Review of scene creation: suggestions to make it more user-friendly

[b3n.0]

Hello everyone,

After a long time of following the project from afar, reading the exchanges (which can be intimidating when they’re too technical), I finally got started…

So for a few months now, I’ve been slowly investing in various connected devices to try Gladys in an interesting way: lamp, smart plugs to integrate, sensors…

After accumulating enough, I started working on scenes, and there I discovered lots of features — and it’s really great — you can imagine a bunch of things.

I’ll try to describe, through a concrete example, the small things that I think could evolve. So I’m posting everything a bit raw to dissect it afterwards. I hope no one will be offended, because I really find all this work around Gladys remarkable…

So my old vintage Moulinex toaster without a switch, without a timer, the basic-basic.

I stick a smart plug on it, a scene that monitors the ON/OFF state of the plug.

when ON
wait 90s
turn off

Simple and effective!

But for tougher mornings, I use a connected lamp to create a beacon effect (gyrophare)…

So I end up making a scene to make one of my lamps flash…

choose a color
choose intensity
turn off
turn on
turn off
turn on
turn off
etc, etc…

A bit tedious, and you think a little copy/paste would be a real plus.

Being able to add an action block (numbered boxes) between two blocks

• a small + button next to the transition arrow?
  And while we’re at it, like in the Dashboard editor, little arrows to move blocks up/down? (see below)
  
  

It also seems to me that the « new action » button would be more useful at the bottom of the block to avoid endless scrolling.

Now that my beacon is (roughly) in place…

• I think I can use it for other things but it would be nice to be able to do it with other colors to signal other events, and here a « duplicate scene » function to modify it afterward would be nice, and it even makes me imagine that maybe we could export them, feed a community library!
• and if this lamp used as a signal is in use at the time of the beacon scene, it should be possible to return to the state it was in before — so a scene that calls two other scenes simultaneously. For the « off » case there’s no problem. But for the other case it would be necessary to retrieve the lamp’s color, intensity, … and re-inject them on exit. For color, I really like the little color wheel but a code (hex, RGB, I don’t know what’s standard…) in parallel would be great, especially if we can re-inject the retrieved data as variables.

[pierre-gilles]

@b3n.0

So for a few months now, I’ve been slowly investing in various connected devices to be able to try Gladys in an interesting way: lamp, smart plugs/switches to integrate, sensors…

Awesome

@b3n.0

So I’ll try to describe, through a specific example, the small things that I think could evolve. I’m therefore writing a message throwing everything out there to dissect afterwards. I hope it doesn’t upset anyone, because I really find all this work around Gladys remarkable…

Great initiative! I’m a big fan of this kind of raw user feedback, if it can improve the day-to-day for all Gladys users

@b3n.0

A bit tedious,

One solution could be to provide more advanced scene actions for lamps, like being able to do « Turn on + color + brightness » in the same action; that would greatly reduce the number of actions needed to create these kinds of scenarios.

@b3n.0

Being able to add an action block (numbered boxes) between two blocks

• a small + button next to the transition arrow?
  And while we’re at it, like in the Dashboard editing, small arrows to move blocks up/down? (see below)

There is a feature request that goes a bit in that direction:

Pouvoir déplacer une action vers le haut ou le bas dans les scènes

Je commence à avoir des scènes avec une dizaine d’actions voir plus. Arrivé à la onzième, je me dit « Ah je pourrai rajouter ça…, mais il faudrait que je le mette en seconde position. » Pour le moment, nous sommes obligé de supprimer les actions afin d’en rajouter une et de les ressaisir de nouveau. Si nous avons la possibilité de les déplacer vers le haut ou le bas dans le même principe que les box lors de l’édition du dashboard, ça serait bien.

I agree this is definitely a current shortcoming!

@b3n.0

It also seems to me that the ‹ new action › button would be more useful at the bottom of the block to avoid endless scrolling.

Not a bad idea!

@b3n.0

I think I can use it for other things but it would be good to be able to use different colors to signal other events, but here a duplicate-scene function to modify it afterwards…

This is one of the most voted feature requests

Duplication de scènes

Bonjour, je viens de faire une petite PR pour rajouter la duplication d’un scène. Lorsque l’on click sur le bouton copier, cela envoie vers une nouvelle page pour choisir le nouveau nom de la scene dupliqué.

There was some development but unfortunately the developer is no longer available. I will post a message again to see if someone wants to pick up the development

@b3n.0

However, for the other case you should be able to retrieve the lamp’s color, brightness, etc., and re-inject them as output.

We discussed that in a feature request:

Être capable d'injecter une variable dans requête HTTP + contrôler un appareil

Salut, je me demandais comment tu voyais le truc quand tu imagines un possible bloc différent pour contrôler un appareil avec une variable. J’ai tenté quelque chose en réutilisant le composant qui existait déjà pour l’insertion des variables. Si la valeur est un nombre, on enregistre comme d’habitude la nouvelle valeur dans value, sinon elle est enregistré comme une chaine de caractère. Dans mon essai j’ai ajouté un champs en base de données evaluate_value. Puisqu’on a également une demande po…

There are no developments in progress to my knowledge; we’re looking for developers

Thanks for all your feedback in any case, don’t hesitate to post more like this!

[b3n.0]

@pierre-gilles

A solution could be to provide more advanced scene actions on lamps, like being able to do “Turn on + color + brightness” in the same action, that would greatly reduce the number of actions needed to create these kinds of scenarios.

That seems like a very good lead…

And I’m thinking of another thing I wanted to do:
A light fade-in

If the global action block for the lights could also handle requests like:

LAMP X:

• brightness: go from 0 to 170
• temperature: from 200 to 300
• delay: 45 min

That would be the best!

Otherwise sorry for creating so many duplicates…
I’m going to go vote now…

[pierre-gilles]

@b3n.0

And I’m thinking back to another thing I wanted to do:
A light ramp

If the global action block for lights could also handle requests like:

LAMP X :

• intensity: go from 0 to 170
• temperature: from 200 to 300
• delay: 45 min

That would be the best!

Totally — are you going to make a feature request for that? (Check first whether there isn’t already one, it’s a topic we’ve often talked about!)

[b3n.0]

@pierre-gilles I created a feature request this morning…
I added a few images to try to be clear

[Romuald_Pochet]

Good evening,

It’s true that scene duplication is interesting; in my case a toggle switch/light would already halve the number of scenes (and also the processing time as a result). But I’d rather see a « scene template » because ultimately what’s the point of duplicating a scene? I’d say we want to duplicate a behavior, e.g. « Turn on a lamp when pressing a button and fade it out, possibly after a certain delay on a subsequent press »

PS: I’m a Z-Wave user (I feel like I’m the only one ) and it’s handled natively but that’s another topic…

[pierre-gilles]

@b3n.0

@pierre-gilles I created a feature request this morning…

Thanks for the request, it’s very clear

Let’s let people vote now!