After some brutal video and audio editing, I finally got this together
Hope you enjoy it.
For many of you that haven’t seen the rest of what I can control with my Android, check this post out.
Monthly Archives: August 2013
A Very Special Android Widget for the Nest Thermostat
In the spirit of keeping things as uniform as possible with the Android system, I designed a Widget using Zooper Widgets that updates each time I change the temperature, or the temperature gets changed. Pressing on this widget opens the “scene widget” I discussed in the previous post.
Zooper has the ability to use Tasker Variables, so each time AutoRemote gets a message for a change in thermostat vitals it will also update this widget automatically within seconds.
As you see here:
The Nest is in an away mode, the current temperature in the home (ambient) is shown on the bottom of the screen window.
I was also able to get the leaf to toggle on and off by writing a new python script for leaf status, this script controls a variable. I inserted this variable into the both the Android Zooper widget and the Tasker scene widget to show the leaf when I’m “earning” one.
The last step was the cooling phase, which turns the screen to blue when the HVAC system is on. Again set by another Tasker variable that Eventghost gets from the Nest thermostat and sends by AutoRemote to the phone.
If you have any questions about the product names I mentioned here, there is a glossary in the menu system on this blog in the home automation drop-down.
Hope you enjoyed this post! More to come in the next week as well as a video showing these widgets in action tomorrow!
My Nest Thermostat Widget
I have been pretty impressed with my nest and it’s great features. It has brought the power bill down at least $100 over the summer season.
There is one thing that the Nest Mobile app lacks, a widget.
So, I built one 🙂
AutoRemote and the eventghost nest plugin make this possible yet again.
It was a pretty simple scene to create, only took me a day, in comparison to my other scenes that have taken much longer.
The variables are set by using autoremote then the magic happens from there.
If the air conditioning isn’t on you’ll see a screen like ..
Of course, this is a little more than a thermostat widget. It also has the outdoor temperature, heat index and humidity on the bottom of the screen, the nest leaf if you are earning one. You can also see the ambient temperature and humidity (in the home) at the top of the screen.
Last but not least, control of the thermostat! I made this controllable in two ways. If you are used to the nest app, you can touch in the same areas that you would in the app on the top or bottom of the temperature screen. The other way is to move the dial just as if you were setting it manually.
But of course, there’s more! Absolutely need the Nest app? Just press on the “nest” logo to launch the app or long press on it to dismiss the widget.
If you want this widget, please contact me for more information by leaving a comment, I’ll be selling the macros and profiles that make this possible after I finish the heating side of it (it’s almost fall!)
I will have a short video up when this goes on the market to show you how to use it!
Adding Some Glamour to Notifications
I thought that my notifications were kind of boring, so I added some zing to them.. Read below for more!
The Media Center Notification was a little harder than the Pandora. I was able to query last.fm’s API to get the album cover URL, then just did some more variable splits and got the picture to post into the notification. I didn’t want the API getting queried for every song, so I set a special variable to make sure that it wouldn’t download the data if the album was the same name.
The Pandora one was a little easier, the plug-in I use for Pandora’s data has an option to download the artwork, I just copied that to my web server and had the phone do an HTTP Get for each song when it refreshes. This might be a small hit to battery life, not sure yet.
An Extra One for You
I just just finished the music configuration (for windows media center) of the notification. The metadata handed off had extra line breaks in it and that was a chore to get settled.
Really didn’t want extra line breaks in my notification that didn’t need to be there.
I hope you’ve enjoyed this series.
Fun with Android Notifications! Part 3.
This last notification that I have prepared is one of the most difficult things I’ve done in tasker to date. I understood all of what I was doing but it took a LOT of effort to get this done.
First, I’d like to start with this, I NEVER see BOTH notifications at the same time, I took this screenshot for the blog, instead of taking 2 🙂 More about this later.
I’d like to start with the Media Center Notification, many of you may not be familiar with Media center, so I’ll tell you, it’s the one with the green Microsoft Windows logo.
The first part of getting this notification set up was using a piece of software I have on the computer that allows TCP/IP control of Windows Media Center called VMCController. I was able to query the Media Center for the “Metadata”. This is done by using Tasker’s HTTP Get, it then writes that file to my phone for me to “play with”.
The typical file looks like this:
<pre>Name=file:///E:/Recorded TV/Unprotected/Clear and Present Danger_HDNETMV_2013_01_29_18_29_00.wtv
Title=Clear and Present Danger
Duration=02:31:58.5287171
Uri=file:///E:/Recorded TV/Unprotected/Clear and Present Danger_HDNETMV_2013_01_29_18_29_00.wtv
</pre>
Since most of my data is sprawled across my network, I had to use “if” conditions to read the directory name, and if it wasn’t matching a certain string, I had tasker look at another variable.
Example:
E:/Recorded TV/Unprotected/Clear and Present Danger
E:/Recorded TV/J. Edgar
OR
D:/All Media/Movies
D:/All Media/Music
I used Tasker Variable splits to give me the title and duration of the movie. But I wasn’t satisfied with just the data, I had to take it a step further. I wanted more information about the show, so I use another variable split on the movie title to get it ready to query a movie/show database.
For this mymovieapi.com was perfect to get the description on the movie. It gives me an XML of the movie data to do more variable splits.
This is about just the same for Media Player Classic, but the only data I get from MPC is a title, I had to query the database again to change it to a proper name with capitalization and duration and short synopsis. The duration was given in a minute format (e.g. 127 mins), I had to write a formula and do more variable splits, multiplications, divisions, sections to get it uniform across each notification. You could say I am a perfectionist to do this, and I’d be guilty but hey, what’s life with out a little uniformity. 🙂
I also added play control to it, and if I touch it, it would pull up the IMDB site for the movie/show. I will get into this in a video series.
It all comes together to see what you see today!
Besides AutoRemote and AutoVoice, I would say this is the most worthwhile investment I’ve made for Tasker. At $1.19, who can go wrong. Seriously, if you are on the fence with Tasker, it’s a $3 app, Joao’s plug-ins are half the price and I am going to say, you couldn’t buy an automation system like this.
Today is a good day to own an Android 🙂
Fun with Android Notifications! Part 2.
The next notification shows my current temperature that was updated from the Nest thermostat, it will update when temperatures change throughout the day, and I can even control the temperature of the house from the notification. I would bet most people would have never even thought that controlling your house from a notification was possible. I was quite impressed by this one, myself 🙂
Read below the picture for more…
As you can also see I have added control for Pandora. This first started with an ambition to “skip” and “thumbs down” music I don’t like, is playing on my home theater through Pandora, without having to power my entire home theater up. It started with that, and of course, it grew into getting the ID for each song sent from the browser on my Media Center, to my phone.
I used a Google Chrome add-in to scrape the song data off the Pandora site. When a new song starts, it saves the scraped data to a local file, then used EventGhost’s Directory watcher to notify itself of a change in file. Each time that file changes, a Python Script reads it to a variable and sends Tasker an AutoRemote message of the song information. Then, I used AutoNotification to build the SongID.
I wanted to make sure I could skip songs without the TV on. So, I built some more macros for Pandora in EventGhost that move the mouse to a certain area of the screen, and then push the skip or thumbs down button.
Each time I press these in the notification, it sends an AutoRemote message to EventGhost to execute these macros.
On the top of the screen are my Power Toggles (GPS, WIFI, Bluetooth), I also added a toggle to turn SongID off (the music note next to the pin). Just in case I don’t want any song data, I can press that, and EventGhost will stop sending me SongIDs. That was another AutoRemote Message to Disable the Macro in EventGhost instead of just turning it off on my phone. Concerns about battery crossed my mind, but AutoRemote has never been a “battery vampire”. I just wasn’t worth the CPU cycles when I don’t want it.
Although Tasker and EventGhost are the engines, there was a lot of manipulation to be done here and none of it would be possible without Joao’s AutoNotification and the rest of his family of products.
Fun with Android Notifications! Part 1.
Recently I purchased another one of Joao’s “AutoApps” that allows me to write some very nice notifications.
These notifications are made with “AutoNotification”. Each one has a slightly different purpose that makes my android phone even more informational and helpful.
This First notification is an updata from my IPCamera. When motion is sensed in the home, the camera sends a specific message to my phone to download the picture and display it in this notification. Although I am quite seasoned with Joao’s Auto-Apps, this was quite easy to set up, especially in comparison to the next few I’ll show you.
It simply does an HTTP Get of the picture on the IPCamera’s Webserver and puts it in a file for local use, then AutoNotification uses that file to put in the notification.
The same is done with my driveway, although, I use an external motion sensor for this because I have more actions to complete when motion is detected in my driveway. I will get into this more in one of my videos featuring “Away Mode/Security”