HSBuddy feature requests

[avargaskun]

Hey folks,

Starting a thread to capture your ideas of new features that could be built into HSBuddy (either the app or the server plug-in). I know you have previously sent me some via the app built-in bug report tool, or through private messages in the board. I'm hoping that this thread will be a more permanent place to keep track of those ideas.

To start, let me seed the list with the ones in the top of my backlog:

• User-defined dashboards of devices
• Add support to connect to multiple servers
• Controlling timers and counters from their device details page
• Showing device history as a graph
• Implement user validation, require special user rights to access certain plug-in functionality

If you have other ideas or if you want to add details on how any of the ideas above should be implemented, feel free to post below. Thank you for giving the app a try, thank you for leaving a review (if you like it) and sending your bug reports (if you don't).

[jmedemar]

One of the things I'd like to see is a tab or something within the app that shows a history/log of the push notifications that were received through the app. I've accidentally swiped away many notifications without being able to find out what they were.

[wimaware]

First of all my compliments, beautiful en very user friendly application.

In my livingroom (huiskamer) devices are 5 LIFX lights (WiFi controled). In HS under "livingroom" there are 5 separate devices. In the app. these 5 devices are put together as a collection in folder.
This is no problem but when entering this folder and want to scroll down, every time i touch the screen, the action is immediatly executed.

Perhaps it's an idea, when in a folder, to ask for conformation to execute a command or insert a scroll bar.

pictures just for info

Greetings

Wil

[Ltek]

@avargaskun

any ETA on the dashboard? Have you seen/used Imperihome? Many of us use it today and its pretty good... with some minor improvements that it would be fantastic.

[Tillsy]

Let me add a vote here too. I'm so sick to death of recreating my dashboard in HomeSeer Mobile due to its built-in feature of imploding itself. Yet I'm not even 100% happy with it anyway as it is not as flexible as I'd like... eg Android version supports half-height widgets yet iOS doesn't so a lot of wasted space on my screen, and most importantly a dark mode so that my entire darned kitchen and living room isn't lit up all night.

[savageautomate]

First, I love this app/plugin ... so THANK YOU! I use it exclusively for mobile control of HomeSeer (v3 currently).
I predominately use the Device view.

I have a few feature requests I have been thinking about that would add a greater level of usability (as least for my selfish use cases).

(1). PIN DEVICES / LIST ITEMS
It would be cool to pin certain devices (or more generically list items) to the top of the list under each group heading. For example I may have 10 devices in an "Exterior" room and would like to pin "Front Porch Lights" to the top of the listing under that room. Or perhaps a more sophisticated (complex) solution would be to allow manual ordering config that overrides the default sort order.

(2). EVENT BUTTONS in Device View
I would love to be able to add "Event Buttons" list items to the device list view that execute specific events. Example, under room "Garage", I have two devices that control two separate garage doors. I'd love to add a button (perhaps pinned to the top) that would allow me to execute a "Close All Doors" event.

I don't use the Event view too often. I do appreciate that it exists and I use it mostly for whole home type of automation control, but I think some combination of devices and events mixed together would be more useful for a per room control use case.

(3) HIDE EVENTS
I also heavily make use of the Hide devices based on server config. I wish there were something like this for events. I realize there is a method to hide certain event groups, and that is very useful. I just wish there were some means to exclude specific events. I have lots of automation events that really don't make sense to show in the GUI. I could re-group them and exclude those groups but they are currently grouped based the context of the location they are in alongside events that I would want to show. Of course a server side control of this would be preferable but I realize there is no existing HomeSeer options for event visibility.

(4). EXCLUDE ROOMS/FLOORS
I would love a device setting to exclude specific room from the device view. Just like the event settings where you can opt-out of specific event groups. To extend this request further, I think it would be really useful to disable event groups and rooms/floors from the server plugin. Thus disallowing the app to ever see specific event groups and rooms/floors. I have many administrative events and system devices that I really don't want any users to be able to view/control.

(5). IMPORT/EXPORT
Perhaps I overlooked this, but is there a way to export settings and favorites from a mobile phone and import them to another phone. I think the last time I tried this I had to manually re-configure everything on a second phone instance (for another user). If not, I think this would be a huge benefit when trying to replicate my defaults to multiple phones.

THANK YOU!
THANK YOU!
THANK YOU!
THANK YOU!

PS. I just noticed the "Buy me a coffee" option in the About page of the app. On my way to do that now!

Thanks, Robert

[avargaskun]

Ltek Tillsy - a beta of dashboards is almost ready for release, will be pushing it out to the stores (Apple/Google) in the next few days. I'm just waiting for HS to clear out the latest version of the plugin for release. The new plugin version lets you use images in your HS server in the dashboards. It includes a starter pack of images too.

Initially there will be support for creating widgets associated with devices (status, icon-only, control, history) and events. Widgets can be arranged by dragging and resizing each widget. There's separate dashboards for landscape and portrait mode. You'll find this and more once the new version of the app is live.

In the meanwhile, here's a few screenshots of a couple dashboards I created on my phone (portrait)

[Tillsy]

Initially there will be support for creating widgets associated with devices (status, icon-only, control, history) and events. Widgets can be arranged by dragging and resizing each widget. There's separate dashboards for landscape and portrait mode. You'll find this and more once the new version of the app is live.

This is fantastic news, you have me very excited!

Just some feedback on my current struggle of HS Mobile versus where I would like to be:

[Tillsy]

That said, for some devices I would prefer to keep the larger and far more in-depth panels.

eg the status indicators at the top (the Tesla one in particular I spent a lot of time creating a custom virtual device to show all this), the sliders and buttons, etc.

These are very very awesome in showing a lot of information and functionality in a well presented manner and am quite happy with these, in fact would be devastated to loose them:

[Tillsy]

Plus also a panel for cameras - we have become quite used to seeing the security camera for our holiday home on the dashboard as it gives us peace of mind at an instant glance.

[Tillsy]

Actually also just checking, are you able to show status of other device types too. eg not just doors, windows, lights (which are toggles), etc but also wattages, etc. I have a few such as these which show us useful information:

The dishes and clothes ones are good examples of animations - I have animated GIFs for those which look great in HS, but on HS Mobile they appear static and would love for them to animate there.

[Tillsy]

Have I mentioned dark mode? Yeah being sarcastic/funny there - I know I have just emphasising it

One new thing I haven't fully thought of a solution for - solar. About to have that installed in a few weeks and am thinking of two boxes on my dashboard to show:
1. Current/live usage kW versus current/live solar generation. (eg 4.3kw of 14.06kW)
2. Daily total usage kW versus daily total solar generation (eg 28.6kW of 39.2kW)

Thought process so far is perhaps a half-circle colour speedometer type gradient going from red to green, a needle that points somewhere along it as a percentage, and then those numbers above printed below. Crude mockup below:


Anyways just thinking out loud but thought might be useful for you to see where I'm trying to go...

I have an 12" iPad Pro mounted on the wall so PLENTY of screen space - just being heavily wasted by HS Mobile at the moment, so plenty of room for large camera/graphs/etc like this if everything else is done more efficiently per posts above.

[Tillsy]

Okay I'm thinking the solar could work the same as a battery status - a range of values 0-100 and 10 graphics that cover that range. Have created a PSD with the various graphic states (though I stuffed up the angle by 2' on each so the first and last ones are a smidgen too close).

So for this to work it would then depend on it being possible to create a larger dashboard item that merely:
1. Has the device's graphic sized over the whole width of the dashboard item
2. Merely has the string text below it

So if it were a regular battery for example, it would be a large battery (assuming a graphic of decent enough resolution) and a percentage below it.

Or in this case a graph per my example above with the string I would write an event to create.

[Tillsy]

Forgot to factor dark mode - so a black needle ain't going to work. Oh well, perfect opportunity to start from scratch and get the angles right this time

[avargaskun]

Tillsy - thanks for all the recommendations!

I have pushed out to the app stores what I had in progress on so far so people can try it out and start collecting feedback. It is labeled [BETA] since there are some rough edges and missing features, but it is fully functional.

I created a thread to keep all feedback related to dashboards together: Dashboards feedback