Just getting back into using the HSTouch Android Client and thinking of ways to make it behave better for an always on wall-mounted touchscreen.
On my phone I have an app called Car Home Ultra. It essentially replaces the normal homescreen in my car and gives me a driving-friendly interface (big buttons, big text) from where I can get info (weather, now playing, speed, location) control things (whatever media player I'm using) direct dial certain contacts and launch other applications. One of the neat things is that it becomes the new homescreen (configurable option) so, even if I launch another app, pressing the home button returns me to Car Home Ultra. It can also be configured to keep the screen on and a specific brightness levels by day/night conditions while it and any applications it launches are active.
What I would like to see is HSTouch behave like Car Home Ultra regarding how it becomes the homescreen and launches other apps. For example, I use IP Cam Viewer to view and manage cameras and Logitech Squeezebox Controller to manage my Squeezebox players and music server. There is no sense (for me anyway) to install plugins and configure all sorts of screens/pages for managing those two when the apps do it so well (same could be said for PLEX and TiVo, but I don't see using them from a wall-mounted touchscreen). I still see a few scenarios where I would embed cameras or media info in a screen/page, but would rather rely on the apps for 90%. So here are the features I'd lie to see in a nice list:
- Option to make HSTouch become the homescreen (is this dock mode.. car mode?), all presses of the phone/table home button return you the last HSTouch screen you were on (with the screen home button taking you to the defined HSTouch startup screen/page)
- Option to make HSTouch override default screen timeout, brightness and lockout
- Easy way to launch applications from HSTouch (think this can be done already via client actions). A drag and drop interface on the client like Car Home Ultra has would be really nice!
Having these features is the only way I could really see myself deploying in wall touchscreens. There are a plethora of sub-$100 android tablets that this would work great on.
On my phone I have an app called Car Home Ultra. It essentially replaces the normal homescreen in my car and gives me a driving-friendly interface (big buttons, big text) from where I can get info (weather, now playing, speed, location) control things (whatever media player I'm using) direct dial certain contacts and launch other applications. One of the neat things is that it becomes the new homescreen (configurable option) so, even if I launch another app, pressing the home button returns me to Car Home Ultra. It can also be configured to keep the screen on and a specific brightness levels by day/night conditions while it and any applications it launches are active.
What I would like to see is HSTouch behave like Car Home Ultra regarding how it becomes the homescreen and launches other apps. For example, I use IP Cam Viewer to view and manage cameras and Logitech Squeezebox Controller to manage my Squeezebox players and music server. There is no sense (for me anyway) to install plugins and configure all sorts of screens/pages for managing those two when the apps do it so well (same could be said for PLEX and TiVo, but I don't see using them from a wall-mounted touchscreen). I still see a few scenarios where I would embed cameras or media info in a screen/page, but would rather rely on the apps for 90%. So here are the features I'd lie to see in a nice list:
- Option to make HSTouch become the homescreen (is this dock mode.. car mode?), all presses of the phone/table home button return you the last HSTouch screen you were on (with the screen home button taking you to the defined HSTouch startup screen/page)
- Option to make HSTouch override default screen timeout, brightness and lockout
- Easy way to launch applications from HSTouch (think this can be done already via client actions). A drag and drop interface on the client like Car Home Ultra has would be really nice!
Having these features is the only way I could really see myself deploying in wall touchscreens. There are a plethora of sub-$100 android tablets that this would work great on.
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