Multiple Client Web UI
#1
Hi there,

I'm at the beginnings of making a centralized control panel for my home which will control the automation products i have (planned). The idea is that I will have a main media centre in my lounge with RPi's in my kitchen and bedroom, each running XBMC, and a server/tv backend in a cupboard somewhere. This is where the control panel comes in. The idea is to have it attached to the wall (yet battery powered so detachable) and be able to browse the mysql library and select a film/tv show/music to play and then have it ask where the file should be played (kitchen/bedroom/lounge/all etc).

My problem is that the web ui's are specific to the client your running it from. It's the last step I'm unsure how to go about doing it. If anyone has any help on this, or knows of any guides on creating a custom web ui it would be very much appreciated. Or if you think there is a better way to go about it, then let me know Smile
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#2
The Yatse android application will do just this.
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#3
trouble is that I want to be able to control my z wave home automation system from the control panel. The yatze app wouldnt allow this....
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#4
The touch control app for iOS would allow for both coupled with event ghost. Though you will need to create the button layouts and scripts.
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#5
By "control panel' I suspect you mean 'dashboard' or "front-end"... e.g. just a UI, no actual logic that unifies some most used features of several other apps.
You're a noobie so you may not know but the info you provided is not nearly enough to have a specific conversation on how to solve your goals and provide specific guidance.

cutting to the chase... forget finding 1 app that can do everything, it does not exist.

Maraschino is the closest I've come but development is dead and it will never be touch-friendly... the devs are clueless, they think touch is a fad or something.
... and the XBMC UI sucks. It it "pretty" and does OK with a few other apps I use, plus I hacked in EventGhost triggers.
... I've given up Maraschino and only use it occasionally.

For your zwave HA app... since you never stated what you use, and there are only at least a few dozen apps that do zwave, we cannot help you there - but you will likely not find ANY front-end that will do it natively. You will need to build your own extension to something that exists or make your own
... and the fact you asked "... or knows of any guides on creating a custom web ui..." is a clear indication you lack the skillset to build or the knowledge of what you are really ask asking about.

My intent is not to be mean, but it is clear you have no idea what it takes to unify multiple apps. IF you want to learn, great, I suggest looking at Maraschino and using that as a starting point - it is already a decent framework that 'can' accomplish what you are asking AFTER you code the custom widgets you will need.
I'm not an expert but I play one at work.
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#6
thanks for the post. If anything ever comes of my project I'll let you know. I'm currently designing the web interface for navigating through my mysql database and it's going better than expected. I plan on using the Razberry daughter board for controlling z-wave which can be controlled using the JSON protocol much like xbmc. It's a long project that I'm gonna do in my spare time so to be honest i have a while to learn and experiment.
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#7
Not sure why you are trying to do it from scratch. It takes years (yes, years) to get even basic HA apps to work properly and then trying to keep up with the protocol additions/changes, debugging, adding device new support (not all Z-wave devices work the same), etc... honestly, IMO you are wasting time and as a 'spare time' thing it will never get done or be anything but super basic.

Do yourself a favor, go look at these free and open source apps that already leverage OpenZwave...

http://www.opensourceautomation.com/
http://code.google.com/p/zvirtualscenes/

and for a dashboard to combine everything, take your skills and enhance Maraschino... many will thank you and you might even reignite the other devs that have worked on it.
I'm not an expert but I play one at work.
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#8
I'll have a look at those options. Cheers
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#9
i just put up my ControlCenter project, which can allow you to control multiple XBMC installations and misc web based software from any web server that has php and sqlite.

http://forum.xbmc.org/showthread.php?tid=176684

hope this is useful for anyone searching
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