Touch screen templates

[sailfish987]

Just getting involved in touch screens and home automation, and was wondering if there is a collection of gui screens out there. I am using stargate with homerunner and trying to create with photoshop, works great, but I suck as an artist. I have seen screens for crestron,xlobby, mainlobby and so on. Made me wonder if they are all interchangable, will they all work on a XP tablet to control my stargate. Sorry for such a green question, I have been reading alot but havent found the answer to this compatability question, and was hoping there was a place to get polished looking interface screens for the tablets. Any pointers in the right direction would be much appreciated.

Kevin

 

[AO-Brandon]

hey kevin! glad to see you made your way over here!

 

[IVB]

Meaning you want a MainLobby template to work on a CQC screen or AMX screen or ...?

Nope, but i'd think they'r all so different that you'd want to rebuild everything to suit the strengths of the particular package you're using.

 

[sailfish987]

Thanks for the reply, I figured as much. I'm getting more proffesional looking results with each new attempt, I'll keep on working thru it!

Hey brandon, thermostats look great, going to try and get them installed this week talk to you later.

Kevin

 

[DavidL]

sailfish,
the "touchscreen" applications you reference are all completely different technically. The "look" is just one small level of each application. Behind that is considerable programming to get the graphics to "do something".
Even the graphics themselves are unique. MainLobby for example is a Flash based user interface application. Most of the "graphics" actually have programming code built into them so MainLobby can be super easy to design a user interface with very robust capability. Drag and Drop them onto a scene and you can then configure what you want the "graphic" to do. The graphics, being flash based, will not work in a non Flash application like Crestron or CQC. Of course, they are also copyright protected as well and are only to be used by MainLobby customers.

MainLobby does not today have an interface for StarGate. There is a StarGate interface plugin in Homeseer, and there is an interface between MainLobby and Homeseer. That today will be the easy path for a professional user interface to be used with the StarGate controller. There are a few users doing exactly that today.

My guess on cost of this solution:
Homeseer - $200
StarGate plugin - free
MLHSPlugin (interface between HS and ML) $40
MainLobby Combo (base package) $179

There is way more than just graphics behind each of these complete applications. The time you will save will be very significant to use "out of the box" production software and "just" your configuration time. This will not be super easy, but very doable and I believe the most efficient path today for support of the StarGate (which I believe there are very limited choices). The above combo represents about the most capable automation solution of any kind on the market today. You will never run out of things you can do with the capability of the various pieces referenced above.

 

[weird_ideas]

I'm not to familiar with CQC or MainLobby but typically how a touchscreen's UI works is ther's two parts. You have the front end (graphics) and the back end (programming/code) If you are able to extract the graphics only you would be able to use them else where, you would just need to develop or use new code. For example, you can take the graphics from an AMX touchscreen and create the same look and feel in a Crestron screen however the back end is going to be completely different.

So to answer your question, yes they are interchangable to a certain point. You just have to have all the tool to change them.

 

[sailfish987]

Thanks for the replies, I have been doing exactly as described in weird ideas post. Extracting graphics from different sources, making graphics of my own, and reassembling on an interface page using homerunner software as the back end to control the whole show, the absolute easiest interface page I have put together uses real pictures of a room with transparent buttons placed on lights and electronic items, want to turn something on or off just touch the item in the photo, no art work involved, only a digital photo. For the more complicated control of all the a/v functions, I am having to create the pages with graphics, my weak point, but as I said earlier I am getting better. Many thanks to the guys who have posted their interface pages to be used for whatever purpose, I have more than a few buttons that have been extracted from them, they look great!

 

[IVB]

sounds cool, you'll have to post a pic when you're done.