Found a decent tablet & wall mount & imperihome loading workaround

[garryadkins]

Hi everyone!
I've been an imperihome user for a long time and just realized they've gone out of business!

I found out because a couple of my wall mount tablets are dying after 3+ years on the wall. (Batteries swelling, blotches on the screen)
I went looking for a replacement tablet, and this particular one works quite well. I don't have any relationship to them (or BB), other than just being pretty satisfied with the tablet after using it for a month. It's on sale (since Black Friday).

10.1" Andriod 10, pretty quick, certainly usable. $69. Phenomenally better than the 3+ year old Lenovo I had mounted.
https://www.bestbuy.com/site/digilan...?skuId=6424716

If you want a good mount, these are awesome. (Again no connection to the company)
https://smile.amazon.com/gp/product/...?ie=UTF8&psc=1
I put a deep new-work box behind it, installed the power supply and there is a little notch the cable comes out of. It holds the tablet very firmly. Just give it a day after you hang it for the glue on the plate to set. Otherwise it will come off when you try to remove it.

I guess I'll be moving to HSTouch eventually, but my first attempts have not been good. There isn't an easy way to replicate good looking switches (like Imperihome), so I need to do a lot of work there, and time is limited.

Because of that, I created a workaround to load Imperihome on the new devices. It uses the accessibility options in Android to automate all the manual steps to load Imperihome. I'm happy to share the tasker code if you would like.

Here's how it works.
1) Go to your working tablet and export the config to your google drive. (I created a separate account for my tablets, so they all share a google drive) It will require a password.
2) Pull the installer from a working tablet, store it on the google drive.

On the new tablet:
1) Install Imperihome. It won't be able to log in.
2) Go to your google drive and "open" the config file by tapping it. It will ask for the password.
3) Enter the password. It will load Imperihome with the list view.
4) Tap the top left corner and select dashboard.


My script basically emulates steps 2-4. I have it set to execute on startup after a delay.
You can also use a similar script to automate daily reboots as well. You just script something like - Long press power, select reboot, select OK


I hope this helps somebody. If you want the tasker code, I have some notes that I used to create it on each tablet. Nice thing about tasker - you can export the config and import it on the 2nd - vastly simplifying install of tablets 2-x.

-Garry

[Ltek]

Why would you need to do those steps / run the script daily? I have 4 devices with Imperihome on it and it works perfectly. I just reinstalled on 2 new phones a month ago, and I had to grab the APK from the web and install that since IH is no longer avail on Play. Opening the config file is not a workaround, that is how it was designed to work that way so you can install without internet access.

I'm sticking with IH since it works 95% the way I want it to... and since HS Touch is a royal pain and HS Buddy is not at the same level, yet. No one wants to write a good dashboard for Homeseer - its not popular enough (vs Smarthings, Hubitat, Home Assistant). In the end, a dashboard has limited usefulness especially as voice commands get more reliable with Google & Alexa.
A dashboard is good for occasional control / use and 'viewing status' (most of what my wall tablet is for)

[garryadkins]

It's all about WAF for me.
It doesn't necessarily need to be run every day of course. On various tablets I've had issues with the tablet locking up (usually with imperihome showing). It might take 2 weeks, might take two months, but it always locked up eventually. And it was always found when my wife tried to do something and would get frustrated.

So the simple solution is just script a reboot every day, and I've not had a single issue since. The tablet in the bedroom reboots at 3pm, the rest throughout the house reboot at 3am. It takes about 30 seconds.

I called it a work-around since you can't load it the way it was intended by logging in and staying logged in You can't just click the icon and get into the app, you have to jump through some hoops, so to me that was a workaround. Since you're loading it through the config file, you can't change something and have the change "stick" without writing it out to the config file so you can re-import it next time. So I automated it. Sorry if I didn't use the phrase correctly. To me, not being able to make a change and then see it next time (like it used to work) made it a work-around for me.

I'm sticking with IH for now, too, but I'm also not going to assume that the plugin and app are going to continue to work longer term, so I'm casting about for a replacement. You kind of made my exact point - I was looking for a way to keep IH until I could find an acceptable replacement. That's all I was offering - if you want something to automate it a bit, hit me up. If you don't that's fine too of course.

I certainly use Alexa a lot, but I find the tablet interface more intuitive and useful for everyday things. For example I have a combo button on imperihome to turn on specific lights outside for my dog when I let him out before bed. I could, of course, do that with an event, but I don't have an echo in that particular doorway, so it's nice to just have a button to press. I also have a custom weather radar radar animated GIF, so it's nice to glance at that walking out the door. The tablet also makes it easier to bump up or down the thermostat. Just hit the + or - on the tablet. I haven't managed to get that working right with the echo.
Another reason - when someone presses the doorbell I have HS turn the tablet on and flip to a specific camera view of the front door. This way I can see from most rooms who is at the door.

I do, however, have all the echo devices announce when the mailbox is opened! Getting that to work reliably was a complicated process.


When I get a bit of time I'll dive into the HS Touch stuff and get it figured out. But that'll be sometime next year. :-)

-G

[Ltek]

Sounds like you have hardware issues. I have an old gen6 Amazon 10" tablet that runs 24x7 and is inside the wall (not on it)... no issues. Havent had it lock up in over 2 years of running it all but about 3 months during my remodel. IH never requires you to reimport your config file during a reboot. Whatever changes you make 'stick' locally - they've never had any sharing of configs across multiple devices without manual import, ever. Maybe I dont get what your doing but I can tell you the configs never need to be imported unless you are setting up fresh... and changes stay (on the local device) even if you dont export/save manually - every change is a immediate 'save config' on that local device.