Athom have stated that they would like for the community to ‘discuss’ ideas in this forum, and any ideas which gain traction might be read. So with out further ado.
Based upon a discussion elsewhere. When a device is added to homey it currently displays one of the capabilities, (chosen by Athom). This is either not always the most logical or correct capability to show upon the title.
While I understand the reasoning behind this, I believe that some flexibility could be added while retaining the current functionality.
I am suggesting a couple of things.
1) Add the ability to show additional capabilities upon the tile
Which capabilities can be shown upon a title is very restrictive. I understand that the UI should not be sacrificed for UX, and an amazing job has been done to ensure that the tile capabilities are clear and expected. But I have faith in Athom that more elements could be added while keeping the great looking app for example : by rounding the values and using different UI elements it could remain clear.
While Temperature and Power (measure) seem to be the most requested, volume and battery would be easy ones to add and obviously other sensor capabilities such as Humidity, Luminescence Air Quality, etc would be great - but harder.
(NB : I Don’t have window coverings so I don’t know how they are displayed)
2) Ignore device class when deciding which tile capability to display
With v2, we were now able to choose the ‘right’ device class (ie. camera, sensor, alarm, etc) - for the device with our worrying about what capabilities the device had.
However there seems to be a throwback to version 1 still where the device class is still effecting which capabilities show upon the title. (contact sensors do not show upon ‘other’ tiles. – motion alarms do not show on camera tiles, etc.)
Ideally the device class has nothing to do with which capability shows upon the tile.
3) Allow the developer to choose which capability to show.
The developer is going to have the best understanding of which capability should be shown upon the tile for their specific device, For example, when adding a device class camera - I would like the motion alarm capability to show.
Giving the developers of the device the ability to choose which is the ‘best fit’ is going to give a much better experience on a device by device bases.
4) Allow users to choose which capability is displayed upon the tile.
Finally, when a device has multiple capabilities which can be shown on the title, the user should be able to change the ‘default’ capability to what ever makes the most sense for their home / setup. This could even be done with out adding new capabilities. For example, I don’t care about the motion alarm upon my ecobee sensors, I only care about the temperature (which sets my aircon).
