Creating a beautiful front-end for Domoticz

In a previous post (here), we created a simple front-end for Domoticz running on a Raspberry. In this post, we’ll take it a step further and style it a bit to look beautiful. It’s good if you go through the previous post first since we are going to build on that code base.

Areas you need to be familiar with to follow this post

Code base used in previous post (here)
Bootstrap (you can download it here)
CSS

Starting with the design

At the end of this post we want to have a design of our user interface looking like this:

Adding the Bootstrap structure to the HTML file

We have downloaded Bootstrap and extracted the folders in the folder where we have our HTML file from previous post. We add the following two lines of code to include the Bootstrap CSS and JS libraries.

[code language=”html”]
<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<title>Home Security Frontend</title>
<meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1">
<script src="http://code.jquery.com/jquery.js"></script>
<!– Bootstrap –>
<script src="js/bootstrap.min.js"></script>
<link href="css/bootstrap.min.css" rel="stylesheet" media="screen">
</head>
<body>
[/code]

Adding rows for the Bootstrap structure

In the body of our HTML file, we add three Bootstrap rows. The first one is for adding a nice logo and a ticking clock, the second one is for adding the house icon and the status of the security panel, and the final one is for listing all the sensor information. All three rows must be wrapped in a <div> with a class labeled ”container”.

[code language=”html”]

</div>

</div>
<div class="col-sm-6 v-align" id="house-status-text"><!– keep the opening a closing div tags together to avoid white space causing line breaks in the user interface–>
</div>

</div>

</div>

[/code]

The glyphicon image is part of the Bootstrap package and we will use it as our house image in the first row. The ”v-align” class will be used in the CSS/style part of our HTML file to align the house image vertically in the middle with the status text of the security panel. Keeping <div></div> on line 14 together is intentional to avoid adding any whitespace when rendering the two columns on the same row in the browser.

Expanding the JavaScript functionality

We will expand the JavaScript part of our HTML file with the following:

Wrap the functionality of updating the sensor data in a separate function: updateSensors()
Add a function: getSensorImage() to borrow some nice looking sensor images from Domoticz
Add the time in the top row. This will be a ticking clock since we update the data automatically with one-second intervals
Fetch the status of the security panel
Finally set a timer with a one-second interval to update all data automatically.

The script code looks like this:

[code language=”javascript”]
<script>
$(document).ready(function(){

var domoticzURL = "http://192.168.1.99:8080/"; //use this format if you want to place this file on another computer on your home network.
//var domoticzURL = "../"; //use this format if you place this file in a folder in the www folder on your Domoticz server.

$(function() {
updateSensors();
});

function getSensorImage(sensorType){
//This function returns the image of the sensor that is stored in the image folder on your Domoticz server

var sensorURL = "";

//The list of sensor types can be expanded dependant on what type of sensors you have
switch(sensorType) {
case "Light/Switch":
return domoticzURL + "images/Light48_On.png";
break;
case "Temp + Humidity":
return domoticzURL + "images/temp-20-25.png";
break;
default:
return domoticzURL + "images/Light48on.png";
}

}

function updateSensors() {

var sensorInfo = "";

//First we publish the time in our user interface
var d = new Date();
var hours = d.getHours();
if (hours < 10) { hours = ’0’ + hours;}
var minutes = d.getMinutes();
if (minutes < 10) { minutes = ’0’ + minutes;}
var seconds = d.getSeconds();
if (seconds < 10) { seconds = ’0’ + seconds;}
document.getElementById("clock").innerHTML = hours + ":" + minutes + ":" + seconds;

//We request a list of all sensor data and loop through it to publish on our web page
$.getJSON(domoticzURL + "json.htm?type=devices&filter=all&used=true&order=Name", function(result){

for (i = 0; i < result.result.length; i++) {
sensorInfo += ’
<div class="col-sm-6 col-md-4 col-lg-3 sensor-outer-box">’+
’
<div class="sensor-box">’+
’<img class="sensor-icon" src="’ + getSensorImage(result.result[i].Type) +’">’+
’
<div class="sensor-data">’+
’
<h4>’ + result.result[i].Name + ’</h4>

’+
’
<h5>Status: ’ + result.result[i].Data + ’</h5>

’+
’

Updated: ’ + result.result[i].LastUpdate +’

’+
’</div>

’;
}

document.getElementById("sensor-container").innerHTML = sensorInfo;

//We retrieve the status of the security system, baically Disarmed, Armed Away, or Armed Home
$.getJSON(domoticzURL + "json.htm?type=command&param=getsecstatus", function(result){

var homeSecurityStatus="";

if (result.secstatus==0) homeSecurityStatus="Disarmed";
else if (result.secstatus==1) homeSecurityStatus="Armed Home";
else if (result.secstatus==2) homeSecurityStatus="Armed Away";
else homeSecurityStatus="Unknown";

document.getElementById("house-status-text").innerHTML = ’
<h5>Home Security Status</h5>

’+
’
<h2>’ + homeSecurityStatus + ’</h2>

’;

//Finally we set a timer to repeatedly poll the status of the sensors
setTimeout(updateSensors(),1000);

});
});

}

});

</script>
[/code]

Note that the final getJSON call is nested within the callback function from the first getJSON call to get the sensor data. The domoticzURL variable could either be set to the IP number of your Raspberry + port 8080 or, if you upload the HTML file in the www root of your Domoticz server, you can set it to ”../” or ”./” dependant on if you put it in a subfolder or not. If you open the HTML file in a browser it looks something like this, still not very beautiful.

Styling the user interface with CSS

For the simplicity of this post, we will put all the styling in the HTML file. You can just as well put it in a separate CSS file and include it in the <head>. We add the following styling:

[code language=”html”]
</script>

.v-align {float: none; display: inline-block;vertical-align: middle;} /*class for vertically aligning elements in a row*/

#house-image{font-size: 9em; vertical-align: middle; display: inline-block; margin-top: 10px; margin-bottom: 10px;}
#house-status-text{text-align: left;}

.sensor-outer-box {padding: 0px;}
.sensor-box{padding: 0px;margin: 5px; background-color: white; box-shadow: 5px 5px 10px #888888; border-style: solid; border-color: grey; border-width: 1px; border-radius: 5px;}
.sensor-icon{vertical-align: 80%; margin: 0px;}
.sensor-data {display: inline-block; margin: 0px;}

</style>

<div class="container">
[/code]

The result is a user interface with responsive design

Thanks to Bootstrap, we automatically get a user interface with a responsive design that works just as well on a laptop and tablet as it does on a smartphone.

On a laptop:

On a smartphone:

You can play around with the style part of the file and the Bootstrap columns definitions to completely change the look and feel of the user interface to your liking.

Creating a beautiful front-end for Domoticz

Areas you need to be familiar with to follow this post

Starting with the design

Adding the Bootstrap structure to the HTML file

Adding rows for the Bootstrap structure

Expanding the JavaScript functionality

Styling the user interface with CSS

The result is a user interface with responsive design

Yellington AB

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