HS3Touch - Help?

[Arisythila]

I've been watching a lot of people do some really cool things with HS3 Touch, I have not purchased the software yet, but day 2 into the trial. I came originally from Nexia, and then went to Vera, and honestly looking for something a bit more powerful, and integrated.

My first house was full Z-wave in general, and my biggest problem with Vera is it doesn't have a way to notify for an open door, or window or whatever, where it appears that HS3 can do that. Other than that Vera is pretty good. Once you purchase the product, all of the plugins seem to be free, Albeit we do want some notifications for the door. (getting this done will be fairly easy I believe).

My main question is I am really struggling with the HS3Touch designer. Ideally I'd like to dedicated an iPad, or Android device and mount it to the wall to have a general overview of everything in the house. Garage doors, cameras, door locks, switches, thermostats, weather, etc etc. While some of the current templates have some of this stuff, I would like some of the stuff to be more condensed.

Is there anybody around that will do the design and stuff for you? Or is it good just to reach out to people to see what others are doing?

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks,

Michael

[Jim]

I'm with you, some personal design help would be awful nice and something I would pay a reasonable amount to get. At this point I really need some to figure out where to even start!

Jim

[Arisythila]

Yeah, Would be nice to have something that made things a bit easier I guess to design, and create dashboards. I mean to even attach a light to an image has about 10 steps. Then you have to do this for possibly 100's of devices. It's just over all cumbersome. The HS3 interface is also very clunky, so just using it, wouldn't really make sense. Vera, Nexia, Smartthings, etc etc have much nicer mobile interfaces.

I am not trying to make a huge fuss or anything, but I am considering spending 100's of dollars on this, and I am not sure if it will really be easily maintainable. Or even moderately maintainable.

Maybe I am looking at things wrong. I am very interesting in the voice/notifications that HS3 has versus other solutions, but man I'd really like to get something going here. Even if it was a "hey we are working on it!"

[Uncle Michael]

. . .I am not sure if it will really be easily maintainable. Or even moderately maintainable.

I agree that HSTouch has a significant learning curve, but I found that it is fairly easy to extend and modify my designs once I got into it. That includes turning my clunky initial designs into less clunky "new" designs. Maintenance has been a breeze. The amount of time and effort I have expended to maintain the system has been trivial, and most of that was related to moving from iOS devices to Android.

Three pieces of advice:
- Watch the tutorial videos.
- Start small and simple and build complexity slowly.
- EVERY time you make a change - especially 'trivial' changes! - give the file a new version designation so you can revert and recover from a mistake and so you don't lose design elements that may be useful in another context.

[ScottRennie]

I agree with Uncle Michael. I would also add, create a test design and use that for trying out new stuff rather than the live version. It's so easy to publish the design that a couple of 'in progress' designs are easy to accomplish. I keep an eye on eBay and buy Android tablets when they come up - usually larger 9-10 inch ones. I would say keep away from cheap Chinese tablets, the screens usually really quite nasty! Having a stock of tablets means you can have one at your desk when you are designing - it's easier than having to go to the wall mount to test each time you make a change.
Scott

[monument]

Arisythila, +1 on what Uncle Michael says. It takes a time investment, but once you get the hang of it it is WONDERFUL to be able to make mods whenever the mood strikes.
HS3 + HST together allow basically anything you can dream up.

I have a big Z-wave network with 6 z-nets and (almost) every home system is controlled/monitored via HST and tablets around the house. I take one with me when I travel too...
this thread has some screenshots from my setup -- i have borrowed lots of ideas and info from this forum.
https://forums.homeseer.com/forum/au...-network/page2

A bit more advice:

virtual devices are your friend;

take time up front to figure out "buttons" in HST and how to make them perform HS3 actions - it's not hard, but fundamental;
then figure out how to use buttons to put HST screens on top of others, or go back to Home (one screen). Now you can navigate.....
everything can be "Hot" -- i.e. if you show the Temp on your home page, touching it can bring up your Weather page.

use TWO screens when you copy/paste -- when you copy a group, first paste it to another screen (i have a "blank" one for that purpose), then move it, copy it, and paste it back to the first screen. if you try to copy/paste multiple things on same screen it makes a mess....

create DAILY backups of HS3 (not HST) -- i use BLBackup. Has saved my bacon many times.....

Good luck.

[Arisythila]

I ended up purchasing the software with the few plugin's i needed. Vera has just been very slow in doing things. I've got an Aeotec Z-stick plugged into a large QNAP SAN unit. Things seem to be working very well, so not really concerned with it at this point.

I have one of my employees designing a set of screens for me so I can more easily start attaching my devices to it.

I do have to figure out how to do a few things like attach Camera to those screens and a few other things. I think I am going to go with a Raspberry Pi w/ a 10" touch screen hooked to it, and installed into the wall VIA POE power/connection.

I appreciate the advice, I got BLBackup installed, and running.

[Jim]

Arisythila, +1 on what Uncle Michael says. It takes a time investment, but once you get the hang of it it is WONDERFUL to be able to make mods whenever the mood strikes.
HS3 + HST together allow basically anything you can dream up.

I have a big Z-wave network with 6 z-nets and (almost) every home system is controlled/monitored via HST and tablets around the house. I take one with me when I travel too...
this thread has some screenshots from my setup -- i have borrowed lots of ideas and info from this forum.
https://forums.homeseer.com/forum/au...-network/page2

A bit more advice:

virtual devices are your friend;

take time up front to figure out "buttons" in HST and how to make them perform HS3 actions - it's not hard, but fundamental;
then figure out how to use buttons to put HST screens on top of others, or go back to Home (one screen). Now you can navigate.....
everything can be "Hot" -- i.e. if you show the Temp on your home page, touching it can bring up your Weather page.

use TWO screens when you copy/paste -- when you copy a group, first paste it to another screen (i have a "blank" one for that purpose), then move it, copy it, and paste it back to the first screen. if you try to copy/paste multiple things on same screen it makes a mess....

create DAILY backups of HS3 (not HST) -- i use BLBackup. Has saved my bacon many times.....

Good luck.

Alright you guys have inspired me and I’m ready to jump in with both feet. I have read the Touch help files and watched the videos but there is so much not covered anywhere that I have found. An example is your advice to figure out buttons: how to use buttons to put HST screens on top of others or go back home. Or making everything “Hot”. I think there needs to be a lot more under the “Sticky How To” page. If I can find the information and read it I’ll find a way to make it work. Where do I go next?
Oh and your pages are amazing!,

[Guest]

Alright you guys have inspired me and I’m ready to jump in with both feet. I have read the Touch help files and watched the videos but there is so much not covered anywhere that I have found. An example is your advice to figure out buttons: how to use buttons to put HST screens on top of others or go back home. Or making everything “Hot”. I think there needs to be a lot more under the “Sticky How To” page. If I can find the information and read it I’ll find a way to make it work. Where do I go next?
Oh and your pages are amazing!,

What I found was to simply sit down and experiment with the different options. And when you get stuck, come back here.

One thing I disconvered is that things work differently based on what client systems you are using. I think some of those things may be considered "bugs", though. For example, on Android clients, putting a screen overlayed over another screen disables the bottom screen, unlike what happens on Windows or Apple clients.

Do not be afraid to ask, and also remember, this is supposed to be fun!

[monument]

Jim, doesn't matter where you start. Just pick something in Homeseer that you want to control, and have devices for -- lights in a room, thermostats, doors, whatever. Make a page in HSTouch with some buttons, deploy it to a tablet next to your desk, and start playing. It really is fun, and can be a bit addicting.

PS: i also make heavy use of plug-ins, and Scenemaster is central to my setup. But that's all HS3 stuff, not HST.