Apologies in advance… I have probably made a post like this at a similar time of night…
I feel like the, admittedly rapid, recent flurry of third party dashboard tools feels like there is an appetite and scope for improvement to the more detailed and tailored dashboard experience, beyond the EZ version. While I haven’t dabbled in this space myself for some time, it still feels like the fondness people recall their use of Smartly, occasionally a thing called a Simple CSS Editor… … as well as more generally people seeking assistance with Custom CSS… People are obviously seeking a more tailored solution that is also simple to construct.
I will put a large “I get it” caveat in this request… It’s a lot of work and a pain…. Kudos to anyone who takes this kind of work on, be it staff or other members of the Community…
Make use of AI where you can, I wish I had that when I was building my utilities in this space….
I will also add to this… I am not expecting a solution on Monday… this kind of thing is not something you produce in a “sprint” as developers would know (2-3 weeks). I get it… But any indication that a broader vision to expand the existing offering would be great…
Maybe for Christmas… (Notice I didn’t say which Christmas… .. Ok, I probably don’t need to point it out…)
Yeah, I don't really see EZ Dashboards as Hubitat Dashboards 2.0, it seems like it was rewritten from the ground up.
However, if EZ is the new, preferred dashboard framework, then maybe EZ Dashboards needs to be developed into something more advanced, with the focus on features and looks, instead of just being easy.
I would hope that Hubitat Developers are using AI now as well, not just us in the community. At my company it is now a requirement to use AI in our daily work, and we had to make commits to use it and explain in our self-assessment at the end of the year how we used it.
Point is, AI should be speeding up the development process at Hubitat, like it is everywhere else, so it seems we should start seeing some faster turn-around on feature requests due to AI.
If I had the native code for EZ Dashboards, I'd be feeding it into AI now to improve it.
I think that you have tapped into a genuine “pain point” of the Hubitat ecosystem.
The emergence of Hestia, Modern DashBoard, HD+, etc. has illustrated a weakness in the Hubitat system. Please do not misunderstand, I’m a great believer and supporter of Hubitat, and I’ve been that way for years.
A number of years ago, I saw how easy it was to export my Hubitat stuff to HomeAssistant, so that’s exactly what I did. Guess what - the first thing that popped out was a simple, but easy to use complete Dashboard. I know that many other users have continued in that approach, for various reasons, but for me that quick production of a complete DashBoard was the only reason I had for going in that direction.
I really haven’t used Dashboards that much - as the original mover of Hubitat so accurately surmised a few years ago, if you have such exceptional tools to manipulate (Rule Machine, Room Lighting, Basic Rules, Motion Lighting, Visual Rules, etc.) why would you need a DashBoard?
However, I found out over time, that members of my family did not want to get that involved in Hubitat, and wanted a simple, easy to use SmartPhone app to do smart home stuff. That’s where DashBoards really come into play.
I think some of the community made stuff is great, it’s filling gaps or at least improving things in niche and creative ways, options are good.
The sparks of creativity are flying for sure right now.
I’m not a huge dashboard user myself, the ones I have to include EZ dashboards are half put together for testing and don’t get used. I have the important things my wife wants pumping into Apple Home.
I’ve been playing with HD++ a bit cause it has native Linux client and now mDash on a Pi Zero with just a browser. And some openHASP stuff thanks to the plethora of projects jslate has going.
For this Dadhboards 3.0. I’d love to see something that is fairly future proof, flexible, and scalable. Something platform agnostic that’s essentially a drop in replacement for both Dashboards and EZ Dashbaords.
I’ve got another use for SenseCAP Indicator that doesn’t have anything to do with Hubitat. It displays the last 5 images captured from Synology NAS Surveillance Station cameras.
My need for a dashboard is simple. I want to quickly see the status of my various lights, doors, etc. I'm using Apple Home/HomeKit on my iPhone and iPad to accomplish this. I also have a Fire tablet that used to run EZ Dashboard, but lately I've been using Hestia and I am currently testing mDash (of which I've reported a couple of bugs that can hopefully get sorted).
… as well as more generally people seeking assistance with Custom CSS… People are obviously seeking a more tailored solution that is also simple to construct.