I have plans for lots of new devices in the near future. I would like to mock up some new dashboards.
Any recommendations for what tile to use for things that don't exist yet?
maybe create virtual devices? and then switch them to real?
the problem is that takes a lot of work. if you create virtual devices for say a temperature sensor, now you have to create rules to display a temperature. or if you create a virtual contact sensor you have to create rules to fake that. Otherwise what are you testing with tiles? wait till you get the devices setup. then setup the dashboard. mocking it up ahead of time doesn't do anything but create a ton of work.
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You don't need to create any rules to put a virtual sensor on a tile. Or any other virtual device.
I don't use Dashboad very much, but AFAIK this is pretty much your best option. Also, you don't need to create a whole bunch of virtual devices - just one of each type. For sensors, I would recommend using the virtual omni sensor device driver.
i mean you can create a virtual contact sensor. but you can't make it do anything. and a virtual temperature sensor will just display no temperature. so you can put the tiles up but what are you showing on them?
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You can have them show whatever you want. The status of virtual sensors can be changed directly from the device page for that sensor. By default, they will show the status as of when they're created.
all I want to do is figure out how I want to lay out the dashboard so I dont need it wired in to do anything
I just want to play with some layout
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That's what I figured.
If you create a virtual RGBW light, you can use that for switch, dimmer, and RGBW templates. If you create a virtual omni sensor, you can use that with temp/humidity/motion/contact/etc templates.
got ya. makes sense.
The "device" you create should obliviously reassemble a device you plan to purchase so I won't tell you what to put on the dash. Instead practical advise about organizing lots of virtual devices (maybe what your after).
I have tons of virtual devices, for lots of different things includes "fake" items for dash testing. What I advise would be to name them in such a way that it is easy search, or sort by.
The '~' comes at the bottom of HE list so I use '~VD - USE - device'. So it would be like
~VD - Kitchen Door - Lock
~VD - Kitchen Door - Contact
This keeps all my Virtual devices out of the way of my "real device" If I use a virtual device for an app I use it in the name, so for Follow Me dashboard tile I would do
~VD - FM - MainDash
Using this scheme I can search for ~VD to see them all or '~VD - USE' to see all in a group.
These are just my hint you'll find your own scheme but I would think about something before you turn around and have a couple hundred device and can't tell what real and what is not.
that is cleaner naming than i have. i name them all FAKE kitchen or FAKE light or FAKE door
There's also @stephack's Virtual Container driver.
One could put all virtual devices used for testing purposes into a virtual container ....
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You could create one of any virtual device then add it to the dashboard. Call it "filler" or something so you know it's not to be used. You can then assign it to a random tile that you know you won't use to help it stand out. Then fill your dashboard accordingly.
Alternatively you could just leave a gap in the dashboard and place your tiles where you want them to go, and fill in the blank space as you go (that's how I did it)
Another thing I'd recommend, and it's a lot easier than using the dashboard, is to use Excel. List all the devices you have/will have on the left, then lay them out on the right. It obviously won't look like the dashboard, but you can create a template for how you will lay them out so when you do build it in the dashboard, you already know what you're placing and where
