HABPanel Widget Gallery

Apps & Services HABPanel
1

Hi!

Since the custom widget feature was added to HABPanel almost a year ago, there has been quite a lot of awesome widget contributions by the members of this community – and it’s about time they get the spotlight they deserve.

Introducing the widget gallery:

This new HABPanel feature simply uses the Discourse API, the software powering this forum (don’t worry, it doesn’t use more resources than simple browsing) to present a view of the topics with the new widgetgallery tag - turns out, widget was maybe a little bit too generic, but let’s keep both during a transition period - and a details page will display the first post along with other info and will allow either:

  • importing the JSON attachments recognized as widgets directly into HABPanel;
  • navigating within the same dialog to a referenced GitHub repository (still the recommended approach to publish widgets) where you can do the same - and keep them updated.

Also, to encourage the use of your widgets by all users, the gallery has now direct exposure in the dashboard designer via a “Get more…” entry in the “Add Widget” dropdown menu. Since the custom widgets are often specialized and require some configuration in advance, like binding, items or icons/images to put in the html folder, a handy Help button in the widget’s settings dialog will take you to the relevant forum topic or GitHub readme file.

I added the widgetgallery tag to the relevant threads, but what’s most interesting is: rather than some arbitrary central authority, this gallery will be moderated by the community!

Indeed, calling all members with the “Regular” badge or above :postal_horn: : you have the permission to edit the topics’ titles and tags, in other terms, you control what appears in the gallery! So while I’ll certainly do my part, I’m also counting on you to use your new gallery-curating powers when you see a new topic which shouldn’t (or should) belong in it :wink:

If this ends up working well, I’m already considering adding more galleries for other types of things users might like to share: themes, dashboards…

You’ll find this feature in the upcoming snapshot builds, but retrieving the gallery info involves the server so make sure it’s connected to the internet - and update your HABPanel bundle, if you use a copy of HABPanel in the html folder it won’t update the server-side parts. As always, feedback is welcome!

38 Likes
2

This all looks excellent though can we somehow urge (or push?) users to use the config placeholders within the widget templates rather than hard-coding item names.

There are a number of visually excellent widgets that I have come across, but the effort to unpick the hard-coded item names has meant I’ve passed over most of them.

3

Here’s some wishful thinking: the gallery expands the widget’s audience, leading to more users coming to the widgets’ individual threads to discuss and request support, in turn inciting the authors to update the “installability” of their widget (and the description/documentation in the OP).
:innocent:

4

Nice! As you say, I would love to see this for themes as well, super cool

5

I just installed the current OH 2.1 Snapshot to try this amazing feature…
I get this error

Error: sun.security.validator.ValidatorException: PKIX path building failed: sun.security.provider.certpath.SunCertPathBuilderException: unable to find valid certification path to requested target

any Idea? what the problem could be?

my OH runs on RPi 3 Raspian Jessie

6

@Dr_Kuebel you’re probably running into this issue:

Your JRE is probably a bit old so the Let’s Encrypt certificate authority (used here for HTTPS) isn’t recognized.

Try updating the JRE to a newer version.

7

This is really fantastic! I was already looking on GitHub to open an Issue to have some type of gallery available. Thank you a thousand times Yannick, really appreciate the work you put into this. It’s like the cherry on the pie :slight_smile:

Some things I’m still wondering about:

  • Why is it not possible in HABpanel to view the widget(s) in editor mode, instead of the black anonymous squares?
  • It would be really cool if you could resize widgets to better fit your dashboard.
  • When you want to save your dashboard on the server you can give it a name. But I can’t find how it’s possible to reach that same dashboard from another machine? A little explanation or link to docs in that section would be nice. As for now, I can’t simply find it back :frowning:
  • Where can you see the version of HABpanel you’re using? Is it automatically updated like some sort of add-on to OpenHAB when there’s a new version in GitHub?

With these changes it would make life a lot easier as you can better see what you are developing. A bit like WYSIWYG. I’m sorry if this was already asked, was only curious.

8

Thanks! :blush: I’d appreciate it if this thread could stay on-topic though, but here you go:

Mostly historical reasons, but also technical and practical ones. Among other things the widget is likely to break until it has been properly configured (e.g. assigned an item).

You have an “experimental” dashboard option in the Advanced tab to change the number of columns in the grid from the default (12).

It’s part of the distribution and the latest version at the time of build is included. You can also update manually.

Edit: there is now a comprehensive documentation on HABPanel in the official openHAB docs:

http://docs.openhab.org/configuration/habpanel.html

3 Likes
9

Thanks ysc, appreciate it :+1:

1 Like
10

Hi thanks @ysc for that hint,
I updated to the latest version but now I could not access the webside on my raspi…

I created a new thread here to keep this one clean …

Thanks for help

1 Like
11

Hi

I start with HABPanel since a while but I’ve never seen a widget list or "get more… " on the Add Widget button.

the update to 2.1 didn’t solve the issue.

Is there something wrong on my configuration ?

image

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the Gallery is a new OH Snapshot 2.2 feature.

Here is a Howto

13

I’m on nightly snapshot 2.2 (openHAB 2.2.0 Build #1054).
There is no “get more…” in my habpanel as well.

14

Same for me runnning a slightly older build #:
2.2.0-SNAPSHOT
Build #1048

And no “Get More”

15

Having not seen it either, I upgraded to Snapshot Build #1063 a few days ago. It’s in there.

1 Like
16

Bingo! I just installed the latest snapshot and i see it now :slight_smile:
Thank you !

17

Yup, upgraded as well and now it’s there. great!

18

Have either of you; @Saracen or @sintei started experiencing problems since upgrading your snapshot?
Since the upgrade my rules will stop running after about ~24hrs. I have to restart OH2 and everything starts running again.
I just upgraded to #1070 and will see if the issue still exists.

Not sure if it’s my .rules file or OH2 snapshot iteself. Let me know if either of you have problems :slight_smile:

19

I’m not experiencing any problems apart from with log files but I don’t think it’s connected.

20

I get an error when I try to view the widget Gallery.

Error: Received fatal alert: handshake_failure

Can you help me?