Web API options for Cortex

[chris_j_hunter]

time format - that one's a mystery ... did wonder if it follows the format in Windows, but couldn't find how to set that either !

direct connection ... not sure I understand (our tablets display the chosen NoticeBoard), but we'd do it via some GeneralLogic gates ... in other words, Room > GeneralLogic gate > AllDisplay item (with text that identifies the Room or whatever + <Time> Message Tag) > NoticeBoard > WebServer > tablets ...

[Karam]

I'm sorry Chris, but I lost you.
I´m using the AllDisplay a lot. It is perfect for the panels.
I manage to get the messages appear one by one on the NoticeBoard, but they disappear after a short while. They don´t seem to be like a feed where I can scroll back in history.

You can control the persistence time of a message on the noticeboard using the tag <Duration=hh:mm:ss>. However the bit about scrolling back I'm not sure I understand. Do you mean you want a new message entry each time the object changes value? I.e so you have something like the history list in Cortex for that object? If so then that is not the way the notice board works. A given object will update its particular message rather then append a new one. If you look at the example screen shot of the notice board connected App in my earlier post, you will see a number of different data items being displayed with times adjacent to them. So as an object changes state or some other reason to update its status (could be scheduler driven or on a button press or any other signal) then it is just the object's data that gets updated rather then an entire new entry. So you can see at a glance for example when the door was last opened or closed or you can see how long something has been going on for if you use a time accumulator, that sort of thing. So the idea is that it is a notice board not a history list display - i.e not something you'd normally want to interact with to scroll.

An app could however be created which simply appends new messages to a list (possibly a simple modification to existing one), but I imagine this would only be used for a single object otherwise the list would be cluttered up with all sorts of data items.

[chris_j_hunter]

Why not use NoticeBoard for current status of rooms, and MessageService for History, both scrollable and both fed by some simple GeneralLogic & AllDisplay ...

[Karam]

Just a quick note to inform you that the public release notice board plus app (on our Downloads page) has been updated to fix the memory leak issue. As its a direct apk file you will need to manually download and install but this will not clear any existing settings. The only difference you should notice is that the progress circle has turned into a progress bar and that the indication of 'no/bad response from server' is now a flashing red/black background to the progress bar instead of the whole date bar flashing. Also, after such a break the app will back off for at least 30 seconds then 60s before retrying notwithstanding your refresh period settings.

[Alexc]

The app installed easily - thanks for the update.

[Aristoteles]

Thanks Karam and Chris, I think I get it to work now and I understand the intended functionality for the notice board.
I also found out that I can get a direct connection from the object to the notice board by enablind display prompts. I can even add a dynamic value in the field (ie. <time>) which make things easier.
However the time format seems to be in 12H even though I have unchecked the am/pm on the notice board screen options. (The time shows in 24h format in the date and time area). Strange.
Furthermore the notification area does not seem to scroll and there is no vertical scrollbar as it is on the message area. Would be good if it automaticly scrolled down so it showed the last notifications.

[Karam]

Interesting, I never really thought to try and use the notification area for multiple line messages. In fact only realised that you could achieve this using the concatenation option. However I still think its intended operation mode is displacement. I.e latest notfication displaces the one before it so only ever one item. In fact it does still work this way depending on the new notification even if you enable concatenation, so it may not always work as you think. I'm guessing you might be still trying to achieve a form of cumulative list function but still not sure that the noticeboard is suited to this.

[chris_j_hunter]

our Notifications are displayed for about a minute - amongst other things, they include written copies of everything that's spoken, so when we don't hear fully what was said we can look at a tablet & still know ... we sometimes have many lines of Notifications showing at once, and we find this very useful ...

that's in addition to Messages, of course, which we have showing for an hour, and use for things like weather forecast & energy summaries ...

[Karam]

I suppose the Notice board app (tablet display) might help a bit in the sense that the notifications are displayed on the same screen and potentially you could scroll with your finger. However I'm not sure what the limits might be, e.g trying to retain a whole days worth of persisting notifications

[chris_j_hunter]

for longer times - several hours, days - then Message Services could do the job of showing (eg) Room Occupation history - just have to generate the messages via some logic ...

if need to see current Room status more or less continuously, could generate an appropriate Message (for showing on NoticeBoard) giving the information every (say) ten minutes, and connect a button to give instant update or, better still, generate the Message whenever room status changes ... we've had some success with formatting Messages to make them easy to read on the displays ...

ie: NoticeBoard summary Message giving current status, and Message Service for longer-term history ...

hmm, when get a moment (we're moving house at the moment), will have a go at doing this ourselves - could be useful, when we have the family staying !