Honeycomb tablet users? App testing needed

[garrettwp]

I am in the process of building a honeycomb app to interface with Vera. I have made some huge progress and wanted to know if anyone with a honeycomb tablet would be willing to test it. Mind you, it contains bugs and unfinished features. But wanted to get feedback and work out any issues that as a developer has missed.

- Garrett

[deimos_anomaly]

I have a Motorola Xoom wifi, and would be willing to do some testing for you.

[garrettwp]

Can you give me your email address so I can send you the application? I will try and having something for you tonight. It has been a long week at work and I have some catching up to do. In the mean time, have a look here to see some screen shots:

https://www.wuala.com/garrettwp/Photos/AutHomationHD/?key=xo0oZz1tDkEJ

- Garrett

[guessed]

What specifically is triggering the Honeycomb dependency?

Most of the readily available tabs are 2.2 or 2.3 (Gingerbread)

[deimos_anomaly]

Aparently I do not have the ability to send private messages, If you could send me your email address then I can reply to it.

[garrettwp]

@guessed

At the time I was making the app for the phone and stopped development (had little time). The development only reached with getting the data from vera. When I got my honeycomb tablet and had more time I started to work on the app again. My first priority was getting it to work on the tablet and phone second. I was trying to conform to google's suggestions for honeycomb development and wanted to use the new api's only available to the honeycomb platform. Google has released a compatibility package, but I do not know if all of the api's i have in my app will work with it.

Now with ice cream coming along, there are more api's that google is adding to help with the layouts to be easier to design across all device screen sizes. This was added in the 3.2 release. I know my user base will be small right now. I hope to have phone support (not sure if it will include 2.3 and under devices).

I do have to say that it has been a lot of work and to support different screen sizes on different releases will be even more so. The one thing I hate about android is the fragmentation!


- Garrett

[guessed]

Fair enough.  I have a CM7 Nook Color.. Which is why I'm asking.

[deimos_anomaly]

Sorry for the delay I have been at work for most of the last few days. I have installed your program and started playing around with it. The setup was easy I used the auto setup button, that worked for both local and remote mode. All of my devices show up just fine including my Panasonic cameras. The only problems I have noticed so far was with my schlage lochs of which one is a deadbolt and three are door locks. I have only tried in local mode so far but my locks don't always respond and sometimes report the wrong state. Also while in remote mode I have gotten a few error messages like connection timed out and something like null state reported, but it may be my connection teathered to my phone. I have only used it for a few minutes so far, I will play with it much more tomorrow and take notes. I can say that so far I am very impressed with it.

[garrettwp]

No problem with the delay. I was going to email you to see if you got my email. Was not sure if it sent ok. I hear you with work. I worked many 16 hour shifts this week and have not had time to do much. I have been trying to catch up on sleep the last few days.

I will email you with a newer release. The connection issues can be due to either vera being busy (need to find a better way to distinguish vera being busy and actual connection issues) or that there were actual connection issues. As for the locks, this will be hit or miss for proper status. The locks take longer to respond than regular devices due to the security and vera also can also get the status wrong as well. I have a longer delay to retrieve the refreshed data when a command for the lock is issued than for other devices (this is 10 seconds and not the normal 5 seconds for everything else).

I can make the delay longer for the locks, but I do not want to make it too long to give the impression that it is taking forever for refreshes to occur. You can issue a poll on the device. This can be done by tapping and holding anywhere on the device to have a menu pop up at the top. Clicking the poll button will tell vera to poll the device. This should get the correct status (both for vera and the app). I have also had issues with correct status in vera with my locks. So this is something I will have to keep tweaking to get the right settings for better status reporting.

For the cameras, I still have to implement the controls. Need to figure out how I want to go about that. But to refresh the image of the camera, just hit the image and it should refresh.

The new release that I will email you will have sorting options in the rooms and in scenes, devices, and favorites. For the rooms, you can sort by name and section (sections will be removed in future releases due to UI5 not having them anymore). Scenes can be sorted by name and their active state. Devices can be sorted by name and to keep the device types together (dimmers together, locks together, etc). There is also an option to show certain devices in the rooms as well. So if you only want to show locks you can, if you want to show locks and cameras you can and so on.

I still need to work out outstanding bugs that, it seems to be pretty stable (from my testing). But I need more people to test it out as there can be issues that I overlook that others will find. Keep me posted on your issues, suggestions, etc.

Thanks again,

- Garrett

[deimos_anomaly]

I am trying out your updated version on remote mode (at work lol) tethered to my sprint phone through wifi. The locks seem much more responsive now, I wont know for sure untill I am at home to make sure they are physicaly responding. So far no connection issues either. I like the option to sort devices. Three things however stand out, that there is no option to start the program in devices or favorites that I can see anyway. Also I typicaly use my tablet upside down in a stand so the charging plug faces up to keep it plugged in, however there is no option to have the screen auto rotate. An example is your program would work great as a wall mounted tablet, but it may need to be oriented differently on the wall. Lastly when I switch between local and remote (maybe a button on the main screen for this in addition to in the settings menu) I need to auto configure each time. I will do some testing later today at home in local mode where It will be mostly as my tablet almost always stays home. Looks great though so far with a bit of tweaking this could easly be the best Android (honeycomb) vera app out there, sorry Rakstar yours is good also lol.

[deimos_anomaly]

BTW forum moderator if you are listening I think It is time to give AutHomation it's own forum subcategory.

[garrettwp]

@deimos_anomaly

- For the response of the locks. Nothing has changed on the backend. The issues you were probably experiencing were probably due to connection related issues. But keep me posted otherwise on the responsiveness.

- The option to choose a tab is actually in the code, I accidentally disabled it when I removed the sorted options from the settings -> application settings menu. If you noticed the application settings menu exist in the preferences, but there is nothing there. I also had some sorting options in there for the rooms and devices. I'll add the default tab selection in the next build. Just to give you a heads up. One of the bugs is that if the app sits idle in the background (this is usually the paused state in android) there is a weird issue when the app is resumed, the app gets confused on the correct tab to show. For example if you have it on the device tab, you put the app in the background, it sits for some time, you resume the app, the default tab will show devices, but the favorites tab may show. Hitting the tabs a few times corrects the right state, or hitting the app icon at the time right corner will fix the issue. I need to figure this bug out.

- As for portrait mode, I have it locked in landscape mode until I can figure out how I want to go about the portrait layout. If you have any suggestions, let me know. I have a Asus Transformer and my plug is oriented at the bottom in landscape mode.

- For right now you have to hit the autoconfig to have it switch between connections. Still trying to brainstorm the best coarse of action for that one.

Keep the feedback coming.

- Garrett

p.s. Thanks for the comment about being a good app. I have to give a credit to Rakstar as he has provided me with help in the beginning. This mention will be added to the "About" option of the app.

[deimos_anomaly]

played around a bit in local, the only problem is in the first say 10 min of connecting to my home wifi things seemed real sluggish and this error popped up quite a bit.

An unknown error occurred
ERROR: java.net.socketTimeoutException

After a bit everything seemed fine and no problems even with the locks.

I did notice the application settings tab being empty and figured it was a work in progress.

As far as he screen orentation goes that would be a big help in a future release. For now to keep your app open I can not plug in my xoom because the charging port is on the bottom and I am using a simple acrylic stand that blocks it.

Here is a list of devices I have tested

- a whole bunch of GE Jasco on/off in wall switches
- appliance modules of various types (GE / Wayne Dalton)
- 1 GE dimmer module on a LED lamp
- several GE Jasco in wall outlets
- 2 Traine / Schlage thermostats
- 1 home manageables door / window sensor
- 1 Homeseer HSM100 3 in one sensor
- 4 Schlage locks
- 4 panasonic ip cameras
- 1 TED 5000 plugin (thanks to woodsby) <------- Not supported by your software
- 2 GE 45601 remotes

Out of all that everything works great except the TED 500 plugin, not that worried about it, but it would be nice.

again thanks for giving me the opportunity to test your app

BTW I think AutHomation is plenty good enough to put to the app market and share with the rest of the community (just my thoughts)

[garrettwp]

Not sure why the sluggishness. Is this just in the app or as well as the tablet itself?

The TED 5000 support is on my list. The only issue is that the plugin does not specify a device category. So parsing the data will need extra work to distinguish the device. The Brultech that guessed has in his setup uses the correct category. So that I can add easily. woodsby, the developer of the TED5000 plugin would have to make the change. Unless I can figure out how to modify his script to correct this.

I am going to add a few more things to the program and then I will figure out how I am going to go about releasing to the market. Most likely I will release it free of charge as I want to give back to the community.

- Garrett

[garrettwp]

I forgot to ask. Were you using the auto refresh option when the sluggishness occurred?

- Garrett