I'm not yet a day in to having my C-8 Pro, and just getting started exploring and putting some distance between my house and my Vera Plus. I love it. I was like a little kid with a new toy when I discovered the Chromecast Integration app. Now my house can yell at me when something needs attention!
I figured it might be helpful to document some of my newbie 'WTF...' and 'that's kind of weird' reactions to some things to be considered for a future update. I'll add more to this if or when I come across other things I find to be strange.
In the Notifications app -> presence notification, it should not be possible to complete the process of adding a text notification without selecting a notification device. This left me scratching my head for an hour until I found the answer at the bottom of coffee #3.
This:
Should be required to be this way before creation/update.
When setting up a notification delay, this field description is really misleading.
Shouldn't it include the word delay, or wait somewhere? Such as 'Delay for? (minutes), or 'Wait for? (minutes) ? The text as it is currently written implies a 'while' statement rather than a delay.
It is; it means that whatever condition you set to be notified of must be "true" for that long before the notification will be sent.
I can understand this, but this also allows you to create the automation before you actually have a device or swap the old device out for a new one while being able to delete (remove) the first device in the meantime. Built-in apps seem to prefer to avoid making fields required for reasons like this.
welcome aboard, glad you're enjoying the platform. as previously mentioned, having certain fields required can break other things down the line. to point 1, what happens when you change your device? if you remove your Pixel 8 and add a new main phone for yourself, you can either (1) take over the device when you register your new phone or (2) create a new device and be able to alert both devices (helpful if you have multiple people benefitting from the hub, you can have certain alerts go to one and not the other).
if the device field was a required field, once you remove your old device, that would then hide the text field. what happens with that data? does it remain but is now hidden until a new device gets added? or does it clear out and now you have to re-enter everything after adding the new device, and now you've forgotten what was there and have to develop a new message?
HE may not be perfect for everyone, but i do feel it checks a lot of boxes for everyone. just like with any other platform, there is a slight learning curve. thankfully it gets easier as things go on, and if there is a huge wall, we're (the community) here to assist!
Thanks. I've read through it, admittedly only after throwing myself into the app to play.
The points you raise make sense from an engineering/programming point of view. They're also clearer after reading the documentation. In my experience though, hitting users with RTFM and not considering intuition is a miss.
As an I.T. manager, I sometimes have to put myself inside the mirror and look outward, to better understand how the mere mortals I have using various systems are going to interpret and understand what's in front of them. Sometimes I get it. Sometimes I don't. And sometimes you just can't, because it breaks things.
Either way, should whoever makes these kinds of UI decisions at Hubitat see my comments, I'm sure they'll make whatever decision they think is best.
