopped development. I know that he has said that there will be many more features in the next release incl MP3 Jukebox etc. The program really is good but I guess he's like the rest of us and only has so much time to devote to the project

[bholio]

www.hometoys.com has a few articles this month about designing touch screen interfaces.

Bholio

[electron]

designing an interface like that isn't that big of a deal (at least to me it isn't), but the scripting involved will take some time. It is a project I am planning on doing (since I do graphics design and build ecommerce sites it should be fun too) once I have moved in to my new house in a month or so, and can get my hands on something better than the Audrey (eventho the project would be audrey compatible). I don't think an interface like this would slow anything down, since every browser can cache images (including the one on Audrey), and the images would be ultra light anyways).

dan

[ghutton]

I am working on an interface right now. Using Flash. My ultimate goal is to get rid of all the SwitchLinc touch pads that I have and move some of that X-10 traffic off of the PLC mode on to 802.11b using PDA's and WebPads. There seems to be some strong movement in the PDA market w/Flash. I messed around w/ the interface in HTML and it was just too messy and slow and too many screen refreshes and so on. Hope your move goes well. I hate moving...

[alevey]

How easy is flash to modify? I control my x-10 with a web page (ASP) now and I do hate the refreshes but it works well, looks good, and is fairly fast.

[Rupp]

asp page refreshes can be taken care of by simply using a hidden iframe and an additional asp page to do the processing.

-Rupp