Provide a graphical interface for Kelvin

[stefanwichmann]

Currently the user of Kelvin has to manually edit the config.json file to interact with the application. This is not only error prone but also a big hurdle for inexperienced or non-technical users. In order to be usable by a broader user base, Kelvin should provide a graphical interface for setup and configuration.

As most installations of Kelvin are probably headless (on a raspberry pi) a web interface seems to be a reasonable choice. It allows access from all kinds of devices (desktop to smartphone) and should suitable for the relatively simple tasks:

• Initial setup and authorization on the bridge
• Editing of the schedules (create, update, delete)
• Overview of the current status

Over the last weeks I implemented an initial version of this interface and you can use it right now if you clone and run the master branch. Just change the webinterface.enabled setting to true and point a browser to the computer running Kelvin on port 8080. You should see something like seen on the following screenshots:

Tell me what you think?

(Note: The next release of Kelvin will contain this changes being disabled by default)

[stefanwichmann]

From my point of view there are several things to do on this and I could need some help!

• [ ] Make it beautiful (layout, colors, styling, logo, ...)
• [ ] Make it fully responsive (only the dashboard works well on mobile devices right now)
• [ ] Make it secure (only http right now)
• [ ] Maybe use a frontend framework? (angular, vue, react, ...)
• [ ] Provide a clean API to control Kelvin (basic REST API is already implemented)

[GittaHub]

Hi Stefan,

thanks for developing Kelvin - using it since your first published version, exactly what was missing in my Hue-setup, makes the whole system so much better.

Regarding the GUI, great idea! Looking forward to seeing more functionalities implemented in the dashboard.

Tom

[stefanwichmann]

Hi Tom,

thanks for your feedback! Are there any particular features you are missing in the dashboard?

Stefan

[FezVrasta]

If that's Bootstrap as I think, take a look at this theme I created, it should give a boost to the look of the app with minimal effort.