jbev Posted July 23, 2007 Posted July 23, 2007 Hi Michel, We were talking over on the Smarthome site, but I figured this was a better place to ask this. Is there any plan for future support for some sort of touch screen? I imagine that would be a pretty popular add-on amongst the DIY crowd. I had some thoughts for a temporary solution for me, but nothing that would work in the long term for the general population at any reasonable cost.
Michel Kohanim Posted July 23, 2007 Posted July 23, 2007 Hello jbev, We are working on a touchscreen solution but we've reached a dilemma to which we have not yet found an elegant answer. In short, our desire is to have: a. a very inexpensive and affordable product b. keep it generic so that any Windows/Linux touchscreen can be used And, we have not been able to arrive at the design yet. May I humbly ask what temporary solution do you have in mind? With kind regards, Michel Hi Michel, We were talking over on the Smarthome site, but I figured this was a better place to ask this. Is there any plan for future support for some sort of touch screen? I imagine that would be a pretty popular add-on amongst the DIY crowd. I had some thoughts for a temporary solution for me, but nothing that would work in the long term for the general population at any reasonable cost.
jbev Posted July 23, 2007 Posted July 23, 2007 You can tell I am desperate to think of this... Since I am a field engineer that does start-ups and other related things, I use Allen Bradley stuff at work for the industrial controls. I was thinking of using a Micrologix 1500 and a Panelview 600+ which both have ethernet... then add some analog output cards to the 1500 to use for light controls. Basically I could write whatever interface I wanted on the screen and program the thing to stand on one leg and jump up and down... of course the price would be kinda... bad. Besides, I don;t think I want to come home and see the same Allen Bradely logo on in my wall as I stare at all day at work. The upside is that it would be rock solid and I could walk away from it knowing it woudl work and I could remote into the PLC to make changes remotely.
Michel Kohanim Posted July 23, 2007 Posted July 23, 2007 jbev, Quite interesting so much so that .... With regards, Michel You can tell I am desperate to think of this... Since I am a field engineer that does start-ups and other related things, I use Allen Bradley stuff at work for the industrial controls. I was thinking of using a Micrologix 1500 and a Panelview 600+ which both have ethernet... then add some analog output cards to the 1500 to use for light controls. Basically I could write whatever interface I wanted on the screen and program the thing to stand on one leg and jump up and down... of course the price would be kinda... bad. Besides, I don;t think I want to come home and see the same Allen Bradely logo on in my wall as I stare at all day at work. The upside is that it would be rock solid and I could walk away from it knowing it woudl work and I could remote into the PLC to make changes remotely.
jbev Posted July 23, 2007 Posted July 23, 2007 Yeah, its gonna be fun to market that one to the masses... I'd love to see someone try that.
Michel Kohanim Posted July 23, 2007 Posted July 23, 2007 jbev, Well, if you can make it web services and run on any of Windows CE/Embedded XP/Mobile/ucLinux, I'd buy one from you ... With kind regards, Michel Yeah, its gonna be fun to market that one to the masses... I'd love to see someone try that.
jbev Posted July 23, 2007 Posted July 23, 2007 Well, there is a Windows CE version available... http://www.ab.com/eoi/graphicterminals/index.html I have never played with the WINCE versions though so I can't tell you anything about their capabilities. Cost of Panelview - $1,200 Cost of develepment software - $6,000 Price of making it all work so you can give up and go to bed - Priceless
Michel Kohanim Posted July 23, 2007 Posted July 23, 2007 jbev, Wow ... this is quite expensive! I guess we have to continue pursuing less expensive devices. Thanks so very much for your feedback, With kind regards, Michel Well, there is a Windows CE version available... http://www.ab.com/eoi/graphicterminals/index.html I have never played with the WINCE versions though so I can't tell you anything about their capabilities. Cost of Panelview - $1,200 Cost of develepment software - $6,000 Price of making it all work so you can give up and go to bed - Priceless
jbev Posted July 23, 2007 Posted July 23, 2007 What makes this worse is that the development software isn't needed by you. Its going be needed by the end user that is programming the panel. Not a pretty picture... If you ever find a sub $500 touchpanel, even with limited features, let me know and I'l be there as a test subject. All I'd want is something that I could put buttons on and customize the pictures on them. Put a few pages there and have all the buttons trigger group triggers or something... shoudn't be hard to do that, but I am sure everyone wants everything.
Michel Kohanim Posted July 23, 2007 Posted July 23, 2007 jbev, You are 100% correct ... let me see what we can find but, at the moment, the possibilities seem rather slim! Thanks so very much for your feedback, With kind regards, Michel What makes this worse is that the development software isn't needed by you. Its going be needed by the end user that is programming the panel. Not a pretty picture... If you ever find a sub $500 touchpanel, even with limited features, let me know and I'l be there as a test subject. All I'd want is something that I could put buttons on and customize the pictures on them. Put a few pages there and have all the buttons trigger group triggers or something... shoudn't be hard to do that, but I am sure everyone wants everything.
sloop Posted July 24, 2007 Posted July 24, 2007 years ago smarthome had a monochrome touchscreen panel for x10 - as best i recall, it was available in two models - i had the timerlinc - it would do macros, timers and scenes - i don't remember what i paid for it but about $200 is what i want to say - i loved that little device problem is, we will want color - then icons - then floorplans - then audio - then you have a $1200 device - lol
Michel Kohanim Posted July 24, 2007 Posted July 24, 2007 sloop, You are right on! This is absolutely the path we do not want to take: there are so many other home automation solutions for that price and so many other touch-screens in the same vicinity. Also, the main issue with a touch screen is that it's specific to each individual application. I think it would be much nicer if we just built the software to run on any touch-screen, PDA, PocketPC, etc. This way, the customer has a choice with his/her allocated budget. Thanks so very much, With kind regards, Michel years ago smarthome had a monochrome touchscreen panel for x10 - as best i recall, it was available in two models - i had the timerlinc - it would do macros, timers and scenes - i don't remember what i paid for it but about $200 is what i want to say - i loved that little device problem is, we will want color - then icons - then floorplans - then audio - then you have a $1200 device - lol
jbev Posted July 24, 2007 Posted July 24, 2007 It would be be a good start not to try and do everything... perhaps just having custom buttons that triggered macros and controlled events like the hard buttons do. Not a smart panel, just a customized version of a hard contrller. I'll have to look around, but I thought you guys were going to release some SDKs for the ISY. If you aren't like Smarthome where you lock everything down and make it a national secret you will probably get much more help from teh community.
jbev Posted July 25, 2007 Posted July 25, 2007 I'm not done yet. I was looking around here since I have bought some stuff from them before and saw a neat 2.7" color touchscreen display and thought cool. Then I saw that it had an option for I2C interface and I remembered that on the Smarthome forum someone said you had I2C pins on the processor you used... http://store.earthlcd.com/LCD-Products/2-7-LCD-Kits Then I saw this, but the price seems way too high: http://store.earthlcd.com/ezLCD-101-EDK ... tegory=445 Then I got frustrated and called them... The guy there said that they don't make any embedded PCs, just displays... but he referred me to the president of TouchTronix. I sent him an email since the stuff he has is well... freakin cool. And the price is right for me. http://www.touchtronix.com/index.html I don't care about the 12" stuff, but the RAD-I/O is pretty cool. When you see that $1300 price I confirmed that it includes 4 touch screens and the PCI controller card... The screens apear to be Ethernet too... can you see where this is going? Please? Help me help myself... EDIT: I forgot to mention the omportant part: http://www.touchtronix.com/products/rad-io_oem.html Looks like Windows CE is in the future....
Michel Kohanim Posted July 25, 2007 Posted July 25, 2007 jbev, Wow, quite wonderful research. This is amazing. Thanks so very much. Now, here comes my issues with these technologies: a. We surely support I2C and would like to use it to extend our capabilities but I am not sure how many people would actually want to run I2C wires (need two: clock/data) between their ISYs and their touch-screen. The problem gets exacerbrated with larger distances b. TouchTronix ... except for your last link to the OEM section, they run a Windows session; this means that you HAVE TO HAVE a computer on all the time to play the host for the touchscreen. This is something we are trying to avoid: having to have a dedicated computer on all the time The OEM one looks much more promising but, then again, it's something in the future. I love the fact that it can also run Linux and thus we won't have to pay Windows CE licenses ... I just wished they had a solution now that we could experiment with. Nonetheless, this is excellent research and one which has reduced the amouth of research we have to do ourselves. I thank you for it. With kind regards, Michel I'm not done yet. I was looking around here since I have bought some stuff from them before and saw a neat 2.7" color touchscreen display and thought cool. Then I saw that it had an option for I2C interface and I remembered that on the Smarthome forum someone said you had I2C pins on the processor you used... http://store.earthlcd.com/LCD-Products/2-7-LCD-Kits Then I saw this, but the price seems way too high: http://store.earthlcd.com/ezLCD-101-EDK ... tegory=445 Then I got frustrated and called them... The guy there said that they don't make any embedded PCs, just displays... but he referred me to the president of TouchTronix. I sent him an email since the stuff he has is well... freakin cool. And the price is right for me. http://www.touchtronix.com/index.html I don't care about the 12" stuff, but the RAD-I/O is pretty cool. When you see that $1300 price I confirmed that it includes 4 touch screens and the PCI controller card... The screens apear to be Ethernet too... can you see where this is going? Please? Help me help myself... EDIT: I forgot to mention the omportant part: http://www.touchtronix.com/products/rad-io_oem.html Looks like Windows CE is in the future....
sfhutchi Posted August 9, 2007 Posted August 9, 2007 With Houselinc Desktop I set triggers to turn off devices like bathroom fans after a period of time. Basically, if Load X 'on' is pressed, wait 10 minutes, then send load x 'off'. I am assuming that the next version with enhanced triggers will handle this. What I would like to explore is the possibility of having these timers reset if there is activity at this load. For example, if I want to employ this same concept on other loads but for an hour for example (essentially a trigger to ensure that lights are inadvertently left on), I would want the hour count down to start over if during that 1 hour, someone turns off the light manually and turns it back on again. I guess depending on how this is programmed.. I would like to see that that count down timer is tied to the specific load that called it. Otherwise, someone could turn off and then turn the light back on 59 minutes later... and then see the light turn off in one minute. Basically if that trigger that looked for the 'on' press at that load simply restarted the same timer, I think that this would work.
Michel Kohanim Posted August 9, 2007 Posted August 9, 2007 sfhutchi, Yes, this requirement would certainly be met by our trigger release. Thanks so very much for the explanation. With kind regards, Michel With Houselinc Desktop I set triggers to turn off devices like bathroom fans after a period of time.Basically, if Load X 'on' is pressed, wait 10 minutes, then send load x 'off'. I am assuming that the next version with enhanced triggers will handle this. What I would like to explore is the possibility of having these timers reset if there is activity at this load. For example, if I want to employ this same concept on other loads but for an hour for example (essentially a trigger to ensure that lights are inadvertently left on), I would want the hour count down to start over if during that 1 hour, someone turns off the light manually and turns it back on again. I guess depending on how this is programmed.. I would like to see that that count down timer is tied to the specific load that called it. Otherwise, someone could turn off and then turn the light back on 59 minutes later... and then see the light turn off in one minute. Basically if that trigger that looked for the 'on' press at that load simply restarted the same timer, I think that this would work.
C Martin Posted August 10, 2007 Posted August 10, 2007 I posted this under another subject while discussing triggers and so forth. I felt it should also be posted here, and I don't know if I or some other person may have requested this before. Is it possible to have time delays available in scenes? Right now a scene just has a seires of events - one after the other. I would like to be able to have time delays between the devices that I call in a scene. "Do this Trigger or Device" "wait 10 mins" "do the next Trigger or Device" "Wait 60 Mins." "Do the next Trigger or Device" and so forth. Thanks for you patience with us requesters..
Michel Kohanim Posted August 10, 2007 Posted August 10, 2007 C Martin, This is surely available in our trigger release (which I keep promising and have not delivered yet)! Thanks so very much, With kind regards, Michel I posted this under another subject while discussing triggers and so forth.I felt it should also be posted here, and I don't know if I or some other person may have requested this before. Is it possible to have time delays available in scenes? Right now a scene just has a seires of events - one after the other. I would like to be able to have time delays between the devices that I call in a scene. "Do this Trigger or Device" "wait 10 mins" "do the next Trigger or Device" "Wait 60 Mins." "Do the next Trigger or Device" and so forth. Thanks for you patience with us requesters..
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