Somebody Asked for Screenshots

A guest member popped in on our chat the other day and asked screenshots of the software. While we haven't released anything yet, we are fast approaching our v1.0 prototypes (or should we call them betas?) and can share some shots of them.

Admittedly, with all the work going on updating the website we haven't done a good job of updating the community with all the other work that has been going on in software side. We are slowly working to get back up to speed on keeping the community up to date (and getting the code to a shareable state) and will work on getting more complete status updates on the site.

The shots of today are from the iPhone user interface composer. While the software hasn't been released yet these are shots from a functional application (with Beehive integration) and not merely mockups.

Screenshot of X10 macro composition in UI Composer
(click for larger image)

What is User Interface Composer?

UI Composer allows you to place user interface components and create layouts for your remote panels.

While eventually we plan to support different types of panel hardware (with a generic web console interface) the first iteration of the UI composer is solely focused on creating layouts that are suitable for iPhone and iPod Touch consumption.

The UI composer at the moment allows you to select your infrared remotes from Beehive database, pulling the remote control button information from a LIRC configuration file and allowing you to place the buttons into your iPhone layout. You can either place the infrared buttons directly or compose them into a simple macro which you can place on the user interface instead. The benefit of using LIRC here (via Beehive) is that there's a good chance somebody from the community has already "learned" the buttons of your remote, you can choose your remote model and be instantly ready to go.

We've also added a simple mechanism to enter X10 and KNX commands as buttons in the UI composer. Initially the use of KNX or X10 will require you to have somewhat intimate knowledge of device addressing of each system but we don't anticipate this to be a big issue for our early adopters. Importantly, this step will let us get the required scaffolding in place to start developing more detailed modeling tools for home and building automation. While the first iteration only uses direct user input (X10 or KNX) or infrared configuration from Beehive as input, later iterations of UI Composer are likely to get information of available devices from a modeler tool that may contain full floor plans, lights, HVAC, A/V device information of the building you want to control.