Showing Energy Stats on OT5.7e

[neillt]

So I am working on a large remodel for a customer, and am playing with the Rainforest Automation EAGLE smart meter interface, and using HaikuHelper and the JavaScripting engine to transfer what we learn from the smart meter over to the HAI realm.
 
Some things like the billing tiers can be translated into existing things like energy costs (e.g. If in billing Tier 3 then Energy Cost is High).
 
But I would like to provide more detail than just a generic energy cost on to the touchscreens.  For example, current demand, or text messages sent from the utility.
 
My main holdup is the inability to set any kind of variable that has text into the HAI Omni.  So if I want to grab the current text message being sent from the utility, I have no way to transfer that to an OmniTouch, do I?  I can use user settings and flags for other things like current electrical load, cost per Kw/h, time of last demand reading, etc.  But there isn't a free-form text variable.
 
Can anyone think of another way to do this?

 

[js19707]

i expect to be experimenting with this soon, I have an EAGLE on the way.  
 
my initial impulse is to have the 5.7e make an HTTP request to HaikuHelper, which could serve a basic web page with this data to the touchscreen.  This would work well for display of the information on the 5.7e but would mean any more sophisticated logic would reside in HH.  
 
i'm not sure if there's a better way to do this, as Automation Studio seems to significantly constrain what can be done on the 5.7e: you can customize colors and layout, but IIUC it seems you either have to use built-in functionality or use the web browser.