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Ideas & Feature Requests
Ability to fix the State of a Tile via Long Press
The https://bondhome.io/ app has an awesome feature to "fix" the status of their tiles.
For example, if someone turns my fan light using the fan remote, my BOND app would not show as the light is on. In order to fix it, I just hold down any tile in their app (in this case the fan light tile) and it corrects the status of the tile.
So by holding it down it changes the tile from off to showing on without sending a command to the fan.
If a feature like that could be added for your tiles would be awesome.
Hope this made sense.
Answer
Thanks for the feedback / idea...
Some Feature Requests fall into the bucket of being too much of a "rare edge case" or have other practicality issues, that we are unlikely to give it much consideration. Sure... we'll keep the Topic open for a while in case we have underestimated interest and it gathers Votes or additional use-case comments.
So there's two concerns:
- "Long Press" is not a gesture option for a Material Design (and "Accessible") compliant web-app. Long press should reveal the text tooltip in most cases (like a hover with a mouse). I use Nova Launcher for Android, and, indeed, it recognizes all sorts of unique gestures, such as long-press and swipe-across-icon. We don't plan to add this hidden layer of complexity to ActionTiles; but it could happen in some far future generation. So if we offered special functionality like this, it would have to be via the standard Tile overflow menu (...).
- We know there are various types of Devices that do not relay their State Changes back to SmartThings (and, in turn, ActionTiles) when acted upon manually or via some other type of control like Alexa Voice. Even certain brands of Z-Wave light-switches may not report manual activation, due to a patent restriction from Lutron. Still ... we don't think it should be a household member's responsibility to "manually" fix or override the Tile State, especially since that still leaves the SmartThings Cloud out of sync (and thus the SmartThings App and any SmartApps that subscribe to the Device, etc.). Many Device Type Handlers periodically "poll" the physical device to determine if the State has changed and thus eventually update. In other cases, the displayed state is not critical, since if the fan has been turned "on" via remote and the Tile still indicates "off", simply tapping the tile twice will ensure it is turned "off" (i.e., first tap will switch the Tile to "on" and send the on() command to the Fan (which should be harmlessly ignored; and the second tap will switch the Tile to "off" and send the off() command to the Fan, resulting in the desired consistent state).
There is no mechanism in ActionTiles to change the State of a Tile without it having (a) been tapped, and/or (b) receiving a State Change Event from SmartThings.
Thanks,
...Terry.
It happens with virtual switches that are used via IFTTT. Thats how I control my BOND to work with ST. THX for the reply.
So you're saying that when you turn on your Fan using IFTTT, that SmartThings and/or ActionTiles is not updated?
If that's the case, then it may be possible to enhance the SmartThings end to better handle the IFTTT request; either by using a custom Virtual Switch, and/or by adding a SmartApp which tracks the Virtual Switch activity or something like that.
I can sorta guess... but I'd need to know more detail... like a step-by-step of what you have set up. Also let me know if you're comfortable doing any SmartThings or webCoRE programming to possibly fill the gap.
my IFTTT, ST & AT all communicate as they should. I was just saying that I use my bond in st via virtual switches controlled by IFTTT.
The only times when no change in the tile happens is for example, the fan’s light is turned on manually via its remote but of course that is expected.
In the bond app, I can have the light tile mimic the light is on in the fan by Long pressing the fan light tile. This allows the bond app to now say the light is on via the app without doing anything to the fan light.
The only times when no change in the tile happens is for example, the fan’s light is turned on manually via its remote but of course that is expected.
That's not really "expected" ... it is not SmartThings compliant behavior. All Switches are both Actuators andSensors. In other words, just like a Contact sensor reports to SmartThings when a door opens or closes, a Switch is supposed to report to SmartThings (and thus, ActionTiles) when it is turned on or off manually.
So you're saying that even in the Bond App, the Fan doesn't report its State change if the fan is manually operated? If it does then you can possibly have IFTTT (or Stringify) get notified by the Bond service, and have that trigger the Virtual Switch in SmartThings.
But if the Bond App itself isn't updated, then ... I'm inclined to say that this Fan isn't a particularly "smart" device...
Still ... I don't understand why you need long press (or any other gesture), other than just Tapping the Switch Tile. If the Switch Tile sends an extra On command to a Fan that is already On ... won't the Fan just stay On?
Customer support service by UserEcho
Thanks for the feedback / idea...
Some Feature Requests fall into the bucket of being too much of a "rare edge case" or have other practicality issues, that we are unlikely to give it much consideration. Sure... we'll keep the Topic open for a while in case we have underestimated interest and it gathers Votes or additional use-case comments.
So there's two concerns:
There is no mechanism in ActionTiles to change the State of a Tile without it having (a) been tapped, and/or (b) receiving a State Change Event from SmartThings.
Thanks,
...Terry.