and android they could just release instead of waiting.....might speed up apple!!!!

Android clearly has some issues... One of the problems is some devices run Honeycomb 3.0 and have no hard buttons, so the stationary 30 or 40 pixel bar is always showing. Other devices have the hard buttons that would allow the app to to full screen.

Currently, Android phones and tablets have a huge range of resolutions. 480 x 320 (same as iPhone 3G) on smalller phones with a slideout keyboard, 480 x 800 on the larger touch screen phones (Like the Galaxy S), 540 x 960 on others, and to add the confusion, 480 x 854, 240 x 400, 240 x 320, 240 x 640, 360 x 640, 480 x 848, and 640 x 960. There are a couple more I can't recall off the top of my head.

The smaller tablets have 1024 x 600 (Galaxy Tab), the mid size tablets have 800 x 480 & 1024 x 768 screens and the largest (like the Xoom) have 1280 x 800 screens. The app would have run full screen on some devices, but display the bar on others with Honeycomb 3.0 and every possible resolution would have to be supported in Integration Designer.

Now imagine RTI having to pay GuiFX to design page wizard templates for all those possibilities or explaining to your client that he needs to pay you to redesign his GUI because he just traded hs Galaxy S for a phone with different resolution or his Galaxy Tab for a Xoom. I don't know about you guys, but I have had three Androids in three years and all were different resolutions.

Apple has one tablet and two phone resolutions, the beatiful part is the retina display simply doubles up on the 3G's 320 x 480 in the same physical area, so a GUI designed for the 3G works on the iPhone 4 and appears exactly the same. So when an Apple customer upgrades, it's a non issue to load the same template file.

From a GUI standpoint, Android is a nightmare. CommandFusion and BitWise allow you to create a GUI at any resolution you choose, which definitely helps out, but trying to cover every available Android device's screen resolution with a page wizard or pre-made templates would be a huge time vampire.

I think is why you see everyone (Crestron, AMX, CommandFusion, BitWise, iRule etc...) contentrating on the iPad, iPhone and iPod Touch and putting Android on the back burner. Aside from all of this, I read an article about a dozen companies that are stopping production on tablets and going back to putting those resources back into developing new smart phones. The market is saturated with manufacturers trying to crank out Android tablets, but they all have to share the market with each other to compete with Apple.

Now you have Blackberry O/S and HP WebOS tablets and I doubt anyone would develop a home automation app just for them. The good news is, you can still sell product to your Android clients who have a distaste for Apple and make some money.

Noel, this is an extremely well said and informative post. As programmers and integrators we sometimes ask for things without thinking about the shortcomings. The graphical plotting and set up time would indeed be excruciating if one had to deal with a host of android resolutions. I am more than happy to steer my clients towards apple and avoid Android, at least for this type of stuff!

Thanks Vincent..... I totally agree. Although Android support would be really nice, there are just too many variables to deal with when it comes to their mobile devices and tablets (not to mention the never ending operating sytems like Eclair, Froyo, Donut, Cupcake, Gingerbread, Honeycomb and coming soon.... get this.... Ice Cream Sandwich) to make them a viable home automation controller.

-1 for droid. If the tabs are anything like the phones then no thanks. Two of my co-workers and myself all have different droids and we hate em'. We're all wishing our carriers would get the iPhone, far less buggy in our experience.

Problem I see with giving our clients buggy devices is that they may think our automation app screwed up their new device...

Apple gets my recommendation for now.

Some of that makes sense, too many resolutions and versions to make it cost effective to do.

As far as Android reliability, my household has a mixture of both Apple and products running various Android versions.

IME, my Droid Incredible and Nook Color (both rooted) have been far more stable and reliable then the Apple products (3 Ipods of various generations and an Iphone).

Installed an XP6 and an iPad running the RTI Panel App on Friday afternoon. Worked beautifully, although a little learning curve with some new things in ID but overall very easy and worked very reliably for the 3-4 hours I was programming/ testing.

Was controlling DTR 30.1 via 232, PS3 and Cable TV with a Mac Mini as a media server. Volume feedback from Integra worked perfectly but still to set-up feedback for the tuner page.

Ok so you either have Tmobile or Sprint, I think you are just an Apple fanboy. Both TMo and Sprint have phones that have been tested against the iPhone and are as good or better as phones. The thing that most reviewers talk about is the iTunes vs Android Market. iOS does arguably have better apps.

I have had 5 different Android phones. The original G1 I still have and will keep it as my back up. The ONLY Android phone I had a problem with was a Motorola with that annoying Motoblur. A bone stock Android phone without all the bloatware it's a thing of beauty!

Crestron has their Android app out. It automatically resizes to the native resolution of the device you load it on. As for the other excuses about the resolutions it seems to be just an excuse to me. It shouldn't be that hard to scale the templates for the different resolutions. I get tired of hearing about issues of gui resolutions. Extron is newer to the GUI game and yet they give us the ability to have graphics automatically resize for the button we are dropping them in. And the graphic will resize if you resize the button. It can't be that hard to resize the GUI's. It obviously can be done or else Crestron couldn't have done it.

huh I guess I got the only non buggy driod x........I must be lucky

i don't know how the gui software works but i don't know if i agree that this is a reason to NOT develop for Android. While annoying (and yes i do know firsthand what you are describing) using this as an excuse to not develop on Android leaves an opening for competitors to come in that are not afraid of this inconvenience. btw as of 3.2 they are doing the same thing as iPad for video stretch 2X button (which they should have done from the first tablet IMO). they also have a new method to develop against different screen sizes starting in 3.2 which will alleviate some of the different resolution size categories you mention. yes, they are a work in progress so these developments are implemented over time.

I agree that developing native apps on android for GUI can be challenging to say the least but if you GUI designer is just putting together HTML pages then this should not be an issue as you can adjust the size, graphics, etc. to match the resolution of the android device. again i don't know specifically what the RTI panel outputs but if it is similar to embedded HTML pages it should be able to compensate for this.

we do the native apps and GUI so we know firsthand the issues you are talking about however saying that this is a reason to not develop on this huge platform is a mistake IMO. most people on android understand these issues already and are more than willing to go along with the best that can be done for now until this is all sorted out on android (which they are doing a much better job starting at 3.2). just my opinion on android development; not specific to RTI. They may have other reasons beyond the GUI size (hurting their brand with the size issues, uptick on support calls, complaining about people that don't understand the GUI issues, etc.)

twilo / cpchillin,

I thought about this for a long time, but it would still be very complicated on my end. I have racked my brain trying to figure out how to come up a solution that works for all Android phones and tablets. I already have designs for Android phones and tablets floating around for beta testing.

All of the issues I mentioned in the earlier post were based on emails I received for one phone template and one tablet design that I sent out. The Xoom template works great, but only on the Xoom. When it is loaded to another 1280 x 800 tablet that has a 30 pixel stationary bar as opposed to a 40 or 28 pixel bar due the lack of hard buttons, which is up to the tablet manufacturer to decide, things don't quite line up anymore and backgrounds don't fit the screen properly compared to the buttons that are overlayed. Everything needs to be designed around a specific device to make it appear the way it was designed to.

It may appear I am pro-Apple and anti-Android, but this is not the case. I use a Galaxy S daily and have a Galaxy Pad that I use for testing. I also have an iPad and iPhone Touch that I use for testing iPhone GUI's.

After re-reading my post a couple posts up I realize that it might've seemed like I was "coming" at you with the "sick of the GUI resizing" comment. I've been running into little issues the last week or two with having to resize buttons like crazy building new gui's. Between Crestron and RTI I keep having to make buttons of different sizes and saving them. Network logo's are killing me. I guess it's the price I pay programming screens from 240x320 on up to 1024x768.

It kills me that Extron has the ability to change sizes EASY. If you drop a 24x24 button with a network logo in you can in the properties or by dragging the line change it to 50x60 or whatever size you want and it will stretch the logo. Of course small changes keep the logo looking fine. If you stretch a 15x15 image to 100x100 it'll look like doo doo.

You may already know about CoPilot but thought I'd suggest it in case you don't. You can download it here: [Link: guifx.com]

It allows you to select the entire contents of a folder (eg. RTI-Channel logos 100X100) and batch re-size them to another folder with just a few clicks.

VERY useful tool!

Very funny guys... for a second there i thought some of you really believed android was even an option.

LMAO.....