Dale-
As I mentioned earlier, I have been using the SG-HS-ML setup for a while now. It's a beautiful thing - ML has brought a huge increase in possibilities. WAF has reached new highs - even my 5 year old is using the HA system now. ML has become the primary interface to SG and HS.
DavidL is right in that once you have HS up and running, setting up the ML software and plugins is relatively easy and fairly quick. However, the the big hump - as with any package - is then creating the user interface screens (or "scenes" for ML).
I bought a couple touchscreens many months ago. They collected dust until I made the time to sit down to create a set of ML scenes. That is the really time consuming part. If I had to guess, I'd say it took me about 40 hours of work, a few hours at a time, over several weeks ( including learning curve and do-overs) to create the screens I'm using now (and I still don't consider it done, probably never will be). The reason it takes so long is that you customize it to your situation - no way around that - and I think this will be true no matter what 3rd party software you use.
Before I started with ML, I looked for someone who had scenes that I could just borrow and make my own. Didn't work out because no one out there has a situation close enough to mine. So I built my own scenes. If and when you pursue setting up SG-HS-ML, I'd be happy to share my ML scene files, if you think it might give you a head start. I've attached a screenshot of one of my scenes.
Good luck.
Mark
As I mentioned earlier, I have been using the SG-HS-ML setup for a while now. It's a beautiful thing - ML has brought a huge increase in possibilities. WAF has reached new highs - even my 5 year old is using the HA system now. ML has become the primary interface to SG and HS.
DavidL is right in that once you have HS up and running, setting up the ML software and plugins is relatively easy and fairly quick. However, the the big hump - as with any package - is then creating the user interface screens (or "scenes" for ML).
I bought a couple touchscreens many months ago. They collected dust until I made the time to sit down to create a set of ML scenes. That is the really time consuming part. If I had to guess, I'd say it took me about 40 hours of work, a few hours at a time, over several weeks ( including learning curve and do-overs) to create the screens I'm using now (and I still don't consider it done, probably never will be). The reason it takes so long is that you customize it to your situation - no way around that - and I think this will be true no matter what 3rd party software you use.
Before I started with ML, I looked for someone who had scenes that I could just borrow and make my own. Didn't work out because no one out there has a situation close enough to mine. So I built my own scenes. If and when you pursue setting up SG-HS-ML, I'd be happy to share my ML scene files, if you think it might give you a head start. I've attached a screenshot of one of my scenes.
Good luck.
Mark
