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Questions about Tile elements and layout chosen for v6.7.2
I have a design question, how come you removed the battery percentage to streamline the design but left in the open/closed text. That info only has two variables and it is displayed in the icon status. The battery percentage is nice additional info that takes up minimal space. I actually wanted to put in a request to have a way to add more info to a single tile. Most of my door senors have a temperature also. I wanted to be able to have a single tile show temp and door status instead of having to split it up over 2 different tiles. For me the tile space is extremely valuable as I try to fit everything on to one screen.
Answers
My ideal tile for a contact sensor would be Name at the top center, icon middle center, temp bottom left, battery percent (no icon) bottom right. I wouldn't need the words Open/Closed at all. This would also be for my garage door tile even though it doesn't have temp.
For lights I wouldn't need On/Off, but just the dimmer percent center bottom if it's a dimming bulb/switch.
Nick,
With the introduction of Tile Intentions, it's now possible to have a tile with distinct states to be displayed with the same Intention and that would make the states indistinguishable. Also, some states icons are a little bit confusing and require a text label.
Battery levels are very transient values. They usually don't change often and not rapidly. They do, however, take up valuable space and distract from the primary value that needs to be monitored.
With the release 6.7, we tried to optimize and unify the layout of Tiles making the icons and text stand out and be legible from the distance. Tiles have limited real estate and it's impossible to squeeze all available device attributes into the same tile. Negative space is important for design too.
If you find it important to monitor the battery statuses closely, I recommend creating a dedicated Panel or Tileset to display these values.
The Battery Tiles have Info Intention by default. When the battery level drops below 25%, such tile will light up with Accent Intention and when the battery is depleted to below 5%, the tile will change color with Warn Intention.
Alex
Thank you for your answer, I understand negative space is important but so is the number of tiles needed on a single page. I want to have as much information as possible on one page, not needing to flip through pages. Having blank space or space with text that isn't needed is extremely wasteful. A window sensor that states that a window is open or closed in text is not needed. Why not give us the ability to have the information we want on the tiles? Why must I create multiple tiles to fit all the information from a single sensor. I would have to create 3 tiles to accomplish what could easily be fit into a single one. Lack of customizable ways to display the pertinent information in the way I want deteriorates the usefulness of the software. I really like this product but being restrictive in the way we can display information in our house's will take away from it greatly.
The Tiles are (and always been) Capability oriented rather than Device oriented. If a device has temperature, motion, light and humidity sensors, these values won't necessarily be displayed on the same Tile.
Battery attribute just happens to be extremely common, but it's indicator is only auxiliary to the device's primary value or state.
I agree with Nick D'Auria. I really enjoyed having the battery percentages displayed. I also agree that the battery percentage number is more helpful than the battery image. This is where Action Tiles USED to far surpass SmartThings because I could see all the battery percentages at once. If necessary, I guess I can create more tiles, but that is really inconvenient. Please consider giving us an option to add the battery percentage back to the tile.
Please be sure to allocate some of your Topic VOTES to this idea (yup... you can Vote for your own ideas). The Voting system helps us identify popular items quickly during our design planning sessions.
As per OP, we added the option to display battery indicator or percentage. This option is configurable per tile, using the Tile Options menu.
Customer support service by UserEcho
Nick,
With the introduction of Tile Intentions, it's now possible to have a tile with distinct states to be displayed with the same Intention and that would make the states indistinguishable. Also, some states icons are a little bit confusing and require a text label.
Battery levels are very transient values. They usually don't change often and not rapidly. They do, however, take up valuable space and distract from the primary value that needs to be monitored.
With the release 6.7, we tried to optimize and unify the layout of Tiles making the icons and text stand out and be legible from the distance. Tiles have limited real estate and it's impossible to squeeze all available device attributes into the same tile. Negative space is important for design too.
If you find it important to monitor the battery statuses closely, I recommend creating a dedicated Panel or Tileset to display these values.
The Battery Tiles have Info Intention by default. When the battery level drops below 25%, such tile will light up with Accent Intention and when the battery is depleted to below 5%, the tile will change color with Warn Intention.
Alex
Please be sure to allocate some of your Topic VOTES to this idea (yup... you can Vote for your own ideas). The Voting system helps us identify popular items quickly during our design planning sessions.