I take the chance to shortly introduce myself.
My name is Arno.
Besides my regular employment in a bigger german company, I was and I am dedicated to software development in many different open source and commercial applications.
Since 2010 I’m mainly developing visualization software in the home automation field.
August this year I released the first version of my new iOS app LiVo.
LiVo supports Apple HomeKit accessories and the openHAB server, which I think may be interesting for you guys.
Yesterday version 2.0 was released on the App Store with some major improvements for openHAB as well.
I’m using openHAB in my own home since many months now and of course this was one of the first “standards” I wanted to support with LiVo besides Apple HomeKit.
If you are interested, you can install LiVo for free (to try) on your iPhone or iPad, take a look at the manual for a quick introduction on how to setup LiVo for openHAB.
If you need additional help on configuring LiVo for openHAB pls. let me know, may be on this thread.
Any feedback is also appreciated.
Kai kindly allowed me to put this announcement in the openHAB forum a few weeks ago.
Thank you very much for this, Kai!
I’m looking forward reading your feedback soon.
Arno
currently LiVo doesn’t support multi instances. This is related to a synchronization issue where items not found in the first initialized instance would be deleted. I will definitely work on this issue for one of the next releases in order to allow multiple instances of openHAB.
Apple Watch support is planned later next year. Still I’m figuring out which use cases to support first, so any advice in this regards is absolutely welcome. Currently I’m not sure if a navigation through the complete sitemap structure makes sense or if it may be better to have a few customized list of items to show on the Apple Watch.
Thanks for the information and potential plans on addressing the topics. I think I understand what you mention regarding the watch interface and I will ponder potential usage myself.
I had a pretty long mail exchange with a user yesterday who had some problems with the setup of LiVo for openHAB. We discovered some issues and I would like to share a workaround as well as some requirements to the sitemap with you:
Sitemap requirements:
Controls should be grouped within a “Group” tag in the sitemap. You may frame controls by using a “Frame” tag within the group definition in the sitemap.
Groups can be nested to provide a multi-level navigation within a dynamic panel.
Make sure, that all items that have to be tracked, are grouped into a group named “All” within your items configuration file in openHAB.
LiVo doesn’t read the titles of items to apply them to widgets. You will have to specify the title yourself by providing a label attribute to each control defined in the sitemap.
Issue 1:
There is an issue in Versions 2.0 and 2.0.1 (currently under review) which causes a crash of LiVo when more than one frame is defined at one level such as in the following:
sitemap home "My Home" {
Frame {
...
}
Frame {
...
}
}
Pls. change this as follows:
sitemap home "My Home" {
/* one frame per level only */
Frame {
Group item=groupName1 label="Navigation name 1" {
/* one frame per level only */
Frame {
...
}
}
Group item=groupName2 label="Navigation name 2" {
/* one frame per level only */
Frame {
...
}
}
}
}
Issue 2:
LiVo seems to crash when the URL is entered before entering the sitemap info. So enter the sitemap info before entering the openHAB server URL.
Both issues will be addressed in Hotfix 2.0.2, the manual will be updated in the next few days.
Regards
Arno
Edit: one rule was wrong, LiVo is definitely able to read referenced groups from the sitemap as the required control definitions are provided by openHAB REST API.
LiVo 2.0.2 was released. The issue that caused LiVo to crash when nested frames were defined within the sitemap was fixed. Also the second issue crashing LiVo when the URL was defined before entering the sitemap info should have been resolved.
my last post has been long time ago. In the meantime many openHAB related improvements and fixes have found their way into LiVo. Let me just give a brief overview to you:
LiVo 2.1 introduced a Web Viewer widget. This may be interesting for openHAB users for showing charts as I am doing on my own installation.
LiVo 2.2 introduced a today extension for iOS giving you access to the main functions via a customizable panel. Also backup and restore of the complete database was introduced.
With LiVo 2.3 dynamic panel menus became customizable in order to combine the concepts of custom and dynamic panel to a complete customizable navigation experience. The panel editor was highly improved on the iPhone and many limitations of the free version were removed. Support of openHAB “SetPoint” sitemap items was introduced as well.
The latest version 2.4, which was just released, introduces many improvements in particular for openHAB users (You may notice on that release that I am using openHAB extensively in my own house and therefore have a personal interest in making things working smoother). Here a list of improvements of the latest version:
Support for openHAB DateTime items added (Status viewer)
Added a queue to the openHAB handler to avoid events overflow and related out of memory issues
It is no longer required to assign openHAB items to a group named „All“.
This update will make all openHAB items available to LiVo independently from the selected sitemap.
openHAB discovery service is supported
Auto setup for openHAB introduced
I’m looking forward reading your feedback and would be very happy about some reviews in the app store. Pls. let me know if something is going wrong or if you need further help. I try the best to help you further and to improve your user experience with LiVo.
I like the app and the look and feel, BUT you really need a better icon. If the icon from an app didn´t look good i normally didn´t install it spend more time. Reason for that: I personally think if the icon looks bad, the developer didn´t spend so much time on the icon and therefore didn´t spend much more time on the app. By the way, my collegue wrote an app too and didn´t had any Photoshop skills to build an icon, so he used Freelancer.com for that. Maybe that would an option for you too.
Oh and I would prefer lighter colors. Black looks so … depressive …
an update of LiVo - HomeControl (2.5.1) is available on the App Store.
Here a list of improvements of the latest version:
Font and background color in label widgets is individually customizable
Cut, Copy & Paste widgets in panel editor was introduced
Handling of openHAB „Text“ widgets nesting other widgets was introduced
Fixed a crash when openHAB configuration contained only one sitemap and the user selected the list of sitemaps
Improved startup performance in user mode
Improved update of widgets during startup
I’m looking forward reading your feedback and would be very happy about some reviews in the app store. Pls. let me know if something is going wrong or if you need further help. I try the best to help you further and to improve your user experience with LiVo.
LiVo - Home Control was updated to support openHAB 2.
In addition to this, sitemap based panel generation was improved to support the openHAB web viewer widgets as well.
I really appreciate your feedback, pls. also consider a review on the App Store as this may help to make the app more visible to others.
Hello excellent app but I’m wondering whether this app is still maintained ? No more update since 2 years and moreover the website is down (not page found)
Thanks for updating us about LiVo status
