General Category > Ideas/Feature requests

Programming the HA

(1/2) > >>

eldaria:
Since I'm a parent and a Techie, I was looking for ways to teach my daughter programming, and I stumbled upon the Code.org, Hour of code campaign, and was thinking about how you will design the HA GUI.

The GUI they use is very easy to learn, and you can build quite complex things without actually knowing code syntax, it is based on some work done at MIT, and there is a similar system for programming Android apps.

Will the HA GUI be as simple as this?

Hour of Code:
http://learn.code.org/hoc/1

MIT App Inventor:
http://appinventor.mit.edu/explore/hour-of-code.html

The system for MIT app inventor could be used for a HA system, where different type of devices are like different hardware devices in the Phone, and thus have different properties.

LGNilsson:
To be brutally honest, as of right now, we don't have anything in place for this, but it's something we'll be working with you guys to get in place, so ideas like this are welcome.
Hopefully some of our developer level backers will work on us with this (you?  :D), as this is one of our weakest points right now.

Mike:
What I have seen from appinventor is great, especially for tech-novices. But apparently these things are still in the early stages, so I hope the initial focus will be on the rudimentals: decent flow control, sensor states, events/triggers, scene composition, things like that, which have more value for the more tech-savy backers/early adoptors.
In the end it would be best if advanced users do not feel limited and first time users dont get get scared from complexity and do get amazed by opportunities once on their way. In a begginners/advanced mode, appinventors style is definifly the way to go for the beginners side. Tasker (android) could be the other one, it has tremendous options to what it can hook in to, but that has been around for years, hard to achieve in a few months.

I appreciate how open you guys are! Id love to keep hearing where things are going :)

LGNilsson:
Our goal is to make an easy to use device and as such, we'll never be another Vera product. I just want to make this very clear.
That said, we know we have a lot of work to do when it comes to making the Almond+ do what you guys want it to do, but at the same time, make it approachable for those that don't have too much experience with home automation.
It's a very fine line to thread, as we don't want to alienate any of our customers because it's too basic or too hard to use.
I hope we can work with our developer community to add some of the more advanced features over time, but as I already mentioned, at day one, the Almond+ won't be doing everything.
We know what we need to do internally, but maybe our way isn't the best way and this is in part why we did the beta/developer tiers, as this will give us early feedback, not just with regards to bugs and other issues, but also with regards to what we need to do on the software side.
Right now we have a working touch screen UI, but it's not "prettyfied" yet, we have native mobile apps and a web app, but again, there are a lot of things we need to add here to make it a fully featured home automation solution for the more advanced users, of which we know quite a few of our backers are.
We believe that with your help, we can make this not just a good product, but a great product and we are listen to all your feedback, it's just not possible for us to do everything at once.

Automate:

--- Quote from: Lars on January 15, 2014, 09:20:15 pm ---we'll never be another Vera product. I just want to make this very clear.
--- End quote ---
This could be interpreted more than one way.  Can you explain how you will be different than Vera?

Thanks,

Navigation

[0] Message Index

[#] Next page