Simpler Home Screen

[irvintim]

Hi,

Wow, this project is awesome. Thanks for putting in all this effort.

I'm using the panels in a vacation rental. The panel in the living room (right by the front door) has its 2 buttons set to the lights (living room and front porch), and I also use this as the thermostat for the room and (hopefully) the fan controller.

There are two problems with the current home screen:

1. The fan "button" is so small that it takes hitting the screen multiple times to get it to register.
2. The bigger issue is that the current home screen isn't intuitive enough for renters who have never been in the property before; for instance, they can't figure out that it is the thermostat or that the tiny little fan icon is how they can control the fan. I have created documentation for them, but not everyone reads the manual.

I would love it if there were an option for a more simplified home screen with fewer, but larger "buttons" that look like buttons. And are labelled with Text and not simply with ICONs.

This is a (very poor) mockup of what I had in mind. Maybe the fan icon could update as the speed changes, etc. I didn't draw in the top line of "chips." I think those are useful; I just didn't add them to this picture for simplicity.

[twasilczyk]

Similar problem here. I don't intend to pack everything into a single panel (I have full smart home control through HA phone app), but would rather like guests to be able to use it without me giving instructions.

Some problems I noticed:

• HA API / Wi-Fi icon is not in the status bar, so it may look like a button
• if you add "custom button" with Wi-Fi icon (I added one for Wi-Fi password QR code), it looks very similar (in shape and size) to that status icon - even if set to the large one, it's not large enough
• custom buttons and "regular" home buttons (QR code, sensors) don't look very organized with my current setup (2 regular icons + 2 light/shade icons)

[rudgej]

I agree. The screen is dominated by weather and time. The functions are not clear to the casual user.

Weather is a nice screen filler but doesn't control the house ! Time is a nice to have but the screen is mostly asleep and most people wear a watch.

The Home Screen could be far more useful if it was a button screen for the most common functions. At present for anything useful you have to swipe. The home buttons are very small and again assume you know what they are.

[edwardtfn]

You can set a button page as your "Wake-up page" so your panel will always show up that page when waking up.

[irvintim]

I agree with @rudgej that the time and weather info could be much smaller than I am showing on the mockup. What is more important is that the ability to adjust the thermostat or the fan, or maybe open an alternate page with a button instead of swiping to a new page, are more important in this "guest use/simplified" design. The more real estate available for intuitive labels and/or buttons would make this more user-friendly.

[edwardtfn]

I really like this discussion. I also have different panels and while weather is quite useful in the panel beside my front door, that is not as important in the panel sitting at my working desk, and even less in the one in a bedroom.
We can certainly think about a few diferent layouts for the home page, I'd love to see some suggestions.

Just some considerations:

1. The home page as it is today is a special one, as that is the only page updated while not visible. This is to make it faster to load without overloading the Wi-Fi with updates all the time. Updating more pages while not visible riquires more memory from Nextion and/or from ESPHome, which are already close to the limit. A bit of engineering might handle the different versions of pages without using more memory, unless the info is very different.
2. We currently keep identical pages (in terms of components, including its IDs, names, sizes, fonts, etc) for US and EU models, to make easier on the ESPHome and Blueprint sides, without having to create a diferent version for each (which would be impossible to maintain). Think about that... Your solution should fit in a (almost) 470x320 but also in a 320x480 screens. And components close to the border are quite difficult to touch, so some area can contain info, but are not good for buttons.
3. Nextion (the version used here) cannot handle transparency and is quite square on its components, so many of the rounded/curvy elements seen are based on pictures superposition/crop. More pictures means a bigger TFT file size and more memory of Nextion, which again is limited.
4. Fonts takes a big part of TFT size, so we have limit for font sizes also. Bigger fonts (in size) takes way more memory than smaller fonts. If we can reduce one of the existing sizes would be nice. 😉

[edwardtfn]

Some other topics related to this:

• Show buttons instead of weather/time on home screen #117
• Make a bit bigger the outside temperature display #126
• Layout #286

[edwardtfn]

I'm reading this discussion again and it is funny... the home page started quite simple, and then we got constants requests to add things there, but in the end it became a mess when all the info is shown.
I think it makes more sense to have different home screens depending on the use case. I have a panel close to my front door. The weather info is super useful there, as I can get prepared before leaving home. For the panel in the guest room, in other hands, that is not very intuitive. Room temperature and some buttons to control things in that room would be sufficient.

We need some time for a redesign. 😉

[lordhelmet77]

I was thinking about this since finding the project, but I feared it might be inappropriate to question the page that so much effort was put into. 🙈

To me personally, the homepage is rather unusable in its current state. Nobody in our house has any interest in the current weather. The clock is very welcome, but it could be smaller, and while we're at it, consistently visible in the header. For anyone using the screensaver, the huge homepage clock is most likely redundant.

I think that a homepage shouldn't reflect everything and all at once, it rather be the place for the most needed interactions. For us these are buttons for lights, appliances as well as status and buttons for climate, heating and media. I'm aware of some of the restrictions in layout and functionality of the Nextion Editor and that it's very difficult to satisfy all personal tastes for customisation. But I think that a step back for the homepage would cater a wider audience.

I'd also prefer a less distracting/intrusive background – if any at all.

[Bascht74]

I would love to have a cleaner home page, too.
More like a "Navigation" page where you can jump directly to an entity or another page with a smal clock on it and maybe some icons on top showing status of some stuff.