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A dashboard for my apartment

iinteractive.com

60 pointsdrgenehack16 comments

This is a project that I've wanted to do for so long. I agree with the author's opinion about people making custom-fit apps for themselves. Programming is less taxing than other home improvement techniques like say, carpentry, (although that may very well be my lack of skill with the tools which make it so) while resulting in a similarly satisfying outcome.

Also, For some reason, this reminded this [1] article which was discussed on HN recently.

[1] http://gizmodo.com/why-is-my-smart-home-so-fucking-dumb-1684...

Is it possible to trick the magnet sensor used for instant unlocking with the smart cover? Might be possible to come up with either a mechanical switch involving a magnet, or an electronic one with a solenoid, that instantky unlocks the ipad?

Author here. Happy to explain any technical details I left out :)

I think it's a great concept. The aging tablets are perfect for "smart home" displays.

I've fantasied a dashboard of tasks and chores I need to do when I get home from work.

Have you looked at [Moves](http://moves-app.com/) for the pedometer app? I used it to get location history in one of my recent side projects.

I think the last time I checked it out, it didn't support the Motion coprocessor yet. Thanks for the reminder to use it now that it does!

If you really want to disable that Guided Access pop-up message, I think there's a way to do it. It's called "Single App Mode". You use Apple's Configurator to enable it through a configuration profile, and it literally locks the iPad into booting directly into that app, and you cannot disable it without connecting the iPad to (presumably the same?) computer and removing the profile.

The downsides are:

1. You have to put the iPad into supervised mode, which requires a full factory reset through the Configurator. This is because it enables a bunch of enterprise controls that they don't want enabled without the user's knowledge, such as the ability to configure a global HTTP proxy, etc.

2. As I mentioned before, there is literally no way out of the app other than removing the configuration profile. This sounds like it interferes with your use case, but maybe it's a worthwhile tradeoff for you?

3. Probably something else I didn't think of.

Here are a couple articles I found that mention how to do this:

[0] and [1] are articles from some app that this feature is useful for, explaining how to do it for that app.

[0]: http://support.kioskproapp.com/knowledgebase/articles/413366...

[1]: http://support.kioskproapp.com/knowledgebase/articles/315259

Disclaimer: I have never tried this myself, I have simply happened to have heard of it. I found the two articles above because I knew the term to Google (not a shot at you, sometimes you just need to know the right search). There may be some unintended consequences because it's an enterprise feature and all.

Another way to address the original problem is jailbreaking and using the Activator app to assign the home button to "unlock", which effectively auto-unlocks the device to whatever app you had open.

I find it quite a usability improvement, when using the tablet as a cookbook for example.

Ever have a look at OpenHab[1]? It's a bit finicky at first but would make a dashboard with whatever you want on it, either in a browser or using their native app. There's also a really cool automation guide I saw recently[2].

I really want to do something like this when I get my old house back this summer. Thanks for the inspiration!

[1] - http://www.openhab.org/

[2] - http://www.homeautomationforgeeks.com/index.shtml

For the lighting, you should totally make a "party" mode that involves sending color-changing messages to all the lights, over and over. Bonus points if the colors fade into eachother.

Well done! I'd love something along those lines as well, since my iPad is generally dead most of the time, never being used.

I'm glad I'm not the only one.

I really want to like tablets, and have owned (and subsequently given away) several iPads, but they just never seem to have a clear place in my life: I have my phone with me most of the time because it fits conveniently in my pocket, and a significant chunk of the rest of the time I'm sat in front of a proper computer; there isn't really enough of a gap left between those two categories of devices that I'd need a third to fill it.

(I also like physical books and haven't really installed very many apps on my phone. Perhaps I'm just a Luddite.)

I use my tablet like a second screen for my laptop.

Read emails, documentation, or play media on the tablet while working on the laptop.

I save my phones batter for when I'm on the move.

Some will react in horror, but my use case for my ancient iPad 1 is, as I'm doing right now, reading in the bath. My phone is both too valuable and too small to fulfil this 'need' safely, and the iPad hardly handles anything other than basic web browsing anymore. Still, since it probably qualifies as a collector's item nowadays, I might stop doing this...

I used my iPad maybe once a week, so I gave it to my 5-year-old niece. She loves playing princess games on it.

+1 primarily for mention of forecast.io; I'd never heard of it, and it makes me quite excited!

All the best,

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