Using ipaq vs touchscreen for complete H/A, media control? good/bad

[shenandoah75]

I was looking at the recent posts on IVB's mobile setup and the HP Ipaq screen shots in the other thread...

I'm just curious how many people are using these to interface into cqc/mainlobby/netremote, etc and how happy you are. I would like to ultimately have 3/4 of these serving as remotes for my zones, right now just 1. I originally was thinking touchcreens like the airpanel, but decided they would really be bulky to lug around in the downstairs living area/pool which is a single zone and also in my outbuilding (office/shop) which is zone 2. The other areas wouldn't be as bad for touchscreens as having one on the nightstand in the master bedroom and one on the coffee table in family would be ok.

Based on IVB's shots, it looks like i can do everything from CQC (security/media/lighting) i would want in such a compact format. Per David, i could build pages for similar purpose in MainLobby as well. And i am pretty sure i can do it in NetRemote (with new elk plugin)

1) Anyone else using purely mobile/ppc control w/o touchscreens? how happy are you with it? or maybe a hybrid
2) The one thing i think i lose is the display size. Not a big deal for media/security/weather/etc - but i think the ability to see a cad drawing of my floorplan or yard to do lighting/sprinler control would be gone (at least in a useful size)

anyway thanks for any pointers/examples of your setups...

thx in advance
-brad

 

[electron]

Check the poll on the front page to see how popular the PDA option is.

 

[shenandoah75]

thx dan... should have mentioned that - i actually took part in that pole :angry:

well i bit the bullet and bought a new ipaq today... gonna test it with girder/netremote, mainlobby, cqc hopefully soon and main some decisions....



Anyway, really interested to know if anyone is using the PPC's small format for graphical/floorplan based control though. If you are, mind sharing a screenshot?

thx
-brad

 

[AnotherOne]

I want to go the IPAQ, Nokia 7/800 route as well, but I'm still trying to figure out what's the right glue to tie it together. The two things I want is being able to control Global Cache controllers and my litetouch stuff (light status, on/off/dim) I have an app on my PC that allows me to control all my litetouch stuff now, I just need to build the web interfaces or port it to something else. It's too bad the premise stuff got killed off my motorolla beause they actually had pretty good support for litetouch. But I'm already dealing with one obsolete system (phast) and don't want another.

 

[IVB]

What I would advise is to try to design a 4" 320x240 UI and see if you can jam everything on there. My issue with PDA control was that I had to design tiny tiny screens. Even the 640x480(320?) size screens were still only 4", so they were rather awkward. CQC may have a rich set of UI objects, but no software package will totally alleviate the physical limitations.

With a full 7-12" screen, your screens can be much richer.

 

[shenandoah75]

ya that's what i was fearing...

I think i still want the compact size for portability / convience (and the 8- use case of music selection)... But maybe i need a few touchpads to help out, say :
- in the downstairs living (in wall next to the equipment rack in living/foyer)
- in the family room for the HT

- <maybe> the master bedroom if i ever put a widescreen in there and do central video

thx
-brad

 

[IVB]

Actually ever since the NuVo driver was upgraded to be able to trap keypad presses, i find myself using the NuVo keypads for a lot more. i'm even contemplating ditching the 3400 in the MBR as I almost never use it. We can use a laptop, the HTPC in the next room, the touchpanel in the kitchen for control. I'm using a MediaMVP in the MBR for tv/dvd's, so i'm generally covered. I'm even researching how to use the keypads for tuning custom XM stations or selecting a CD.

Didn't mean to confuse you more, but given that CQC has the ability to detect nuvo keypad presses and do *whatever* you want in response, those are pretty damn viable for automatoin control purposes.

 

[AnotherOne]

I want something that is portable, doesn't require line of sight to operate and can be easily carried around and moved from table to table. Keypads are great for being in one place, but they are not portable.

 

[IVB]

true, but it's not an either-or situation. Get the 10" 3400 with wifi card or 4" ipaq for that situation, and keypads for the other stuff.

After having the wifi 3400 around but forgetting it in a different room, 90% of the time I now walk a shorter distance to a keypad or the nearest PC rather than whichever room the 3400 happens to be in.

 

[Rupp]

If you want a very robust but no frills interface you should give Rover for HomeSeer a try. It's free and works perfectly with all small low powered touch screen devices.
http://rover-for-homeseer.blogspot.com/2006/06/welcome.html

 

[EST]

shenandoah75,

Hows the ipaq working out for you? I am interested in doing the same as you...2-3 ipaqs in the home for use and eventually a larger touch screen. I like the portablility and the easy on/off from PDAs than booting a PC (inpatient).

Which one did you get?
I am looking at the rx4240, hx 2490, 2495. The 4240 is cheapest of all and has 802.11g...also smallest.

Thanks
Eric

 

[shenandoah75]

Hi Eric,

I also was looking at the 249x series too (best price i could find was via mtnstore.com on those). However, i decided to buy a hx4705b (used) off ebay... I didn't want to end up in a position where the screen real restate was really limited, so wanted a VGA screen (480x640). Hp is no longer making models with the higher resolution from what i could discern (dell axim is no more, so choices are limited)...

In terms of how i like it, if you see my commentary in my "leaning Main lobby" posting, there's some specific feedback and good commentary from John/Harleydude on why you may not want to go this route. Remeber that all feedback so far is using Netremote only (havent' developed interfaces for CQC for PPC, and the PPC clients from main lobby are not available for trial).

In short, batteries on a small device are not endless. To maximize, you need to enable power saving features. But if you power down the unit or disable wi-fi in those settings, you'll likely find yourself needing to turn it back on to change your queue, etc. My wife and i have found that very annoying because it takes a while for the wi-fi to recomment ( i use both tkip and mac address security, not sure if that contributes to the slow reconnections or not). Might not seem like a big deal until you realize you may want to quickly pause playback or change from a song you don't like.

In short, i still think these devices can have a purpose (bedroom / shop), but i would not recommend as your primary interface unless you're going to keep it on A/C or USB power all the time (certainly an option). As per another posting, i just installed a 15" touchscreen and i think generally, that is far more useful (much more real estate for information) and powering an LCD up from powersave is nothing compared to the ipaq... I bought the touchscreen new for $250 on ebay compared to ~300 for the used ipaq.

let me know if you have any more questions and goodluck.

-brad



btw i upgrade from 2003 to mobile 5.0 OS and it's a dog. There are a lot fo forum posts discussing the reasons for this. I have had problems with hanging, etc and needing to do soft and hard resets (original OS had the same issues with resets, perhaps more). Still to early to say it's chronic, but at least enough to be annoying (especially when you want to change the tune).