Will the UI ever get better?

[joshlobe]

@user6649

Judging from those screenshots, your always-on dash seems like the perfect candidate for TileBuilder app.

I have been watching your interactions with the community and your app over the past week or two. Congratulations on all the hard work!!

So, my house is a quad level, with a basement. There are five levels in my house. Some of the levels overlap. I could not imagine what that would look like in a "flat" floor plan. I guess I could have tiles for each "level" of the house. Then I would have five tiles?

I will probably give it a try soon. It does look amazing. Thank you very much for the recommendation.

[rlithgow1]

Probably not a popular opinion but here goes. I finally got around to installing Home Assistant just to see things a little more clearly. First off getting it running in my docker container was a pain. One environment variable threw off the whole thing and it wouldn't run. The error was not clear at all even in the terminal window, Someone pointed me to an old thread on the HA forums. Then getting HACS installed was no picnic either. Configuration and install is not that straight forward even for a linux person like me. (To be fair I do more in windows than linux but I still can get around). So finally get HACS installed. Figure out how to install the Hubitat integration and get it configured with Maker API. Great, now devices being populated. Gotta say I'm not a huge fan of the dashboard. (That said, I not the greatest fan of Apple's either). I really don't use dashboards in general except to look at the status of a few things. So that was a disappointment. No the main UI.... Honestly I don't see that much diff in the way building rules is handled. (Hubitat definitely has some better mechanisms than HA). HA does look a bit nicer in the fact that it's fatter but there is a lot of scrolling going on during creation that annoys me. I do like the thermostat displays on HA better though. So all in all I like Hubitat's ui better. Sure HA's dashboards might be more to other dashboard people's liking, that ultimately doesn't matter to me. Hubitat's UI is definitely more slim.

[danabw]

> Will the UI ever get better?

Gotta admit, starting to wonder the same about this topic...

[SmartHomePrimer]

There are limitations and they come from many sources. Bottom line today FWIW...

You want a better dashboard, use HomeKit.
You're have an Apple-phobia, use Google Home.

If one feels the admin UI is so bad they need a better looking UI to build automations, you are probably underutilizing your hub potential.

[wiegout]

Well I did get the shortcuts made and they work from an iPhone or a Mac. But they never show up on CarPlay. No Shortcuts ever show up in CarPlay actually. There must be another step somewhere.

[bobbyD]

@trek

The only two remaining are if this page ends up in landscape view and returns to portrait

Please update to latest version and let us know if the problem is resolved...

@gopher.ny

Improved portrait/landscape detection on mobile devices.

[djh_wolf]

@jimhim

automate things - that's what we are doing here, but I'm different from a lot of you. I don't like to automate everything. I don't always want the lights to dim when I turn on the TV. I have different moods, what I feel like changes, sometimes my kids are in there working on something, there are so many variables, and things are just not so predictable around my house

Exactly

[tray_e]

@calinatl

At the end of the day, the dashboard is how the non tech people of the household interact with HE (for those of us whose households cannot be 100% automated) and the impression people are left with.

@sburke781

if you want others with less technical backgrounds to also enjoy the power of what we enjoy, you need to make it more accessible.

I will state that I would agree that the dashboards could appear rudimentary. However, I went out of my way to make sure that those that are non-technical in my house (Which includes everyone but me and several visitors) to not even notice that they were interacting with smart features.

To that end, anything that can't, shouldn't, or wouldn't always be 100% automated is controlled through conventional looking buttons and switches. There are 4 button controllers behind each couch and the only thing to learn was special taps for special actions. Since those were actions that were requested by those users, teaching the usage was easy as they wanted that feature to work. It's also much easier to reach behind your head and tap a button than pulling out a phone, unlocking it, opening an app, picking a dashboard, then clicking whatever button you want to control. But, I set up simple dashboards with shortcuts on their phones for them if that is what they want to do.

Additionally, I have exposed most of the lights and switches to Google and Alexa so that if we don't want to get up, we can vocally request it from the nearest speaker.

I have three tablets, one on each floor, running on fully kiosk that have all the key switches for each floor. As we walk by, we can see the status at a glance (did we leave the garage open? Okay, speak the magic phrase and she who shall not be named will close it. Did we leave the front door unlocked? Again, she who shall not be named will fix that too). We aren't walking to the tablets to do anything usually because we don't need to.

The one rare use I have is the automation I have for my Green Egg Grill with Fireboard controller. I set the grill temp variable and meat flip temp variable from a dashboard so that I will get voice notifications once the grill is at temperature, and again when the meat is ready to flip, and when it is done. That was easily set up with the built in dashboards.

So, while I agree it could be more polished, I haven't really found a need for it to do anything it doesn't already do. In fact, I have had several visitors comment how cool it was to walk by the dashboard and see everything on the floor. I suppose it is all a matter of perspective...... Tomato or tomato........

[aaiyar]

@joshlobe

I have been watching your interactions with the community and your app over the past week or two. Congratulations on all the hard work!!

FWIW, Tile Builder is from @garyjmilne. I'm sure @user6649 wouldn't want to take credit for someone else's work!

[joshlobe]

@aaiyar

FWIW, Tile Builder is from @ garyjmilne. I'm sure @ user6649 wouldn't want to take credit for someone else's work!

Ugh. I feel like an idiot. I don't know where my information is coming from.. lol. It's been a long week. Apologies for my confusion. Still.. awesome app!

[danabw]

@joshlobe

I don't know where my information is coming from

Well, we have been hanging out a lot but I deny everything!

[doctorkb]

I had similar issues getting started with HAss.

Finally just deployed the OVA on my ESXi host and it seems to have been more foolproof.

Some of the dashboard stuff in HA is rudimentary... But still leap years ahead of HE in capabilities. Not to mention it doesn't take 5-10 seconds of loading screens before showing anything. There are also a bunch of add-ons available to improve it further.

I haven't looked at the rules engine there. I started working with Node-RED as well and that seems to take the cake on most of those use cases.

[djw1191]

@rlithgow1

One environment variable threw off the whole thing

I don’t mean to get off topic and I’m no home assistant fanboy, but what environment variable were you setting? I just double checked my running container and other than some custom stuff I do with docker networks and volume mounting for configs, it’s a plain old deployed container that didn’t require anything special.

It’s been a while since I installed HACS but I don’t recall it being overly complicated. Seems like it should just be a one liner command after you exec into the container. Either way, like I said no skin in the game, I will always advocate for everyone to use the tools that work best for them and other than dashboarding and a couple of cloud integrations I’m still more of a Hubitat fanboy.

I have personally gotten to a pretty good point with my mobile dashboard. In case anyone wants inspiration. (Highly influenced by a YouTube tutorial i watched at some point)

[dJOS]

@djw1191

installed HACS but I don’t recall it being overly complicated

It’s not hard to install, but the “entity” naming system is horrid to navigate, even for technical users. Their built in rule system requires a degree hostile computing systems to figure out, especially when you factor in the bizarre entity system.

The one saving grace for HA is their really nice dashboards.

[djh_wolf]

Come on, @josh - get these guys to work on a deal to include a local version.

sharptools is amazing.

[SmartHomePrimer]

Not sure what you mean by “navigate” the naming system. Do you mean the entities menu? That is a bit strange to have front and centre in the UI.

If you look at the Devices menu, you can see a more organized list, with their entities categorized and named. Just tap the entity and then the gear to get its device ID when needed.

[dJOS]

@SmartHomePrimer

Do you mean the entities menu?

Everything to do with entities and device management in HA is a hot, impenetrable mess, IMHO.

I much prefer how Hubitat manages devices and device states.

[SmartHomePrimer]

I respectfully disagree. I’m a Hubitat fan and supporter of their great work, but as device lists go, I do think HA has a better look and usability.

[dJOS]

@SmartHomePrimer

I respectfully disagree

You misunderstand me, I’m not talking about dashboards in my previous comment, I’m talking about automating things in HA.

HA dashboards are really nice, I used to use one to view my home solar + battery system. I only got rid of my HA docker image after realising i didn’t do anything else with it and the Tesla app was good enough.

[bobbyD]

@SmartHomePrimer

HA has a better look and usability

Let us not forget that they have about 5 years ahead of Hubitat (they just turned 10, right?) and a team of developers that is twice as bigger than Hubitat, with dedicated front-end developers. Who knows where Hubitat will be in 5 years from now, with a much larger team