Ideas for enhancement (was: Is dashboard design now frozen?)

I'd be great to be able to use a tile (or the dashboard in general) as a device-- so that i can flash the screen/tile itself and/or make it play sound.

like an ipad with an always-on dashboard- i'd like to use Rule Machine to interact with the dashboard-- making it play a sound on the ipad, putting a red border around the whole screen, changing the color of the tiles, etc.

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I would love just a small change. Make the button for returning to the Dashboard menu bigger. I struggle with my phone and the fat sausages I call fingers, often missing it!

I would love to have few UX improvements such as:

  1. The tiles should reorder (or maybe even resize) depending on screen size. Currently, if I view the dashboard on my phone, the tiles immediately go beyond my screen'
  2. Allow me to use mouse to simply reorder the tiles on the dashboard using drag/drop. Don't force me to go inside the config screen just to move the tile from top row to the next row.
  3. Allow me to change the top text label of tiles.
  4. Allow me to create some visual grouping(maybe by color and borders?), such as to show different rooms
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For the first one, you can set a width of blank to resize the tiles to fit any size screen. Unfortunately, the text may not be readable, depending on font size.

Drag and drop would be lovely!

Also customisable states for things like battery level and temperature.

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How about custom tiles? It is pretty annoying everything you do has to fit into the mold

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I second being able to move tiles around by dragging and dropping but it would also be great to be able to turn off snap to grid so I can place them anywhere. Currently doing this with CSS over a floor plan but it's a pain.

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Better icons would be great. Also more individual customization aspects. Lots can be done currently with css but it's very clunky and time consuming.

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Yes, but when I tried that, not all parts of the tile were getting resized. It was a very unreliable way to reduce tile size, if various fonts, icons etc. are not scaling in sync.

Some logical conditions would also be nice...e.g. I could then create a sort of "alarms" dashbord, which only shows tiles, which are in alarm state...e.g. open contact sensors. So if there is any thing there, then it would be worth a quick review, instead of having to look at dozens of tiles on screen.

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Drag and drop, ability to easily change the tile titles, use of custom icons, and the ability to change colors to some tiltes without change the general template.

I have seen other people dashboard screenshots, and see custom titles on the tiles. I am not able to find how to do that. Any pointers on how do i change the individual tile titles? I would expect this to be some simple text field somewhere?

Unfortunately not.... You need to use CSS.

The more complete list of tweaks like this can be found here or you can also look at some examples on my run through of how I did my dashboard:. The method to use can vary because not all the text is in the same element of the tile, so it depends on the template being used.

That is very sad! These are type of small things, which keep away first time Hubitat users. Dashboard is what a user would mostly interact with, once things have been setup and should be quick an intuitive to configure. I know people here would say it is a one time pain, but I would argue that this is not inclusive. Why should a user need to now learn CSS etc. just to add a title text on a dashboard? If I had to delegate my setup to a new house owner, I think there would be 1% chance that he/she would be able to figure out all the hundreds of "tweaks" I had to do to setup my dashboards and the system. I am a fan of Hubitat by now, and love the power of its ability of customization, but somethings such as this, should not need this much effort.
Capabilities such as Tile Master, Hubitat Package Manager, hub watchdog, hub information, much revamped dashboard system and more should be considered by the staff to lower the new user friction. Again, I know there are priorities and limited resources...but just sharing my thoughts.

From memory you can also achieve this in Smartly, another third-party option, but I'm not sure if you can just do this and not the other formatting options it provides.

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There are other options for dashboards, if you don't want to use what HE comes with. Here is one: [RELEASE] HD+ - Android Dashboard

There are several others as well.

Many users don't use dashboards (personally I do), so I am not sure how high it is on the priority list. I do think they are probably going to redo it at some point. But I also believe it will be hard for HE to keep people happy with the changes. So many users of HE like the technical nature of HE, and with something like dashboards, many users like the ability to modify the CSS to change tile appearance to their desire.

One could also say this: "That is great!, These are the type of things, that allow knowledgable users to have extensive modification capabilities, to create things how they want"

I guess, it all comes down to the target market HE is aiming for. Personally, I think it would be crazy for HE to make the product "quick and easy to configure". Doing this always has trade-offs. If you go down this path, you are competing with Google and Amazon and you will lose. So why even try.

Think about it another way, if it was Google or Amazon who released the home automation hub that is Hubitat Elevation it would have been a huge failure. People who buy tech products branded by these companies expect "quick and easy to configure". Google and Amazon products are brain-dead easy to use, thier customers expect this. I believe HE is aimed at a different market, nowhere near as big, but still large.

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I feel that there is a difference between allowing "knowledgable users" to be able to go and extend/customize if they need to... vs not providing users with no option but to have to go tweak/write code to make simple thing work. Right now, to add title to a tile, I am forced to go into power user mode. E.g. I love the fact that Hubitat provides simple apps to do a lot of routine/most common stuff, but if people ant they can go and play with Rule Engine for complex work. If people are yet more inclined they can go into making apps, node-red etc. But if i just need to turn on lights base don motion sensor I do not need to learn rule engine.

I partly and respectfully disagree. A lot of people buy stuff from large brands due to "possible" reliability, standard ecosystem and yes, being easy to use(read "better UX"). It might be incorrect and too generic to assume that Hubitat users do not want better UX, or ease of configurability. having the ability to go into power user mode vs ease of configuration are slightly different problems to solve.

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I agree with all the above. Coming from SmartThings, I used ActionTiles and tried SharpTools.
SharpTools was the best for drag and drop. But, it is by subscription only. ActionTools was good with limitations such as limited color themes and being cloud based. Also, when I last tested ActionTiles with Hubitat, it could not display hub variables. And licenses from SmartThings do not transfer over to Hubitat. A new license required.

My spouse uses Hubitat dashboards (local and cloud) on cellphones. I often use dark backgrounds and simple text colors to show up on the Apple and Oneplus screens in daylight. Also, black backgrounds save power on AMOLED screens. I do throw in some color, but often layer another tile on top to give transparency effect or to make tile appear as RED if doors open etc. I make my CAMs available on local dashboards only. I learned this from aggressive hit to data plan one month.

I like jpqage4500's Android dashboard. The control is great and it can switch between local and cloud automatically and it can be backed up to hub or local. Also, a great feature is if you have devices in a folder such as bedroom, the folder can change colors if any device is on in that folder. Makes it easy to see the things you need to see. Hubitat should do also. Though I think overall the least visually appealing to me. I really like the Hubitat dashboard the best (looks).

As the only one that knows how Hubitat works in my household, I use the Hubitat dashboard to show everything on my windows laptop. Either on one screen or links to different room screens.

Really dashboards don't need to change often unless adding new devices etc.

I have found it would be great to have the following: Separate colors per tile not by template. Control of all aspects of tile's contents per tile.. Sometimes I don't want to see an icon. It is a pain to edit code to resolve some of these issues. I don't want all my switches to share the same color. Zooming Icon size uncenters icon in tile. Without being able to adjust tile's font size, often zoomed icon overlaps text. Its a lose lose. Either something is too big or small overall across the dashboard.
It would be great as mentioned for a tile to hide or show by rule manager as well as color too.

As someone else said here, only 1 % of people could set this up easily.

When I die I know this all will be ripped out of house. If they could find it to rip it out :wink:

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I forgot. If the background of dashboard or tile could be changed by device state or rule manager it would provide a meaningful visual punch. Dashboards could change for day/night or seasons or if windows/doors or garage open etc. Especially useful to see a change on phone when driving with a glance and not taking eyes off road for too long.

Excited for future changes. Hubitat offers so much as it is.

^^^^ This ^^^^

Tile sizes are more flexible, colors and shapes are more appealing, and once you've converted a dashboard you can add/remove/move tiles at will. This should be what the HE dashboard should look like right out of the gate.

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