My New Whole Home Controller (Updated: Dec 2021)

Showcase
#1

Edit: I have gotten a lot of requests for my project. I cleaned it up for an example layout… enjoy.
JD_Layout_2021_1_6.hrp (1.6 MB)

First, a BIG congratulations to Bill and thank you for launching this beautiful forum for us!!

I have been using The Home Remote for a few months now so, I would consider a myself a newbie. Many folks talk about a steep learning curve with HR but I do not consider it to be difficult. When you are trying to achieve a look, an action, or style, there are many ways you can do it and simply playing with the designer, you’ll figure it out. There’s no right or wrong in how you want to create your interface. Its about creativity! Its about trial and error! Its the freedom to say “I want my controller to look and function like this” and having the ability to do it!

For myself, I wanted an interface to control my whole home. I have 4 zones for audio, 2 zones for video, almost 30 lights throughout the house, 4 temperature zones, and SmartThings/Hubitat integration. I created this interface for a 10’ tablet installed in my kitchen. My intention was to create this interface and use it for a while to work out any issues with controlling my system. Then I was going to modify it (dumb it down) to work on dedicated room controllers (7" tablets previously running idrule). I loaded the same project onto all my tablets and haven’t looked back. However, I do intend to create a more phone friendly version for my Samsung Note.

One important mission…? The wife has to understand how to use it!! :crazy_face: I have also animated my pages using lots of property actions. Some slide in from the top/bottom and some fade in. Lots I could do aesthetically but, I’m very happy where I am at.

My Home screen. I consider this to be a Dashboard where I can see status throughout the house. A lot of work but I animated the floorplan to show what lights are on (dinning rm and garage are on in this snip):

Home
Home895×563 440 KB

Security. I’ve spent the least amount of time on this but all the function I need is there

Security
Security899×561 400 KB

Lighting. I love sliders but I had to implement raise/lower/off buttons for minor tweaks.

Lighting
Lighting896×566 413 KB

Climate Control.

Climate
Climate896×571 386 KB

Weather. Dave Z created most of this weather page. I just modified it a little so Thank you Dave!!

Weather
Weather895×571 289 KB

Volume. When the whole house is rocking and the cops come, I need a place to quickly turn down the music. Kidding… I live in the middle of no where no cops coming here.

Volume
Volume893×570 375 KB

Shutdown. I have the ability to shutdown individual rooms, devices, or a complete shutdown.

Shutdown
Shutdown893×567 385 KB

Specific rooms. From my home screen, if you click on a room in the floor plan, it will bring up individual room controls

GreatRoom
GreatRoom894×568 411 KB

9 Likes
#2

Thanks Jeff! The floor plan & everything looks sharp!

1 Like
#3

Wow Great Job! I am doing something similar a whole smart home control for a tablet i made a stand for on my wall. I will send pictures soon. But I have to say yours looks great!
I am just like you, a newbie but loving this soooo much. Lets keep in touch and share ideas. I am really trying to learn how to do plugins… But still studying up. And if there are any integrations we would like to see lets try to chip in to motivate Bill on pushing up to the front of the line haha.

#4

Hey one more thing, what are you using to get your energy usage? Do you have solar or are you using switches that log usage?

#5

Hi Roberto! Thank you!

For energy monitoring, I am using the Aeotec Zwave HEM paired to Smartthings. Unfortunately, it stopped working a few days ago when Smartthings pushed out an update!! I have the 2 clamp version (one for each phase) and it monitors the feed into the house. I am only displaying a total power usage but you can display each individual phase in HR if you want. To keep to my at-a-glance strategy, I used datatriggers to change the background color of the wattage… yellow if I am using 1000-5000 watts, red if I am at 5000+ watts, and no color if I’m under 1000w.

While I cant recommend this device at the moment (until the issue is fixed), I highly recommend getting an energy monitor. I’ve had this for a few years and it most definitely payed for itself and then some.

On that note, if anyone can recommend an energy monitor that will play nicely with HR, I’d love to hear some options.

2 Likes
#6

Sounds great, I was looking into Sense energy monitor but still thinking thinking about spending 300 bucks on it. plus don’t see any integration to any smart home hubs. Have to check if there has been anyting recent.

#7

This is fantastic work, and I’m drooling (metaphorically, at least) at the idea of creating something similar.

I’ve been wanting to create some control stations with some Fire tablets sitting around. I got pointed to the Home Remote as one possible way to get there, and I see that you’ve already done 500% more than I’d even imagined.

Is there a way in this platform for you to safely share the structure and framework of the work that you’ve done (if you’re willing, of course) without also inadvertently giving access to your devices? It seems like collaborating on builds and designs would be a fundamental feature of a platform… I didn’t seen any examples in my 30-40 minutes that I’ve spent exploring the tools so far, so I’m hoping this is something I just need a pointer to.

Thanks!
/Joe

1 Like
#8

Hi Joe!
I’ve stripped out my credentials and you can download my project from the link. EDIT: link removed… See OP.

It would require a lot of changes to work for your equipment but at least you have a good example to work from. Poke around and let me know if you have any questions.

I scooped up a bunch of fire tablets (two HD8’s and one HD10) back near the holidays when they were on a big sale. The new HD10 is very fast and works well with my animations. The HD8’s are are good but slightly slower. One thing I didn’t like was amazon removed the ability to disable sleep. However, you can use adbLink to disable sleep (Hoping for for no burn-in!).
The Home Remote Designer has the ability to publish to an FTP server. I setup the FTP server on the same laptop I use for the designer so getting my updated projects to my Fire tablets is easy.

#9

I haven’t made too many changes in the last couple weeks. Mostly tweaks here and there.
I did make a popup for the rooms in my floor plan that do not have a lot of controls. The popup up is a page browser. Pressing a room enables the page browser and writes which page. I used another button the size of the whole screen so, when you click anywhere outside the popup, it closes. I was able to make the popup open with an animation by a sequence of PropertyActions of height and width.

Capture
Capture898×567 381 KB

1 Like
#10

Thanks for sharing this! I’ve taken more time than I really should before work this morning starting to look through it. 2 questions pop up at first:

  1. Is there a consensus on the next-best weather integration since Dark Sky announced their embed and API access end-of-life a couple months ago? I figure if possible I’d just start out from the beginning on a long-term answer there.

  2. What did you use for your floorplan images? I’ve decided that for v1 I’m probably going to use a simple and non-detailed 2-d set of boxes for mine, but I’ve started playing around in Planner5D for something a bit more exhaustive. That’s early going, though, and I’m not yet convinced it’s what I’d want to stick with.

Thanks,
/Joe

1 Like
#11

The only discussion I’ve seen so far was on the old forum: I’ve been keeping an eye out but haven’t actively been seeking an alternative.
https://groups.google.com/forum/#!searchin/thehomeremote/darksky|sort:date/thehomeremote/DHGGXcOXB2o/QQLByASLAAAJ

I’ve used Planner5D but found SweetHome3D to be much easier and better quality. In fact, my first floor plan was in Planner5D and I used it to make drawings to design a hot water radiant floor project in my great room a couple years ago. There are others out there too but, SweetHome3D is just what I personally settled on and its well liked in the commercial BAS systems I’ve done. To edit my floor plan images (like creating a transparent background or sizing), I used GIMP (photoshop alternative). Here’s a link for when I was trying to figure this all out…
https://groups.google.com/d/topic/thehomeremote/9Rm_QyTWhus/discussion

1 Like
#12

I have the sense monitor, and I would not really suggest it. I’ve had sense for almost 2 years, and its detection is not that great. It uses machine learning and AI, but it sucks. It’s found around 20 devices in my house, and 8 of those are duplicate AC.

1 Like
#13

Wow, really! Thanks for the heads up. Still in my wish list is a energy monitor so thanks for the heads up. I think it might be better just to probably get smart plugs with energy monitoring and maybe even create something nice here in THR that will give a read out of each plug. :thinking: hmmm I have an Idea coming on!!!

#14

About a month ago, I took the Aeotec HEM off smartthings and moved it over Hubitat. Its actually working really well now. I’ve had it setup to refresh the wattage every 5 seconds and it worked well but I didn’t want to congest my z-wave network so, I bumped it up to 10 seconds. Seems solid! There’s no fancy software for trending or AI but its good for me (as long as it keeps working lol!)

Funny thing is how well you learn the typical wattage usage and how much power each device, in you entire house, consumes. I have my own “AI”

#15

I’d LOVE to do that. Just gets expensive getting all the smart plugs/outlets. I used a (heavy duty 40amp) smart switch on my well pump and use the energy monitoring to send me notifications if the well pump kicks on and no one home. So there are definitely benefits to monitoring individual circuits/outlets!
I tweaked my dashboard to show both phases. :smiley:
Capture

#16

Very cool setup, I was going through your pop up and it works great in the simulator but doesn’t funtion at all on the IPAD app, all the other buttons function just fine though… any advice would be great cause i created a pop up as well that I can’t get to work on my ipad
@Jdamore

#17

hmmm… I don’t own any apple devices so I can’t test this. I have all android. I’m using Page browsers all over but, the popups use only one page browser and the Page property is written for the room you press. Maybe this has something to do with the issue or maybe the issue has something to do with the Size properties (for the animations)?

#18

I know I’m replying to a post that’s a year old, but the design you have is very close to what I am looking to create and I was hoping you might be able to re-post your hrp file as a starting point for me. The one that’s posted here looks like it was placed into your trash bin in Google Drive.

#19

Hi Ted! Sure thing. Give me a day or two to rework my project. I’ll clean it up and simplify it a bit.

#20

@TLoomos Done. Stripped it down and made it more universal. Keep in mind you may need to configure the platform and/or resolution to the size of your device. Its currently setup for a Fire HD10. I can think of several different ways to created a layout like this but this seems to work well for me. Give it a shot…

JD_Layout_2021_1_6.hrp (1.6 MB)