Next Gen Dashboard Maybe?

Just saw an article on Hackaday about this project. It would be interesting to make a 3D Dashboard, especially if it could be made responsive to lighting changes and custom meshes.

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What do you mean? Automatically map out your devices based on your mesh? That won't work. I have devices connecting to repeaters across the house from where they actually are. Zigbee isn't that logical.

Also, for something like this, you'd have to create the 3d model in Blender. I dunno about you, but that seems like an awful lot of work for a dashboard that only controls lights on and off. You can't even control dimming levels with this. It looks cool but very, VERY impractical as it stands today. Maybe some day.

Agree 100%

I don't really think it even looks that cool... LOL.

Heck, I would be happy with a 2D dashboard that could do everything I want. It is looking like Home Remote will get me there, but it is going to take a reasonable amount of setup.

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Custom meshes, I meant from the 3D side of things. Custom meshes refers to the ability of the user to upload their own 3D mesh representation of objects/rooms/etc.

As for amount of work... Sure, it currently is. But these things all get easier and for someone that knows how to use Blender (or another 3D rendering tool if others can be used) it is not very difficult to make a few rooms and such.

In comments to the article on Hackaday people have brought up about the render's poor quality. Turns out that was intentional as the creator had no idea how quickly it could be rendered and was doing much of it as "proof of concept". Other people chimed in that it would be very easy (and not very resource intensive either) to up the quality quite a bit.

On a couple of my own dashboards I try to place devices in some semblance of where they are actually located in relation to each other from an "above" perspective but it never works out all that well (and I live in a split level, I would bet it would be even tougher in a 2 story). Plus many times I have added something in after the fact and that requires rearranging a bunch of the tiles. A 3rd dimension with some smooth transitions between areas/floors and such could make life easier.

I am also trying to think of the future of it. If you have all your devices mapped out in there then overlay their ZigBee/Z-Wave mesh routing data and reception values... you could see gaps easier and maybe even identify WHY easily (ex: oh, that is where the main duct work is... need to put a repeater a few feet to the side).

How many people out there do you think even have Blender let alone know how to use it? I don't think it's as many as you think it is.

Probably not, although there are probably more people that use Blender than Hubitat. :grinning:

I never got into Blender myself (tried it, but did not stick to it). I prefer POV-Ray, even if it is basically ancient nowadays. But then again, I also use OpenSCAD for all my 3D printing designs also... so I guess I just like scripting methods.

It does look cool, but at least in my case I rarely need to use dashboards anymore for lighting. In my house lights come on by either motion, lux level, time, etc. I want my smart home to work for me, with less hands on.

The only thing I wish was possible, and I know it is coming is the ability to use positioning by room and individual, so that each person could have their own lighting settings when they walk in on a per room basis.

Now I still do use dashboards for monitoring certain things, and also when I am not home for control.

I would just settle for a simple good looking 2d Dashboard like sharptools, but local of course.

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how is your home remote dash looking now?

It's coming along slowly. I have a few other projects in the queue before I get too serious, but I've cobbled together some examples of most of the types of data I want to get on there (Arlo, deviecs from HE, devices from MQTT).

The main thing pushing it to my back burner right now, is that of the 2 tablets I use for dashboards one is in portrait orientation and the other landscape. I am thinking it would be worth my time to go back and make them both the same direction.