Manually change icons of things

[torkelsson]

Sometimes it is really hard to autodetect what the kind of things. For instance in my case, remotely controlled power on/off switches, the "thing" could be something that controls a sits in a power outlet and controls for instance a power heater for my car, or a lamp or my home theater. Or it could be a "thing" that sits behind the wall mounted on/off switch to a ceiling lamp. But there are no way to automatically distinguish what it is connected to. To make it more user friendly, I think it would be great if it was possible to help the steward to identify what kind of thing it is and to present it for me. For instance by manually change the icon (from a predefined set?) of a thing to something that better matches to what the thing is used.

[mrose17]

good point. realistically the steward doesn't know that you've got a lamp or a fan or a … connected to a plug, just that there's an on-off or a dimmable plug. so, it makes sense to let the user associate an icon with an individual device. i'm need to think about what the "right" approach is. it may take a day or so to figure that out...

[torkelsson]

This could probably be expanded to a more general request of being able to change properties of devices because they may be wrongly detected or if they are used in a way that can not be detected. For instance I have some dimmable devices (because of technical reasons) and I have set the dim level once, but after the initial setup I have never changed the dim level (well except when I had to change the light bulb to one with a different wattage). I.e I want the device to behave like an on/off device and hide it's true nature...

[mrose17]

in truth, downgrading a device from dimmer to onoff, is probably a really bad idea. inevitably, there will be a need to restore it, and then we'll need to support that.

[mrose17]

ok, so what additional icons would you like to be able to set, e.g., a lamp, a fan, a ...

[torkelsson]

lamp, fan, car engine heater, would be the obvious ones. Coffee maker maybe?

[mrose17]

@webchickbot - could i ask you to make some preliminary designs for these four devices (lamp, fan, electric heater, and coffee maker)? these will be used in the HTML5/D3 interface. in terms of naming, use switch-lamp, switch-fan, switch-heater, and switch-coffee-maker. thanks!

[webchickbot]

+1

[mrose17]

thanks. for the last one, make it switch-appliance, and could you make it look like a coffee maker/blender/etc. also, how about switch-crockpot ? (seriously.)

[webchickbot]

switch-popcorn-popper (seriously, too!) ... it goes with the big screen at Point.B ... let me see what I can do!

[webchickbot]

Here is where I am at ... still coming up empty on the popcorn popper :-)

[mrose17]

looks great!

just one comment: my guess is that we should rename switch-appliance to switch-coffee-maker, and have another switch-appiance that looks a bit more generic, like a blender or something..

[webchickbot]

Take Two ...

[mrose17]

great! i'm happy with these.

@torkelsson - any comments?

[torkelsson]

I think they are gorgeous.

Question though, nr 2, that is a crockpot right?

As for the heater, I really like it. It is more generic than the ones I have seen before for car engine heater (they have usually been a car on fire...).

Would it be possible create an icon for a plug designed similar to the switch-heater? A stylistic version of http://www.elot.se/PICTURE/781499-3-image.jpg or http://www.elot.se/PICTURE/780108-3-image.jpg or http://www.elot.se/PICTURE/781495-3-image.jpg. For the swedish users :-)

I also think it would be nice to have something similar to http://www.elot.se/PICTURE/106fe5c3-f106-4dbc-8633-fea158316cbc.jpg as an on/off switch.

Sorry for giving you more work.

[webchickbot]

No worries - the ones you are suggesting are infinitely more easy than coming up with a switch-popcorn-popper. Popped kernels are hard to get right!

[mrose17]

my thinking on this is that each device will allow you to do a perform of 'set' with an 'imageType' parameter. the value must be something like "switch-heater". this value will be returned by the steward. if the value is present, then the HTML5/D3 client will use that svg file rather than the default one for the deviceType. how does that sound?

[torkelsson]

Sounds reasonable. Preferably with a reset too, to get back to the original svg file.

2014-06-04 5:25 GMT+02:00 mrose17 notifications@github.com:

my thinking on this is that each device will allow you to do a perform of 'set' with an 'imageType' parameter. the value must be something like "switch-heater". this value will be returned by the steward. if the value is present, then the HTML5/D3 client will use that svg file rather than the default one for the deviceType. how does that sound?

— Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHub https://github.com/TheThingSystem/steward/issues/215#issuecomment-45048049 .

[webchickbot]

Shall I proceed with the specialized icons requested in https://github.com/TheThingSystem/steward/issues/215#issuecomment-43137300 ? ... I have some other icons in my queue, so it is good timing!

[mrose17]

@webchickbot - yes, thanks!

[webchickbot]

Here are the icons for the on-off switch and the outlet -

[mrose17]

@webchickbot - thanks@

@torkelsson - i'm planning on adding most of the rest of the support tonight!

[mrose17]

i haven't forgotten… just been traveling for the last few weeks (-;

[mrose17]

i have updated the steward so that you can do a "set ikon outlet" or "set ikon switch-onoff" and have it set the ikon from d3/actors/xyz.svg - note that the file must exist. i have also updated the HTML5/D3 client to make use of this field.

at present, what is missing is support in the HTML5/D3 client to set the value.

[webchickbot]

One idea for the behavior in the UI ...

On the drilldown, click on the large icon displayed on the left, and then select the icon in the subsequent popup.

[mrose17]

i think that would work great!