I've been hesitant to weigh in on this debate because I truly am riding the middle ground on my opinion...
For those against the creation of an app, I completely see the point. With many of you coming from SmartThings, I completely agree. The ST apps are crap (classic) and crappier (new). Those who were with ST during the Kickstarter days may remember a lot of what SmartThings took away when they released the current classic app.
I was using IrisV2 until March 2016 when I left for SmartThing due to Iris V2 being a steaming pile of you-know-what at the time. I despise Iris to this day, and have not shed a tear for its' demise.. But, the one thing that I will credit Lowe's for getting right is their app..
For those who never used the Iris app, there are (were) things that you can do in their app that you simply cannot replace with a Hubitat dashboard. The Iris UI was built with the concept of "cards".... It had, for example, a Doors & Windows card that displayed at a glance, on the main page, how many open doors and how many windows were open. How do you replicate that, out of the box in Hubitat?? You can't. In fact, I think you would probably need either complex RM rules, or custom code to achieve.
The same goes for Locks, Smoke devices, garage doors, etc...
How does one view active HSM alarms, triggered devices, and alarm history in the dashboard when .. I don't think you can.. At least I have not figured out how do to that.
Again I am neutral on this because it's been 3 years since I've had a truly usable mobile app.. My intent was to show there are other purposes and use cases for a mobile app that extend beyond what dashboards can currently do.
The concept of cards is similar to how I have setup my dashboards. This works better for me than the rooms construct that I have in Google Home/Assistant. Lights and fans I might want to turn on or off but windows and doors I mostly want to see what is open and what is closed. Water and smoke alarms I really only want to know about when there is a problem.
I'm just playing devils advocate as I have no desire either way.. However, that example does not show which devices which triggered the alarm, like the Iris app did... As such, it really isn't a very useful presentation of information. If I am wrong please feel free to show me..
So for the sake of an apples-to-apples comparison... In Dashboard 2.0, how does one create a single tile that shows how many windows are open, for example? That is exactly what the card on the Iris app did.. Provide at-a-glance information without the need to scan through a list of devices and visually identify those that were in a particular state.
That is inarguably far more efficient than scanning through a couple dozen tiles..
Single tile, would have to create an app that returns that data. Seems like an opportunity for someone...
But putting all your contact sensors for those windows on a dashboard, you can easily see which ones are open or closed, with total customization of icons, colors, backgrounds, etc. Including photos of which room, etc.
I get that people want data presented in an app. They want control and visibility into their systems. Not just automation. We built a solution around automation and are slowly but surely adding better visibility and control (see the 100+ improvements to dashboard). But we are not built as a mobile first / mobile only platform on purpose. The setting up of a system is not easy on a tiny device not matter the UI.
Appreciate your perspective and feedback. There are a few things Iris probably did right... I never used their app or their service (don't really like cloud first solutions for obvious reasons).
One thing holds true at Hubitat, we listen to our customers and continue to deliver on our core mission, speed, reliability and privacy. Being local and having to serve up data off the hub proposes a unique set of challenges cloud based services don't have to deal with.
I did just that for SmartThings, but haven't had the time to bring that across yet. For someone like me with an extremely large number of devices, having 10 tiles to look at for at-a-glance information is better than scrolling through pages of devices.. Perhaps someday I'll have time to port it over to Hubitat.
I found an old screenshot that highlights what I'm talking about..
Again, I'm personally not advocating either way.... However, I am trying to help understand why there is a rallying cry for an app, particularly amongst Iris transplants.. For them, it's a significant loss in terms of usability.
Geo-fencing and push notifications will be great. having to use pushover and life360 isn't bad, but not ideal. Keep up the good work guys. I'm a recent convert from ST and thought I would miss the app more. The goal is to have enough automation that I don't need to access dashboards/app etc.
I am currently using a dashboard, pushover for notifications and automate as a presence sensor via the maker api. If the "app" is just going to link to your dashboards then, for me at least, there is absolutely no value in it. And the worse part is I really really want an app... but I want a good one that is well thought out and adds value, not one that is just thrown together to check a box.
I didn't like the old version of the dashboard and thought it was ugly and very limited, and while I appreciate the last update to it, still don't like it and think it's ugly and very limited.
But what bothers me the most about the current state of the dashboard isn't how it looks, it's the fact that I can't make it mine. And saying the dashboards are a blank canvas is a bit of a stretch. Sure I can add a background and adjust some colors but that's nothing. It would take barely any effort to allow me to add my own CSS to override the element's styles and better yet since we already have jQuery on the page, allow us to add our own javascript so we can manipulate the dom. As an added bonus, add it to the "Advanced" tab and it would actually make the name of that tab make sense. At least then I could make it into whatever I wanted it to be.
For example I could add a background that is a floor plan of my house, make the sensors icons with tooltips for more details and position them into the proper place on the floor plan. Then maybe I would add radial heatmaps around all sensors with temperature data, etc.
So yea these are just my thoughts about things and how I'm feeling about the app and current state of the dashboards.
You are correct but the '$' function for easy dom manipulation is being provided which I assumed was jQuery but it's probably being provided by vue.js or another module. Perhaps something in your vendor.js. I didn't really dig into it, just checked if it was there.
The point I was trying to get across was that these are our dashboards and a bit more control over them to make them into our own would not only be appreciated but would probably silence a lot of people who do not like the current transparent square tile look as they could just change them themselves or share themes amongst each other.
For me personally, I would like CSS overrides AND the ability to paste in a block of javascript and have it injected into the page when it's loaded on any device.
At the moment I have to use an extension in Chrome/Firefox and then a custom android app I built that loads the dashboard and then injects my own CSS and Javascript to tear down and rebuild the page like I want.
Since these are stored on our hubs, and used on our devices as client side code, I don't really see what the harm is in giving us more control. If we screw up a dashboard we just delete it and start again which really isn't a big deal.
Anyway thank you for reading and taking the time to respond to my post.
It's already been said that the app is basically just a link to the dashboards (plus notifications and presence)... If that is the case, why not just put the dashboards on her phone? No need to wait.
I have one dashboard that is a main menu. I stuck a link to it on my wife's phone main page, and moved on with life. And it is less clicks to get to the dashboard than the app will be...
