I have a curiosity question. When I add a new device, and I want to have a tile for it on a dashboard, I have to first go to Hubitat Dashboard under apps, and add it to a given dashboard first. Why not just have it so that when I add a tile, I can see all of the devices I have, and pick the one I want, and skip the step of having to add it first in another location?
This is a question that comes up from time to time, so there are likely topics outlining the reasons. Some reasons (I believe) include:
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Security - depending on how you control access to dashboards, they can be open to anyone with access to your hub, able to view device status and history, which may be something not desirable for certain types of devices like those related to presence. It is also a broader platform feature that for any app to gain access to a device it must be the result of a user choosing this to be the case in the admin UI, not within the app interface, i.e. the dashboard app vs the dashboard itself.
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Performance - while this could be handled differently (I expect), any instance of the dashboard that is open will receive device events for any device linked to it, whether there is a tile for the device or not. Having a dashboard with access to all device could obviously labour if receiving all device events from the hub.
There are probably other reasons or better ways to articulate the reasons I have outlined.
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I'd also add... you are not alone in wanting this, I am sure there are others, including me, who would prefer to convenience of either having all devices automatically available when constructing a Dashboard, or at the very least not needing to switch to another screen.
Personally I have come around to the idea. The way I think of it, Hubitat are acting like the sensible friend or relative that always has the honest and reasonable advice when you want to just have fun or take things easy. Other (un-safe) options are available, but make sure you enter these with your eyes-open.
There are comments I could make about child-safe or those who over-indulge in life... But that would diminish my point, and the reason behind what I feel is an often dismissed feature of the HE platform, being that the developers hold our / your privacy as more important than commercially desirable convenience.
I've probably over-indulged.... Trust me (well trust HE), you'll get past the inconvenience once you realise the small amount of time it takes you to add a device compared to the alternative....
One small request I would make is to have a link back to the app from the dashboard. That would certainly be nice.
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Well, I only have one dashboard, and every time I add a device, I automatically hit the toggle all devices button, or whatever it's called, in the Dashboard app.
How would the dashboard labor? I've never noticed a problem.
I could see if there was an option to automatically add the device to the dashboard app, or not. It's not like it's that onerous though.
This is sometimes a hard case to make.... as it may not be an issue for all homes, but for those that either have multiple mobile devices displaying a dashboard or those with a number of "chatty" devices, I could imagine these situations could produce undesirable outcomes if, as devices were added to the hub, they automatically started sending events to every dashboard on every mobile device displaying a dashboard.
The point is that you still have to choose to add all devices, knowing that doing so does not cause you any issues. If this happened automatically for you and it degraded the performance of the hub, it would both be annoying and a pain to diagnose, both for you and the HE support staff.
Because it has to ask for the status of every device you select, process that data, and render it. It does it for every device you select, not just the ones displayed. It apparently is quite intensive for the CPU to do so.
This was discussed back in 2021 and I don't think much has changed. It was even a pretty bad issue with hub slowdowns of hubs back in the 2019-2020 era.
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^^^ this 1000x!
Well, I have only one dashboard. I have a bunch of small tiles. I toggle all devices in the app. I have a total of 204 devices. They are not all on the dashboard. I have not noticed any problem. My Z-Wave has a tendency to stop working for short periods of time once in a while, but that's it.
But it isn't just 204, it is 204 devices times how many ever attributes each device has. On something like a multi-sensor, that could be 4 or more (temp, motion, humidity, battery). I counted 16 attributes on my thermostat tile. My Zooz Zen15 plug has 15 attributes, and my RGB controllers have 6 or so.
So with your 204 items, and conservatively 5 attributes each, you are loading well over 1000 pieces of data simultaneously every time you open or refresh a dashboard. If you have a lot of devices that have lots of fancy features, you could be more like 3000 items.
I would be curious if your Zigbee issues correspond with opening a dashboard. I would suggest not toggling all like you are doing, that is just unnecessary work for the hub.
It may not cause perceivable slowdowns, or you might not correlate issues with this practice, but it still seems like a bad idea if you think about what you are asking the hub to do every time you open a dashboard.
Besides that, how do you even find what you want if you have hundreds of items on one dashboard? You must be endlessly scrolling! I have things broken into 19 dashboards, pretty much by rooms or areas, but some by a particular device. I have one dash for just the hot tub, for example, because it has a dozen or so buttons or status indicators and it was just too much to quickly use when grouped with the other outdoor devices dashboard.
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I don't have them all on the dashboard, just the ones I feel I need.
That 204 includes virtual devices...I just counted them up on the dashboard app page.
I made it 3 cols wide so it fits on the phone.
Here a sample. Scrolling isn't so bad, maybe compared to flipping back and forth to different windows.
edit: I'm having a problem with my fridge at the moment. Not sure what the problem is. Evap fan won't stay running. I ordered a new one-supposed to be here 10/30-hopefully it'll limp along til then and I can still use the freezer. It's 20 years old.
Just for the sake of sanity, you might want to explore the relatively new app called Tile Builder that consolidates multiples of your devices into table groups (which each gets represented as a single tile on your dashboard). Much more visually pleasing and simpler to include "everything" on a single screen.
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I'm trying to avoid extra apps, where I can.
Also, a lot of my tiles control things, which I don't think is in Tile Builder's wheelhouse.
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Right but you have ALL of them exposed to the dashboard and everytime you open the dash, even if you don't have a tile for the device it's rendered for availability. What @neonturbo is saying if you only have lets say 10 devices for a particular dash, ONLY expose those 10 devices, DO NOT hit select all. For instance, this dash only has a few devices. ONLY those devices are exposed
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I got what he was saying.
He was also talking about scrolling, etc, on my one big dash.
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In my case, I have more than one dashboard. I have one set up for the main devices in the house, so to speak, but another for the outside lights, and one I call backroom, which is some of the behind the scenes stuff. On that one, I have a button that changes the mode since Life360 doesn't seem to have life figured out at the moment.
I can see some of what was said about security. On one hand, maybe an option to toggle that on and off (having to select it on a dashboard or just have them all available) but it's not truly that big of a deal. I don't have to add devices that often.
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