Touch Screen Interface

[DavidL]

IVB,
No, you can easily make your interface look like anything you want it to. If you send me some of your graphics, and a screen shot of one of your current scenes, I could probably duplicate it in a few minutes in MainLobby.

You don't need to know a lick about Flash. You click on a button that says Library, scroll thru a bunch of graphics, pick one and click OK. Now you have a button on the stage. You then go into Design mode and click and drag the button where you want it. Then, go into Edit mode and rotate, resize, tint, assign a command, label it, change the font, change the font color, click OK. then, go back into Design and bump it around until it is exactly where you want it. Repeat with all other buttons on the stage. Save. Done.

Now, if you want to use your own custom jpgs or some swfs, add the button and in the button's edit properties browse your hard drive for your custom jpg and click OK. There you have a custom button the way you want it. If you go to MainLobby's Forum, many have posted there VERY unique taste. We have a few that are really into StarTrek and have duplicated that look (search for FunGun). Others are contemporary, others are classical, etc.

BTW, you would NOT like Maestro based on what I see of your CQC based system. Maestro is a canned UI with no customization potential. You are better with what you have, for what your needs are. Maestro might be good for someone who really doesn't want to mess with any of this stuff. Once it gets out of a "beta" stage, it might be ok for one step better than Homeseer's Touchpad interface, but not even close to what CQC or MainLobby offer.

Mike,
No, you can't duplicate what is on that website with no programming. But, you can with MainLobby make a home automation system that is of the same quality with no programming background required. I assume that is what you are really trying to achieve?

 

[DavidL]

Rupp, the reason you have the junk is because you didn't deselect those options when you installed Flash from Macromedia's website. No different than when you install Google or Real Player, etc. Personally, I , Like you, hate when co's do that crap, but it was a choice and you can uninstall it now.

Installing Flash is just like having to upgrade to .Net to support Homeseer 2.1 No difference. It is core system components that are required for other software to run.

 

[Steve]

David,

Does a custom jpg always have to be associated with a button? Can you just have jpegs as backgrounds or other images without being a button?

 

[Rupp]

Rupp, the reason you have the junk is because you didn't deselect those options when you installed Flash from Macromedia's website. No different than when you install Google or Real Player, etc. Personally, I , Like you, hate when co's do that crap, but it was a choice and you can uninstall it now.

Installing Flash is just like having to upgrade to .Net to support Homeseer 2.1 No difference. It is core system components that are required for other software to run.

David,
I was not presented any install. It popped up a message to install the ActiveX control and after that a pretty picture was presented. It's not that big of a deal but really that wasn't a good comparison. I don't really think I need the Yahoo tool bar to use the flash interface. On the other hand I do need .net to use HomeSeer.

 

[DavidL]

no Rupp, I think you missed my point. You need Flash to run MainLobby, just like you need .Net to run Homeseer 2.1.
It was not to say that you needed the Yahoo Tool Bar to run Flash.

Here is the page that most go to install the latest Flash. Note the blurb on Yahoo toolbar and the Also Install choice.
http://www.adobe.com/shockwave/download/do...sh&promoid=BIOW

 

[DavidL]

Steve, Yes, you can add a jpg as a background without using a button. I use a button because then you can move it around, scale it, rotate it, etc. You can also use other Flash swfs within a button, or as a background, but that is subject to how the Actionscript was written if that is to be successful.

 

[DavidL]

IVB,
I went to your website and clipped a few pics, spent 20 seconds in Microsoft Paint, and built the beginings of a MainLobby scene with your graphics. Total is about 3 minutes. So, please don't rate this on quality of presentation. Only that you can use your graphics to do what you want to do.

 

[upstatemike]

Mike,
No, you can't duplicate what is on that website with no programming. But, you can with MainLobby make a home automation system that is of the same quality with no programming background required. I assume that is what you are really trying to achieve?

That's right, I want the same quality using an HA theme. I still want the lady to do an introduction and explain how to use the system before the menu is presented and I want the movie to run only I want it to be summarizing the status of various systems. And of course the menus would be replaced with buttons.

 

[DavidL]

Ok, we can do the voice overview with our new MLSpeak plugin. The girl is an environmental activist and thinks home automation is not green enough so won't do the gig.
The menus can be done and so can the video.
Now what?

 

[IVB]

Thanks for the note & the work, David. I'm pretty tired now after a long day cleaning up my rack horror, then banging my head against the wall trying to figure out how my Xantech does 12V. Still not getting it, perhaps i'm just too tired.

I'll check it out tomorrow.

 

[JohnWPB]

DavidL Wrote:

If you go to MainLobby's Forum, many have posted there VERY unique taste.

I just went to the forums, and a couple of the pages are working, however Most report a "Internal Server Error"

Are you guys having problems/upgrading the Forums?

 

[DavidL]

JohnWPB,
No problem with upgrading, we are already on the latest. The forum host company messed up with something in a database fix issue a few weeks ago. I have gotten same messages, but go back in a minute and all is good again. try it now.

 

[Ripper99]

Basically with Flash if you can't code it yourself someone else will have to do it and it won't be cheap...all the fancy menus that slide out and have links that are coded in Flash and you cannot do this unless you can program Flash and regardless if a program can do it nobody will do the programming for free.

Certain things however can be done and you don't need to have Mainlobby to have Flash video show up in interfaces, to show the video of the lady discussing the system you could simply record a video and encode it with a flash encoder and embed it in a local webpage that could be displayed with the web widgets from both CQC and Mainlobby and shown wherever you want in a template you design...I'm not sure if Mainlobby has a local webserver yet but either way whatever can be displayed on a webpage can be displayed both in CQC and Mainlobby with a web widget.

For the sliding menus that appear and stuff while they are fancy and look cool I can assure you no company is just going to create your one off interface for FREE, the coding is in the .swf and needs to be edited with Flash..while it is possible just as a flight to the moon is possible if you have the money it is not simple to make interfaces like that on your own unless you can code flash and even then making changes to your interface would be a real pita.

Another thing you need to consider is if someone else builds this for you and later you decide to change your menus unless you can do it yourself you will be paying, you might also be waiting for extended periods of time if the designer is busy regardless if you don't mind paying more money to have a link added or a graphic changed.

 

[Ripper99]

Here is an example of .swf video running inside the CQC interface viewer, this can also be done with Mainlobby with a web page plugin/widget..you also don't need to use just Flash video, you can use whatever video you can embed in the webpage.

**The video in this example has no audio as I am recording while playing in CQC and the software I have doesnt record the audio while its playing.

http://www.ncrypt.net/touchscreen/cqc/vide...-swf-video.html

Here is the actual video that loads into CQC interface viewer with audio using a resizable web widget.

http://www.ncrypt.net/touchscreen/cqc/download/Untitled.html

In the case where someone mentioned about the girl talking and walking you thru things, you would simply make 10 small videos or whatever you need and as each button is pressed it loads a new video in a web widget or a CQC overlay with a video of the lady giving you instructions to operate the system.

Of course I am only loading a small portion of the webpage, I could technically load a widget as large as my touchscreen and have the static webpage background to look like my interface and have the girl in the middle pointing in all directions and saying what each button does, to make her move to another area of the loaded widget you could use something like the Swish program for flash that would tell the webpage when video 1 in the center stops playing load video 2 in another area of the webpage and start playing it, when it ends load the next video...many possibiltys.

If you cant hire a model then you have another option http://www.oddcast.com/sitepal/

*This one isn't free but their is free software similar to this on the web that uses the microsoft speech engine.

With this software you could make animated characters that do the talking and have them embedded in webpages just like the video example, you click a button and it has a command to load "dvd-instructions.html" and this animated person loads into that widget and begins explaining how a person plays DVD using the touchpanel.

 

[upstatemike]

Another interesting feature of this interface is the audio. When you move the mouse over the middle of the text you get additional audio overlayed over the background sound... cool effect! I can picture theme music in the background that is not interrupted by the helpful messages spoken as different controls are highlighted on my HA touch screen. Is this something I can do with MainLobby?