This week I implement the application and absolutely love it. I always like to contribute (monetarily) to the developers since my programming days of COBOL, RPG, etc. are way behind me. LOL. I was not able to find anywhere how to contribution to your efforts. I have a great deal of appreciate that these applications take many hours to develop, create documentation, respond to inquiries, etc. and I personally like to recognize that. Is there a way that I may contribute to the developers efforts? You won't be able to buy a new car but at least a decent lunch :-).
While on the topic, I would like to provide a feature request for an upcoming release; if the developer, and the community think it is a good idea. I did read similar approaches to this suggestion but not sure I seen this approach.
Instead of having all the groups centralized within the app what about the idea of the groups being displayed in a parent / child relationship where each group would be listed under the parent application (Device Activity Check) in the Hubitat Apps section as a "child" of the app? This would conform with many of the apps (i.e. Button Controllers, Notifications, Room Lighting, Rule Machine, etc.). See link.
If considered, I would also like to suggest providing the expand / collapse arrows (also provided in the above example). This would allow those who want to see each individual group within the app to do so. Others who do not want to see them once created could simply collapse the details in the same manner as the aforementioned and only see the "Parent" application name.
If this approach is agreeable to the community and feasible (again most changes are never as easy as they seem) it would also be helpful to supply a descriptive group name for each functional group. This would allow a much quicker mechanism for locating a functional group vs. scrolling down one internal list, looking at the group content to determine its functional purpose.
I wrote this app specifically to not have separate child apps for everything: I wanted the same notification device, same schedule, etc., and didn't want to need to configure that separately for every single "group" of devices. (There actually could be some way to make this work by splitting configuration up between parent and child apps, I can actually see some value to having certain devices listed as "In use by" something that might give better clues as to what part of the app they are used in--but I'm not sure if that's your underlying concern. This would require some re-working, however.)
The good news is that if you do want entirely separate apps for whatever reason, you can already do that: just install another instance of the app, name it whatever you want, and configure it however you want. Nothing should stop you from installing multiple instances of the app (some apps do prevent this), and you can customize the installed name for each to make them clearer. They just won't show up as parent/child apps, just separate "regular" apps, but if you name them appropriately, they should at least appear next to each other.
This is a feature provided by the platform UI for parent/child apps/devices and other collapsible sections, not anything an app would need to do on its own.
This is something that could be easily added to the app -- a way to provide a description for the group besides just the number.
Thanks for the kind words! I think the only hint is a link in HPM, and I don't normally share unless people ask: https://paypal.me/bertabcd1234. As usual, I should mention that it is certainly appreciated but never required and also carries no guarantee of support, specific feature development, etc.
Thanks for your quick response. Lunch is on the way. As noted in your response; no expectations of supportability, warranties, etc. Just genuinely appreciate folks like yourself who share their work.
