iOS 8

[kideon]

So iOS 8 is supposed to be angelic, a blessing from the heavens falling into our own non worthy hands. i got it running on my iPhone and it is pretty slick but the real power will be the API's like Homelink. Are the Homeseer team or any members going to look into what is possible with the new platform and explore?

I hate the comparisons to other platforms on the board (and have been guilty of it myself) and they all do different things in different ways but are not nearly as flexible as ours.

Some things worth exploring:
iOS 8 now features a new language called Swift that makes coding much easier
iOS 8 will let you say Hey Siri when the phone is docked and call up Siri. How can we make that talk to Homeseer
iOS includes native location sharing, how can we make that talk to Homeseer
The new iOS devices include NFC

Right now out butt is being kicked by little handheld hubs that can send status alerts to the device, we have to go third party through Pushover or rube goldberg through IFTTT or dreaded email

This is definitely the tinkerer's platform so lets get tinkering. People are thrown off by the $90 developer fee, well if someone wants to step up and work on this stuff I'll paypal it right over to you. If the Homeseer team wants developers it's pretty cost effective to sub it out.

Not excluding our Android friends out there either. It's just as capable a platform and can do everything mentioned above.

Lets make it happen guys!

[Automated]

iOS 8

I will have all our tablets and phones locked on 7 until 8 is jailbroken. We have several tablets, but to me they are worth nothing without the jailbreak, period. There is no way I can do the level of integration we have here without that (using various 3rd party tools and especially ssh scripting firing from the HS server to wake and sleep the tablet screens, etc).

Pushover has worked great. I actually prefer a 3rd party message service to handle it, rather than Apple's, or even one by Homeseer. Apple gets their hands on enough data as it is.

Location sharing I have to look into, but I have a feeling I will have the same opinion as the messaging.

NFC...about time. I do use that together with Tasker, and a few things with HS on my Android phone.

So I am unimpressed, SO FAR.

[kideon]

What do you with the jailbreak? I just ordered the iPhone 6 and will relegate the 5 to being strictly home automation

[Automated]

Tweaks by app name:

GuestMode: Allows the in wall iPads to be locked down to only a handful of automation and music apps.

OpenSSH: Allows SSH sessions, so HS can turn off the screens when we are gone or there is no motion in the area for a long time. Likewise, it can turn them back on when appropriate.

Background manager: Forces HSTouch to run constantly connected, even when another app is active. With a massive HS system, that building screens popup is way too too otherwise. If you want to just hop in and out to do a volume adjustment or check a temperature or anything quickly, it is far too slow. It is far better to have HSTouch stay connected.

Dimmer and f.lux: Can make the screen able to go even more dim than normal. F.lux allows a nicer yellowing to the colors at night, so the screens do not blind us with blue light if we are up at night and check something on HSTouch. So my setup not only turns the screens on and off, it moderates the brightness and color cast according to room brightness and time of day.

There are a dozen or so more, for customizing the iPad look and GUI behavior as I like them.

[mrhappy]

All noble endeavors but unless these are things done by HST (who already of course have HSTouch on iOS and then the argument starts over Android/Windows mobile etc) they are unlikely to offer any real return on investment if someone took on a HS interface project on their own. Individual elements (like I use push messaging, location sharing) that you can piece together from other available apps.

Location Sharing - I use FollowMee for iOS, I get some degree of customisation over how often to report location and some settings that can be changed, then read this data into HS with a single script. I know you can say well FollowMee now knows my location but if a HS application this could also never be ruled out that a third party knew my location.
Voice Control - As they have said they are integrating third party Siri integration I suspect it won't be long before a similar application comes out that can enable some sort of external control. I imagine NFC will also follow.

[zimmer62]

This might be relevant. I suspect someone could write a plugin and xamarin app to interact with the rest api, and siri using the homekit stuff.

http://developer.xamarin.com/guides/...on_to_homekit/

I'm betting someone will implement this type of thing for other automation systems fairly soon, and with analyst predictions of selling over 75 million iphone 6 units with ios8 by the end of 2014 it's not something to pass over.

Also worth noting that the apple watch is going to work with Siri, which means talking to your wrist to communicate with homeseer is a possibility in the near future.

[kideon]

HS3 dev team is any sort of development schedule available with the milestones of what we should be looking forward to see?

[jlrichar]

So iOS 8 is supposed to be angelic, a blessing from the heavens falling into our own non worthy hands. i got it running on my iPhone and it is pretty slick but the real power will be the API's like Homelink. Are the Homeseer team or any members going to look into what is possible with the new platform and explore?

I hate the comparisons to other platforms on the board (and have been guilty of it myself) and they all do different things in different ways but are not nearly as flexible as ours.

Some things worth exploring:
iOS 8 now features a new language called Swift that makes coding much easier
iOS 8 will let you say Hey Siri when the phone is docked and call up Siri. How can we make that talk to Homeseer
iOS includes native location sharing, how can we make that talk to Homeseer
The new iOS devices include NFC

Right now out butt is being kicked by little handheld hubs that can send status alerts to the device, we have to go third party through Pushover or rube goldberg through IFTTT or dreaded email

This is definitely the tinkerer's platform so lets get tinkering. People are thrown off by the $90 developer fee, well if someone wants to step up and work on this stuff I'll paypal it right over to you. If the Homeseer team wants developers it's pretty cost effective to sub it out.

Not excluding our Android friends out there either. It's just as capable a platform and can do everything mentioned above.

Lets make it happen guys!

+1

I'd like to see some more happening with the HS clients. For iOS I'd like to see location tracking built in, homeseer notifications on my iPhone, the client running permanently in the background, and of course siri integration.

Notice I called it an HS client, and not HSTouch client? There is so much that could be done with the client that simply is not being done on any platform. HSTouch is a remote control interface. To me it is not automation. I think the client could be used for some automation.

I'm a windows/iPhone guy. So I want to see the above for the iPhone client, and I want the windows client to do similar stuff, while giving homeseer the ability to control whatever windows machine the client is installed on (wake, sleep, screen brightness, start specific programs), and see what is going on on that pc (performance, who is logged in, when certain apps are started).

Examples of events that I would setup.

• On iphone to have the house enter away/occupied/guest mode based on My wife's and I location. (this is already working, but uses non-HS programs).
• Get notified of all HS alarm states on my iphone.
• When I start photoshop, or lightroom on my graphics PC in my office set the lighting to the specified LUX for imaging work. When closing said apps, set lights to optimal LUX for other work.
• Notifiy me when a PC needs attention (maxed performance for specified time, etc...)
• Say "hello" to whoever logs in to any PC with the client installed on it.

There is a lot that could be done. Some of it is already possible--but it takes a lot of fiddling and 3rd party software. So it is difficult to change when upgrading devices, and to track what has been done to which device. By extending the clients a lot of management hassle could be eliminated.

[kideon]

I just saw something really cool. Never thought about it much but iOS (and android) use bluetooth to send notifications to smart watches. Someone should write a receiver plugin that could take those alerts and throw them in a device with a trigger when a new one comes in. If this can be done easily on an arduino it seems like it would port right. I'd bet one of our coders could write it in an afternoon?

Anyone want to try? If I could integrate alerts from my phone into Homeseer I would be a happy camper!!

http://lukeberndt.com/2014/ios-notif...-with-arduino/

[mrhappy]

I just saw something really cool. Never thought about it much but iOS (and android) use bluetooth to send notifications to smart watches. Someone should write a receiver plugin that could take those alerts and throw them in a device with a trigger when a new one comes in. If this can be done easily on an arduino it seems like it would port right. I'd bet one of our coders could write it in an afternoon?

Anyone want to try? If I could integrate alerts from my phone into Homeseer I would be a happy camper!!

http://lukeberndt.com/2014/ios-notif...-with-arduino/

Magical this could be exactly what I needed thanks for the link, this is what I used Tasker essentially for with my old Android phone (notifications of incoming messages/calls were and the contents put into HS etc) but lost this with my iPhone. I have been looking for an excuse to buy a BT LE breakout and this appears to be the ideal one! I thought originally that I would have very little to use with it as I did not want to get down the lines developing apps for the iPhone but using it the other way around is exactly what I was after.

You are right in guessing I probably will just use a Arduino and from there throw the notifications into HS for it to do the remainder of the work.

[kideon]

Whatever you wind up doing definitely keep me in the loop

[mrhappy]

Whatever you wind up doing definitely keep me in the loop

I would not rush into this one if I was you, I have the breakout and have been in a duel with it for the last couple of days - bottom line is that I don't think the ANCS library is ready or there are some steps that have not been documented fully. Things don't work as described (my device never appears in the pairing list) so I am going to leave it a month or two to see whether or not there are some changes to it.

[mrhappy]

Well as luck would have it I have managed to get this Arduino ANCS reader working and it spitting out serial data, once I sort out a psuedo-protocol for sending the messages in a standard-ish format for HS I should be good to get it running with a couple of devices.

It was a good few days to get this going and yet again another traumatic trip into the world of Bluetooth Low Energy but none the less I am confident I can get a nice interface between my iPhone and HS getting me notified about incoming calls/messages etc.