Helmsman - a new semi-native Home-Assistant companion app

Cool! First time I heard of that, and using that would definitely be a better idea than to write everything from scratch. Making a Sailfish UI for that sounds intriguing, I’ll keep it in mind and look into it more at some point :slight_smile:

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Tada … Helmsman is now on OpenRepos: Helmsman | OpenRepos.net — Community Repository System

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Oh wow. I mean: WOW
This is some magnificent thing you’re doing for the HA on Sailfish! Kiitos! Thank you! :partying_face:

Location worked out-of-the-box :clap: I was banging my head on the wheel with Android version trying to get Companion App sending location to HA - but I couldn’t get it done.. Helmsman did it in a blink of an eye without any settings done or headaches :+1:

I atleast am very keen on using location services of phones. So, pretty please :folded_hands: eventhough I understand that many don’t want battery drain if not using much such - but please leave it selectable so that I can kill my battery and use frequently updated locations :grin:

Awesome work :clap:

If translation help is needed, I can help to correct Swedish translation.

I can put often used items to the Events View - so cool! :heart_with_arrow:
Got there few lamps but now I don’t find my way back there to change selected items.. :see_no_evil_monkey: Can somebody help an idiot please? :see_no_evil_monkey:

There are some things that I can’t get my head around…

  • pull down menu: middle item “Settings” get me to the Webview - is that meaning?
  • Sometimes connection fails (HA Cloud) - doesnt happen with other companion apps
  • Arrow button (under the “Companion App” -item) on the Webview appears often after long delay
  • Hamburger menu not possible to press because it will be registered as “back button” on the left hand upper corner
  • It can be just me but I don’t know how to get to app settings other than interrupting connection at start..

Could be just me again… but I can report this better/more thoroughly if interested to look into these..

Congrats!
This app is so cool, thanks a lot for doing the work on it!

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@lumen I don’t know about HA cloud, I’ve never used it myself. But the other things:

Settings goes to webview - that’s intentional. The native app settings are in there, in the Companion App menu. (where you can also edit the Events View stuff)

And yup, the hamburger button issue is known. I will probably disable the back swipe.

And the back to native dashboard button appearing can take some time because it waits until the page is fully rendered before it injects the button. For me it’s almost instant but I guess it can take longer if the general loading takes time.

Also thanks for the translation offer. I’m fluent in Swedish myself, but for this I just did quick machine translations so I could get most common languages in there. Also I have to admit, I’ve never used a phone or computer in Swedish, so I don’t necessarily know all the correct terminology. So some advice could indeed be useful.

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Regarding the Settings - would it make more sense if the pulley menu item led to the native settings which then had a button leading to the general Home-Assistant webview settings? (now it’s the other way around)

What do y’all think?

Of course the settings could also be made native, but I figured since they don’t provide json like the dashboards, it’s better to use the webview to ensure that nothing is missing (what is shown depends on what and how HA is running)

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Now this is a cool app. I was somewhat afraid I’d have to install the android app and that it maybe would eat battery on background with AAS.

I only installed it yesterday, but since I actually can’t even find the native settings, maybe.

The native dashboard doesn’t seem to filter hidden devices. I’ve added some lights that belong to the same lamp under a helper and marked the individual bulbs hidden. They don’t show up in web/android hass dashboard, but do here in native ui.

Might be a good idea to add the github link to the openrepos description. I always skim it for mentions of source code.

I atleast when selecting that pulley menu item waited that I would land in native side of settings. So I would vote for that.

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I can’t figure how I get to selection where I can choose what items appear on Events View (?)
I have there now few items, but I want to change them.

For the app Cover Actions I have no idea how I get there items …or did I read correctly that I can get two items on the Cover Actions?

When I get some free time I can read through translated items and make suggestions for modifications if needed :hugs:
I suppose you don’t have Weblate or some similar system where to go and suggest translation modifications?

Lots of new updates, I really like the idea of the native version, thank you very much for your work! Some things I’m using don’t work yet on native side, like picture element card which doesn’t show images (other elements inside the card are in place) and history card which doesn’t show content. Nice to have the shopping list working!

Here’s the path: Settings (pulley menu) → Companion App → Events View and Cover → and there’s one button leading to the cover actions selection and another leading to the Events View selection.

For the cover, you can choose as many actions/entities/etc as you want, but if there’s more than two, it will show one button to perform the action and another to cycle through the actions. This is because the cover only supports two buttons.

And no, I don’t have any translations system yet. It’s all inside the app for now.


Yeah, that’s a known thing. For example I have a helper called “xmas”, which toggles where a couple of my lamps are shown (I put the bulbs into xmas stars for the season and at other times they’re in a floor lamp), and now they show up in both places :smiley: Should be a relatively easy fix.


I’ll check those when I get a chance :slight_smile: I don’t use those particular card types on my own dashboard so that’s why I’ve missed them.


I guess I’ll change the settings order so it goes into the native settings from the pulley and then from there you can get to the webview settings.

By the way. If anyone is using the next153-browser for the webview rendering and it blinks like crazy, the solution is to put some prefs into a .mozila/user.js file under the helmsman config directory. I’ll post those later (I don’t have my phone at hand right now to check them) and see if I can also automate writing those if they aren’t there. The webview runs a fair bit smoother with that enabled, so I definitely recommend it.

The exact file to edit is ~/.local/share/org.helmsman/harbour-helmsman/.mozilla/user.js and the prefs are

user_pref(“gfx.webrender.compositor”, false)

user_pref(“gfx.webrender.compositor.force-enabled”, false);

user_pref(“layers.acceleration.disabled”, false);

Not sure if all of those are needed but it does the trick. I’ll try to get that into the app so those don’t need to be written by hand.

Aha! I didn’t understand to press the “Companion app” button in the Webview. I thought that the Webview is a “terminus” and the “Companion app” button would function only inside the Webview. But now I get it :folded_hands:

By the way, at some point…I guess I wouldn’t be the only one who would like to “buy you a coffee”. Maybe even two :wink:

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Hey, I just uploaded a new version on Openrepos :slight_smile: It’s also available on Github too - I’m using that to build the RPM’s to upload into OR.

Anyway, the stuff that was recently discussed is now in there. The native dashboard is also now the default. I’m thinking about making a screen in the onboarding, after first login, that would allow the user to select which one they want to use along with some screenshots and explanation why native is better (unless your dashboard uses something it doesn’t support).

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By the way: the latest Sailfish OS update updated the stock browser to ESR140 - that also affects Helmsman’s webviews. Thankfully it seems like it mostly just got a fair bit smoother :slight_smile:

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My browser (5.2.0.18) says it’s ESR 115 :man_shrugging:

Hmm, so does mine, now that you mentioned it. I’m pretty sure I read about the browser being upgraded in some changelog, but maybe it was in some upcoming changes section… Either way, it does feel smoother after the update.

[update]

ah, I misread. The browser was updated, but not to 140. It was updated to a higher revision of 115 (115.40, which confused me).

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