Overall, I love this. Everything I want or need is there, which is all you can ask of a good self-respecting Tile.
Only problems I foresee have to do with “things not visible” here. Such as, while I know from experience what the various Mode and Fan options are, someone else using my dashboard may not. And the last thing I want happening is for a visitor to accidentally trip my thermostat into “Vacation” mode in the middle of the night!
They’d have to ponder, “Which way do I slide for ‘Heat’ mode?” or “What’s the opposite of ‘Auto’?” or “How do I make the Fan come on?”
So I’m wondering if it would make sense to show (perhaps in transparent or smaller text) what other detents exist for each slider. Or maybe such an option already exists, and this n00b just doesn’t know how to turn it on?
Also unclear to me why there are [+] and [–] symbols on both the “Thermostat” and “Temperature” fields… isn’t the former just reporting the applicable Cool or Heat setpoint? and doesn’t the letter simply report the home’s current interior temperature (which I cannot change)? Indeed, clicking to change either one’s value appears to “do nothing” after Apply.
Not sure it would visually be possible without making the sliders much wider, plus not even sure you could scale text for “Vacation” and sensibly fit in the last detent. I’m very much open to suggestions but a large issue is the text labels are big, and too small and you can’t read them, too large and it takes up way too much space. Maybe a slider is the wrong widget??
That’s a HE thing where the standard device has these many Setpoints - so I have to support them all even if I don’t understand why… e.g. some devices have only respond to changes of Temperature, as in Australia where it doesn’t get cold, we don’t have a Heating and separate Cooling setpoint on any of our home AC systems.
You can disable/turn on/off whatever you want if you go into the config a bit more… e.g.
Okay… show me a widget that you think would be better… I’m not sure about drop-downs, as they are more taps/clicks then is needed, but open to whatever widget you can find that you feel is a good way to switch/pick fan and ac modes.
Of course, I’m ignorant of whether you can populate sections of such a tile with more (or fewer) buttons, sized-to-fit, to accommodate whatever array of “Modes” a random thermostat device might throw at you. I assume the possibilities are fairly limited (“Off”, “Cool”, “Heat”, “Auto” being among the only ones I’ve ever come across).
But since setpoint/target, to me, is invariably a read-only value. It’s either the singular setpoint you encounter 99% of the time (regardless of whether the thermostat is current in “Cool” or “Heat” mode) or it derives from the currently-in-force “Cool” or “Heat” setpoint (if the thermostat happens to be in “Auto” mode) in actual practice.
I know, it’s complicated. Nevertheless, so far as “Mode” and “Fan” selections go, I’m definitely thinking “radio buttons” not “sliders”, because they are independent choices.
NOTE: Up to now, I’ve been completely ignoring such things as “Fan State” (e.g. “Idle” or “Active/On”), though this, too, is read-only. Some units even have variable “Speed”, etc. Egads, creating a UI is literal hell.
Plus, the driver “reports” a string of modes that could be “my cat jumps”, “turn it all off”, “make it super cold” so technically, I can’t just rely on a set list of buttons that have short names either.
e.g. how do you fit “emergency heat” in the list of modes you have that are 4 or less chars ??
It’s actually bit of an annoying problem that someone (SmartThings) created a universal model that didn’t consider how to visually display all this stuff.
End of the day… I don’t think simple buttons will work well.
The reason sliders work well is that I have all this realestate to display unknown length text on the right side… e.g. “cool” can easily change to “emergency heat” and still fit/render without issues.
If you want to experiment, create a virtual thermostat and play with the options it reports back into hubVue and you can see all the length text that is expected to be available - not that any driver author can make it worse/longer too… as the reported modes are variable in size and number.
Totally hear ya! But I’d be forever disinclined to slide a slider, never being certain where it will stall. (Obviously, an “Are you sure?” dialogue would help, but I know you’re trying to avoid all that hoohah.)
I suppose the next-best thing would be the dreaded drop-down, which at least can grow or shrink within a single input item, and gives me a legible target that my fat finger can aim for.
The current implementation, using sliders, does… it allows you to change the mode to any of the possible options without "Apply"ing and if you change your mind, just [ X ] close the dialog box.
yes to heating\air modes are pickers and not sliders.
To address different users needs and use cases it might be helpful to have the select mode as a tap and then as @Hparsons requested the tap and hold be a choice for bringing up the selector option.
I’m not a big fan of the tap and hold because I’m too impatient and don’t like being slowed down by even a split second That said, sinse tap and hold is not all that intuitive for many they might never figure out they could raise or lower the temp (money out of my pocket) when they tap and nothing happens.
Sorry to dig up this old thread, but a few more suggestions on thermostat.
I like the checkboxes that control which sliders to show. Is it possible to further customize with:
a) checkboxes for every slider including mode, fan mode, and heating/ cooling individually, and
b) separate set of checkboxes for which modes appropriate for your unit (i.e. heating only, cooling
only, no fan, etc.). There are many different use cases for thermostat, and not all modes apply
(nor might one wish to expose all modes to guest user).
A +/- setpoint control on the tile that would not require opening the tile and hitting “apply” would be very convenient for this most-often used control of the thermostat.
Once again disinterring this thread to ponder two points in more depth:
I still cannot grok why “Temperature” (which I consider a read-only value taken from the Indoor Temp reported by the Thermostat device) should ever have [–] and [+] buttons on that field:
LABELS - It’s a given that Thermostat is a “special” tile with its own peculiar layout, but would it be asking too much to be able to modify the Labels for its internal control? For example, being able to rename “Thermostat” to “Setpoint”, or rename “Temperature” as “Bedroom Temp”, etc. Right now (as of 1.4.x), those labels are not accessible/editable.
Simply because not all drivers do the same thing, and it’s a Hubitat reported capability that I cannot deny the existence of. You can simply hide it within the Thermostat settings.
Guess it’s just one of those things. If only clicking the + and - buttons actually accomplished something, like magically heating or cooling my abode, lol.
I’d love to see a working example of a thermostat (device) where those + and - adjustments “do” something.
They have the same concept in public schools where teachers can never feel warm enough or cool enough. They put dummy thermostats on their classroom wall and tell them they are in complete control of their environment. Now that I know @g.slender has this placebo thing going in the thermostat tile I may give my kids full control when they come home to visit.
Pro tip: Throw in an RM rule that temporarily sets your Thermostat to “On” (running fan) for 30 seconds IF it was idle at the time someone fiddled with your placebo controls. They’ll think it’s really working!
All the Aussie AC systems only have Temperature as the set point and DONT have separate Cool or Heat setpoints. We just don’t have anywhere in our country that gets below 32 deg F for any great length of time or far beyond ice freezing point, so heating isn’t a big deal. A simpler single AC setting that targets a temperature of 73 deg F is all that is needed. You lot are the weirdos with dual temperature settings
So both the drivers that support the popular AC systems down under make use of that single Temperature setpoint
That said, sinse tap and hold is not all that intuitive for many they might never figure out they could raise or lower the temp (money out of my pocket) when they tap and nothing happens.