Haiku Feature Request & Question

[ano]

I use both Haiku and HaikuHelper, and it seems like they are both very well thought out products. In the past I have used WL3 for Windows Home Server, and Home Control for Windows Media Center, two products I don't think HAI has ever touched since the day they were released. Its interesting how HAI is still listing these two products while they don't work with any Windows products shipped in the last few years. Windows Home Server is discontinued now and WL3 never worked with the latest version anyway, and the last Windows Media Center "Home Control" worked with was XP.

Anyway, my Windows Home Server is on its last legs and I am switching over to a Mac Mini running OS X Server, so Haiku fits right in. I like the products, but there are two things I wished they would do better. First, allow a way for Flags, Units, Zones, Buttons, etc to NOT be included in the listings. I have many of these that are for internal uses, and I'd rather not see them on lists. Like I have many zones for home control, but NOT security, and I would rather not see these displayed on the top because they are used for other functions. i.e. Bed sensor, package box, AC running, etc.

Second, it would be nice if Haiku could display "Long Names" instead of the short cryptic HAI names. Both PC Access and WL3 do that, although these names probably would need to be stored locally. I don't think the panel knows about these.

Now the question. Alerts. I see HaikuHelper can send alerts, and Haiku can receive alerts, but not a lot is mentioned on HOW this happens, other than that the panel name needs to be exactly same on both. For Haiku I have a LAN profile for Wi-Fi and a cellular WAN profile for an iPhone. Do "Alerts" only work over a LAN? With port forwarding, I can get from cellular to my panel, but how do my alerts find my cell phone from my Mac Server? I don't see how that happens.

Thanks.

 

[lupinglade]

Great news, all of your concerns are easily addressed

You can hide zones, flags, units, etc from Haiku and HaikuHelper by not setting a name for them on the controller. You can still set a description for programming readability.

You can already set long names in both Haiku and HaikuHelper, but yes they do have to be set separately from the controller config. In Haiku, you can double click the title of any object when you are viewing it to rename it. In HaikuHelper, there is an Object Editor window that lets you do this. Configuration files are interchangeable between Haiku and HaikuHelper provided you are running compatible versions.

Alerts will work just fine over the Internet, they use Apple's push notification service. E-mail, growl, notification center alerts are also available. SMS is possible via an email to SMS gateway. All of this can be customized and other systems can be easily integrated as well.

Great choice on switching to Mac and HaikuHelper, you will love it!

 

[ano]

Thanks. That is good information. Adding the description is great, but I'm not so sure deleting the name in the controller is the best way to handle hiding things, and I'm not sure I want to do that. Since each name contains a "favorites" checkbox, wouldn't it be easy to also have a "hide" checkbox?

Also, it appears there is a bit of a bug. On the HaikuHelper web page, I have three Zigbee locks. At this moment two are locked and one is unlocked, and they are display correctly. The problem is the pull-downs for all of them have the same options:
Unlock for 1 min
Unlock for 5 min
Unlock for 15 min
Unlock for 1 hr
Unlock for 2 hr

These are great options for a lock which is locked, but not very helpful for a lock that is unlocked. There is no way to lock the lock.

 

[lupinglade]

There is no reason to name items that are not visible to the users. You can still set a description so the space is reserved, documented and readable in programming logic. In fact this is also how HAI's interfaces work. Haiku/HaikuHelper follow this for consistency.

I will check regarding the bug, strange. Thanks!