New Room List Icons?

[Topfox]

Just noticed when I bring up my room list on my phone app, it’s now showing squares next to the name of the room which appears to be whatever the background is for my room. Does it only follow the room background or can you set it to something separate from the room background. 
 

Currently I’m not a big fan of the feature, semi distracting but then again all my backgrounds are basically the same blue color. Maybe it would be more appealing if I was using something different. 

[Cyknight]

It's a new feature/addition and yes a blue square is a bit boring. You could go all the way and give each room it's own background (even a picture of the room).

[msgreenf]

I shared similar feedback that the icon idea is good but they should be different then the background. But the feature was released anyway... 

[GregCAMS]

agreed - I'm okay with creating or adding thumbnails of pictures for each room or a set of stock photos to represent each room in the room/zone list.  However, I don't like that it shows up as the wallpaper background then on that room when viewing all of the controls.  very distracting and pretty poor user interface design, far from elegant and streamlined.  I'd almost go so far as it is pretty terrible compared to background images that are either blurred and non-distracting or have a more refined aesthetic shown by all the other major control systems.  Can easily get demo versions of those apps to do a comparison.  This feels completely hodge-podge and thrown together.

Edited December 20, 2023 by GregCAMS
additional info

[Cyknight]

1 hour ago, msgreenf said:

I shared similar feedback that the icon idea is good but they should be different then the background. But the feature was released anyway... 

I don't disagree, even if with the background I use on my personal system (same for all) it actually looks fine - being the same (and the same across all of them in my case) as the background really isn't very useful, and would prefer it being an OPTION to add an icon of my choosing or not having it at all.

[South Africa C4 user]

Interesting.  I was at my holiday home when the feature was turned on on the App and the Touchscreens,  I really liked it.  I came back to my main residence and don’t like it.  The difference between the 2 houses is that I have professional photos as wall paper for most of the rooms at my holiday house but use 2 or 3 of the standard wall papers as wall papers at my main residence.

I guess that an option to toggle this on/off would be great.

[indecision]

I completely agree that a toggle is the way to go on this.  It is going to go unused and be unattractive on most installations.

[GregCAMS]

This just doesn't seem to be so hard if they take some time to have forethought and a design/user interface perspective on these type of changes.  The examples here are ones that take the effort to show high quality images that aren't so compressed or small aspect ratios on the rooms views and then properly obscure/blur the background to not be so intrusive or make the device options hard to read if you have a high contrast photo of your room.  This needs more work and design thoughtfulness.  These examples, IMO have a much more refined user interface and have been out on the marker for a few years now and don't seem as clunky as what just got rolled out in this latest mobile app update from C4

[chopedogg88]

Agreed, should be an option.  They should provide canned stock photos for different room types/names like Savant and others do, so if you don't have a picture of the actual room handy you can at least quickly select from a set of stock photos that make your house look way cooler than it actually is!

[GregCAMS]

Just now, chopedogg88 said:

Agreed, should be an option.  They should provide canned stock photos for different room types/names like Savant and others do, so if you don't have a picture of the actual room handy you can at least quickly select from a set of stock photos that make your house look way cooler than it actually is!

amen - to have a bunch of blue rounded squares and no option for stock photos like Josh/Savant/Crestron is just software application negligence.  So now have to go take photos of 2 dozen zones to not have this clunky non-descript icon showing up in the list.  terrible

[C4 User]

Completely unrelated but I love the multiple rooms under the suite in the above example. 

[GregCAMS]

14 minutes ago, C4 User said:

Completely unrelated but I love the multiple rooms under the suite in the above example. 

Yeah that's the Intelligent Areas function within Josh.ai.  I have C4 and Josh and have started using more of the latter as the user interface (remote, iOS app, etc.) with C4 doing some of the backbone work of items that system doesn't directly control (use of their Bridge).  The customer portal allows a customer (myself in this case) to create, group, and nest rooms, zones, etc. on demand and within seconds.  So everywhere I have a grouped area (bedroom with retreat, bathroom, bedroom for example) you can nest those areas.

[Kaas Mayer]

the idea is nice, but the small icons should be selected seperate or should be replaced by more modern room pictograms. 
like @msgreenf said. its in most of my installations is just the same image by the rooms and not helpfull in any kind. more like distracting..

 

 

[Topfox]

6 hours ago, Kaas Mayer said:

the idea is nice, but the small icons should be selected seperate or should be replaced by more modern room pictograms. 
like @msgreenf said. its in most of my installations is just the same image by the rooms and not helpfull in any kind. more like distracting..

 

 

Now icons like this example I could totally get behind. 1000% better than my blue squares. 

[South Africa C4 user]

My two houses (quite a contrast in my view):

 

Edited December 20, 2023 by South Africa C4 user

[RAV]

Nice FREE no-license stock images for rooms:

https://unsplash.com/s/photos/rooms
 

(the few with the unsplash+ logo are member only $7 monthly subscription and show a watermark unless you're a member, the majority are unmarked)

[SpencerT]

I actually like this app update.

We've always done generic wallpapers that remind us of what a room is (not actual pictures of the space - baked goods for kitchen areas, water pictures for the pool, etc). Turns out they look good as little icons. 

I like this much better than the odd fly out icon update that makes me feel like I'm back on an old version of Elan. 

[jillmark99]

17 hours ago, Kaas Mayer said:

 

I don’t mind these basic icons. Looks better than the native squares in the app. Where did you get these basic items? I would like to add these to mine. 

[BY96]

19 minutes ago, SpencerT said:

I actually like this app update.

We've always done generic wallpapers that remind us of what a room is (not actual pictures of the space - baked goods for kitchen areas, water pictures for the pool, etc). Turns out they look good as little icons. 

I like this much better than the odd fly out icon update that makes me feel like I'm back on an old version of Elan. 

That is an interesting idea. I have used some pictures for some of my rooms (my wife is a pro photographer) but I don't like how they look on the phone app. They look great horizontal, but then selecting a slice of the photos for the app looks off. I need to research wallpapers to see if I can find enough options to cover my rooms. 

[SpencerT]

Just now, BY96 said:

That is an interesting idea. I have used some pictures for some of my rooms (my wife is a pro photographer) but I don't like how they look on the phone app. They look great horizontal, but then selecting a slice of the photos for the app looks off. I need to research wallpapers to see if I can find enough options to cover my rooms. 

Most of ours are bing potd images (there are thousands and they are high res). We can generally find a slice that looks good on phones (as well as tablets). We have professional pics of most of our spaces and have never bothered to use them as backgrounds for the reason you mentioned.

We have screensavers feeding our rokus and our generic wall tablets with the same images. Every once in a while we'll find a new one we like and update a room wallpaper.

Easy peasy. 

[SpencerT]

Also, I might just be an extra bourbon in for the evening but is this new(ish)? I don't remember shuttle controls in sessions... We usually had to plop into a room to skip, thumbs down, pause etc. this is great!

 

[Kaas Mayer]

5 hours ago, jillmark99 said:

Where did you get these basic items? I would like to add these to mine. 

its just a mockup for my idea. its easier to identfy rooms by icons instead of text. 
at the moment you can only change the background of a room and the icon will be showed in the room overview.
my idea was to have seperate pictures for that. 

[jillmark99]

10 hours ago, Kaas Mayer said:

its just a mockup for my idea. its easier to identfy rooms by icons instead of text. 
at the moment you can only change the background of a room and the icon will be showed in the room overview.
my idea was to have seperate pictures for that. 

I like your mock-up you posted. It looks good. I’m going to play around with it and add some background images over the holidays similar to what you have in your picture posted above. 

[Kaas Mayer]

33 minutes ago, jillmark99 said:

I’m going to play around with it and add some background images over the holidays similar to what you have in your picture posted above. 

i think this gigantic icons will look strange as a background, but i am interested to see what you will make out of it.

[jillmark99]

2 minutes ago, Kaas Mayer said:

i think this gigantic icons will look strange as a background, but i am interested to see what you will make out of it.

Will see. Can always delete them if they don’t look good on the T3’s.