ActionTiles Support & Ideas Forum
Public Forum for ActionTiles Customers. Please use the Search Box and carefully browse the results to look for existing relevant Topics before opening a new Topic or Private Helpdesk Ticket.
Current outside temperature or sensor that works with smartthings
I am looking for a tile for just the current outside temperature. I do not want a multiday tile, just a super basic current outside temperature. I am also fine with buying a sensor that I can mount outside that will work with smartthings
A Panel width Setting to help layout consistency for Panels viewed on different screen sizes
I've been using smarttiles/actiontiles for years now and there's a specific functionality that seems super simple to implement, but remains missing... I'd like to be able to set a maximum panel width, so I can achieve the same flow of tiles on multiple similar sized devices... it could simply center the tiles on screens with larger resolutions, or could scale tiles +/- ~20% to fit the available resolution of the screen... for smaller screens, it would still wrap the tiles of one row into 2 or more, but it's just too much to maintain unique panels for each unique display type... so, for starters, could we at least be able to specify max tile spaces wide for a panel?
iPad Kiosk app? Wake on front camera motion?
I tried to search the forum for this answer, but could not find anything. I was looking to create another smart panel for my house and have an iPad Gen 2 laying around and figured I would try to repurpose this. Unfortunately I can't seem to find anything like Fully Kiosk that will wake up the screen on motion. From the show me your tiles post I know there are a lot of people using iPads, so what are you using? Or is the display just always on? Thanks in advance.
Transitioning to the new SmartThings platform
On September 30, 2022 October 15, 2022 December 31, 2022 Some time in 2023
SmartThings already started shutting down their legacy Groovy Platform, which affects all ActionTiles users.
Rest
assured that we are working hard to release the migration tools so that
ActionTiles will continue to work with the new SmartThings platform! We
are hoping to a smooth experience with minimal service interruptions.
We will release more information as it becomes available. Please stay tuned for a series of further announcements.
ActionTiles has become an integral part of many smart homes and businesses since 2017. We thank you for your love and support!
Migration instructions:
https://support.actiontiles.com/knowledge-bases/8/articles/12350-smartthings-platform-migration
SmartThings announcement on the community forum:
https://community.smartthings.com/t/the-end-of-groovy-has-arrived
Platform transition FAQs:
https://support.smartthings.com/hc/en-us/articles/7055691183380-Platform-Transition-FAQ
Sonos device showing in hub details but not in hub tiles
Hello,
I'm a new user trying to add a sonos device to my panel.
my setup consists of 3 sonos devices connected through smartthings.
My sonos devices are visible in actiontiles under location/hub details where I can see the last status and the capabilities, but when I try to add a new tile to my panel the sonos devices are not there when all my other devices are.
Can someone point me in the right direction?
Many thanks.
-Niek
How do I add the SmartWeather tile?
I see where I can add individual sensor values of the weather tile (temp, humidity, lux), but how can I add it as a whole in the same way SmartTiles did? I'm sure I'm just missing something here.
Snap feeds no longer working
I have used AT for years with minimal issues. I am running AT on a Fire Tablet that updated to OS 7.3.2.7 last night and I lost my Ubiquiti snap feeds. I am running the Action Tiles app v6.22.08 How can we get the feeds restored and is using snaps the optimal method with Ubiquiti still? I have searched this forum with little luck locating suggestions that work. URL for Video feed still works on the same Fire Browser, my iPhones, all our IOS and windows PCs. Any suggestions to get it working through AT?
HTTP on media tile no longer working (HTTPS still works)
Was the platform recently updated? I have internally hosted items on my panel (limited to http instead of https) and noticed today the http protocol items no longer show up.
Custom stock ticker tile (or any Google Sheets data)
I spent some time this week trying to figure out how to add stock data as a media tile and thought I'd share what I learned. There are a few steps involved and it's not as simple as I initially hoped, but it's also pretty flexible and could easily be expanded to other uses. Essentially, this can turn any Google Sheet into a media tile, so it can be used for much more than stock data.
Background
This started by wanting to display stock tickers as a media tile. I first came across a great post on being able to turning any json data into a badge, but this had the limitation of only being able to display one piece of data. I wanted to be able to display a few different tickers in one tile.
(As an aside, Google provides instructions for getting JSON feeds from spreadsheet data: https://developers.google.com/gdata/samples/spreadsheet_sample)
I also came across this post explaining how to create a media tile from a stock chart, but that also wasn't quite what I wanted: https://support.actiontiles.com/en/communities/12/topics/3014-stock-ticker-tile
Part 1 - Create a public link to Google Sheets data
Example spreadsheet - https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1Id-49n-MnAG6MpzrI3WKAuXXaosg7WVR6PFBIhh8ryY/edit#gid=0
First create a spreadsheet that contains whatever information will be displayed in the tile and share it (File->Share) so it doesn't require a login to view. Then take the spreadsheet ID (the long string in that URL) and sheet ID (the part after gid=) from the link to that sheet and insert them into this link below. You can also specify a range of cells if you only want to use a portion of the sheet. (Reference)
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/SpreadsheedID/pubhtml?single=true&gid=SheetID&range=D15:E15&widget=false&chrome=false&headers=false
For this example, the link is:
This link can be used to create an iFrame tile under "My Shortcuts" in ActionTiles and you can stop here if that's all you need. The main shortcoming is that shortcut tiles don't auto update until you refresh the browser. You'll also need to adjust the width and height of the cells so that it fits well into the tile.
If you want the tile to update without refreshing the browser and adjust its size automatically to fit the cell, then it needs to be turned into an image that can be used for a media tile which has a refresh rate.
Part 2a - create an image to be used as a media tiles
This part requires running a couple command line tools on a Linux server. I have a Raspberry Pi set up that I use for this.
The first tool is wkhtmltoimage which converts any webpage to an image. This supports creating svg, jpg, bmp, or png images. I found that svg is the best quality. The command is:
wkhtmltoimage --crop-w 224 --crop-h 112 --height 1024 "$imgURL" $outFile.svg
crop-w - the width of the spreadsheet range
crop-h - the height of the spreadsheet range
height - this just needs to be larger than crop-h. I found that the default value used was too small
imgURL - the public link to the spreadsheet URL
outFile - where the resulting image is stored
Here is the command I use for this example which outputs the image in a file called stock_example.svg
wkhtmltoimage --crop-w 224 --crop-h 112 --height 1024 "https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1Id-49n-MnAG6MpzrI3WKAuXXaosg7WVR6PFBIhh8ryY/htmlembed?single=true&gid=0&range=A2:C5&widget=false&chrome=false&headers=false" stock_example.svg
Part 2b - Create a link to the image
Now I use rclone to add the image to my Google Drive, but this also supports other services like Dropbox and Amazon Drive. (If you have your own web server, you could also just copy the file there and not worry about using rclone.) The command for rclone is:
rclone copy <outFile> <driveName>:<folder>
outFile - the path to the image that was created in the last step
driveName - this should be the name of the drive you set up when configuring rclone
folder - the name of the folder on my Google Drive where the image gets saved
For this example (with a drive gdrive and folder ActionTiles) the command is:
rclone copy stock_example.svg gdrive:ActionTiles
Part 2c - Automatic updates
Note: Here I explain how to share the image using Google Drive, but this could also be done with any service that rclone supports like Dropbox or Amazon Drive.
The last step is to automate all of this so that the data is updated periodically. To do that, I put the wkhtmltoimage and rclone commands into a script called updateStocks.sh and then set up a cron job to run at the desired interval. Here's my cron entry which runs every 10 minutes while the market is open (9-4 Mon-Fri)
*/10 9-16 * * 1-5 /home/pi/actiontiles/updateStocks.sh
Then in Google Drive, you need to share the image publicly and you'll get a link like this:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/15bxoWJeH4fbyzUz9G44I72Tly4nE0fkt/view?usp=sharing
The direct link to the image takes the below format, inserting the proper ID:
https://drive.google.com/uc?id=IMG_ID
So in this example the direct link to the image is:
https://drive.google.com/uc?id=15bxoWJeH4fbyzUz9G44I72Tly4nE0fkt
Then in ActionTiles, use that link for a media tile and set the refresh 600 seconds (or whatever refresh rate you prefer).
Some final notes
- One of the coolest parts of this is that any changes you make to the spreadsheet (values, colors, size, etc.) will automatically show up in ActionTiles. No extra steps are needed after the initial configuration.
- The width and height of the cells in your spreadsheet should be modified so that they fit nicely in a tile
- I also made the background color of my cells match the color used by the ActionTiles theme
- When generating the .svg image, thin cell borders are added. I haven't found a way to get rid of this
- wkhtmltoimage seems to cache the site. Sometimes it takes a few minutes after updating the spreadsheet before the image produced from this tool is updated
If you made it this far, thanks for reading. Please comment if you have any questions or come up with other ideas of how to use Google Sheets to create interesting tiles!
SmartThings weather tile doesn’t update info
Hi all I’m new on AT and I have an issue with the SmartThings Weather. I have created the Simulated switch as per procedure but the data in AT are not update as you can see in the image. Any suggestion on how to fix it? Thanks
While a SmartWeather Station Tiles is displayed, ActionTiles pulls the latest data from SmartThings every 30 minutes and issues the update command.
If SmartThings fails to update or provide accurate data, there's nothing else that could be done from our side.
Show me your Panels! - Gallery 3 (enhanced Themes)
Continuing from very popular first 2 Galleries of Panels:
- https://support.actiontiles.com/communities/12/topics/1433-show-me-your-panels-gallery-1
- https://support.actiontiles.com/communities/12/topics/4847-show-me-your-panels-gallery-2
Here's a place for Customers to share your Panels and related stories. This content may be copied to other sharing services like Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, etc..
NB: Inquiries about the techniques used to create the particular Panels, frames, etc., may be spun off by the Moderator into new Topics or Help Desk tickets to avoid too much threading here.
More details (Release Notes) about ActionTiles v6.10.0 (enhanced Theme Builder) are at:
The biggest changes and new Features of this Release are the enhancements made to Theme Builder (and thus, much more powerful customization of Panel Appearance). On a related note, Tiles also have new Animations and Effects options!
I've pasted a snapshot at the end of this Post showing off some of the new Theme Builder.
Be creative - Go Wild!
We have had many Customer requests to allow Panels to be more vibrant, cool, textured, and fabulous. The new options in Theme Builder make this possible. You can use Google to find "wallpaper" library websites - many of which allow hot-linking of the images as a Panel Background Image. Tweak the opacity/transparency value of the Tile Background Color (for each Tile Intention) using the Color Picker, to decide how much of the beautify background to show through. And/or you can strategically use more Blank Tiles as windows to parts of the background, such as the blossoms on a tree branch, or the moons in a fantasy solar system...
Share your Creations, please; as Comments:
Help inspire Customers to dive into the Enhanced Theme Builder. Let us know what wallpaper gallery websites you find attractive. Many of the images on such websites are completely free of restrictions for personal use.
Thousand thanks, everyone. Looking forward to seeing your Panels with just simple bits of flair as well as a few which will surely be incredible works of art. - No pressure! 😉
Please note: Per ActionTiles's Terms of Service, any or all images shared here may be used by ActionTiles for any purpose, including advertising and/or embedding in the app and/or our websites, social media, etc.. You are granting ActionTiles a perpetual royalty free unrestricted license to use the content you share in any way we see fit.
Thanks and ... have fun!
...Terry (& Alex)
STHM and Simulated Switches issues, July 2023
In early July 2023, some unspecified SmartThings platform changes had unexpected consequences that affected some Virtual/Simulated switches.
https://community.smartthings.com/t/legacy-virtual-switches-stopped-working-july-2023/265871
This had impact on SmartThings Home Monitor workaround that many users have been using successfully for years.
SmartThings platform is changing rapidly with some tools and processes become obsolete. We created a new knowledge base article that describes the process to integrate SmartThings Home Monitor with ActionTiles using the current tools.
SmartThings released the the IDE that facilitates creation of virtual devices:
https://my.smartthings.com/advanced
If your existing STHM integration workaround is not working, it is recommended to remove previously created Virtual/Simulated switches and recreate the integration using the following instructions:
Enter valid url with ActionTile on Fire HD
I've been using Fully and ActionTile on my Fire HD with TinyCam Pro for several years flawlessly and over the past month the video tiles stopped working and I get the "Enter Valid URL" message on Fire HD within my Fully browser. If I go into my ActionTile via my desktop all urls work properly and display. If I plug properly in the url into a browser on my FIre HD, it works properly. When I enter my panels to edit through Fully browser, I get the "Enter valid url". I've attempted to reenter the http://xxxx.xxx.x.xx:8083/axis-cgi/mjpg/video.cgi?camera=1&user=xxxxx&pwd=xxxxxx in the Media tiles with no avail. The only changes would have been OS and Fully updates.
I've searched the threads and didn't see anything listed as new issues. I've read through and all recommended settings and configurations are set as recommended.
Thanks,
Andy
Countdown timer
Am migrating our entry tablet into ActionTiles. Using a basic Android tablet with a countdown timer widget (kids usually want Christmas, I want the day they all move out). Is there a way to add a countdown timer tile to ActionTiles? I tried using a couple online countdown timers but they don't seem to display correctly in the tile (they are just a link to that page). Any ideas?
Hubitat Integration Public Beta (March 2021)
Hubitat integration is now ready for Public Beta!
We are opening up registrations starting today. You will be able to use the Hubitat Elevation platform with ActionTiles for an extended period of time, free of charge, while we iron out any kinks that come up. When the integration will be deemed stable, a standard 14-day free trial period will begin after advanced notice.
Make sure that your Hubitat Hub has the latest firmware built 2.2.6.130.
The use of ActionTiles platform is subject to our Terms and Conditions. A license will be required to continue using the Hubitat integration after a trial period. The licensing fees will be similar to SmartThings Locations / Hubs.
Send URL shortcut command without opening a new page?
Can you add an option to Shortcut Tiles Settings, so you can execute a URL command in the background without opening a new window?
For example, I have created station preset buttons and volume controls in ActionTiles, but when the URL is sent, the server returns a device/command status response message which I don't care to view, and is annoying since I have to navigate back to the panel via the Android back button.
Perhaps a "Don't open a window" option would do the trick?
Media Tiles update interval has been 'sketchy' since about the time of the retirement of groovy
Since around the time of the the retirement of Groovy my static image media tiles have not been updating on a consistent basis. It does not seem to matter what I set the refresh interval to - I have also tried leaving it blank.
Clicking on them does not refresh them which I also find strange. I can 'force' a refresh by reloading the panel or restarting the browser but that is not what I want.
Any thoughts?
Outdoor temperature from Weather Underground to replace SmartWeather Station
I have been using the SmartWeather Station tile from Smartthings on my 8" Fire tablet and it is still working but it only updates every three hours, which makes it useless since the temperature can be vastly different in that range. I'm looking for a way to replace this functionality and simply display the current outdoor temperature sourced from a Weather Underground station a few houses away. Given that SmartWeather Station is no longer supported (True?) is there a replacement for this seemingly simple function? I have seen forecast and weather map tiles but not plain old temperature. Bonus for humidity, lumins, barometer, etc.
Cant get my weather widget to update
I know i must be doing something wrong but for the life of me can't figure it out
this is the widget
Question marks all devices - connected to SmartThings
Have not played around with automation for a long time and am trying to get back into it. I have ActionTiles and Smarthings running and in my ActionTiles dashboard all devices have a question mark. I know it must be an easy fix but I just wanted to ask first. Whats the most likely reason for this?
...ar
Customer support service by UserEcho