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Nomad 1.0.0-beta.11 Release

Richard Brown
Richard Brown
CTO & Founder

Applies to: Nomad
Release Track: Beta
Version: 1.0.0-beta.11
Requires action: No

Nomad 1.0.0-beta.11 is about your van knowing where it is and who is in it. Your system now has a proper record of the people who live aboard, one place to tell it what your vehicle actually is, and a much clearer answer to the question of where its position comes from.

Summary​

This beta adds the People tab, gathers everything about your van onto a renamed Vehicle tab, gives you real control over your GPS source for the first time, and rebuilds the driving screens around the map with the controls that matter in one row beneath it.

Highlights​

  • People. Say who lives in the van, whose phone is whose, and put a face to each of them. It works with no internet at all.
  • A Vehicle tab. The Settings, Radar tab is now Settings, Vehicle, and it answers questions about your van as well as your map: how tall it is, how heavy, and which fuel it takes.
  • Your GPS source, under your control. Choose where your position comes from, for the whole system or for one screen, and pick from any device that reports one.
  • Fuel and Toilets on the map. One tap pins every match across the map in front of you, and keeps up as you drive.
  • Driver faces, not a dropdown. A row of photos under the map, sized for a thumb at the wheel.

What has changed​

People​

The new People tab under Settings is where you tell your system who lives in the van. Each person gets a name, a photo, and the phone or tracker that travels with them.

A name is all that is required. Photos upload straight into your system's image library from the row itself, and the phone list is the same one the GPS source setting offers, so the two can never disagree about what counts as a phone. All of it works with no connection, because the record of who lives in your van belongs in your van.

If your system has been online, the add row also offers the people on your mySensa account, one at a time, bringing across their name and photo. Nothing you have set up is overwritten, and any phone you linked yourself is left exactly as it was.

Your system also creates a person automatically for any device it finds reporting a position, so a phone in the van is never anonymous. Give them a name and a face and it is the same person from then on.

This release delivers the managing of people. The presence and journey behaviours that build on it come next.

See People.

The Radar tab is now the Vehicle tab​

Everything that was on Settings, Radar has moved to Settings, Vehicle, and nothing was dropped in the move. The old name described where the map came from rather than what the tab was about: someone asking how tall their van is or which fuel it takes is not thinking about Radar.

Alongside the existing GPS, Tracking and units controls, there is now a Vehicle card for the van itself:

  • Fuel type, so a fuel pin shows the price you actually pay rather than the cheapest on the forecourt.
  • Height, width, length and weight, for low bridges, width limits, weight-limited roads and whether a car park will take you.
  • Steepest hill, for routes you would rather not be sent up.

Type the figures in rather than hunting for them on a slider. Leave anything at 0 if you would rather not say: zero means not set, and that one is simply not checked. Vehicle-aware routing and its warnings need Radar Premium, and without it your figures are still saved, just not used.

Where your van thinks it is​

Choosing your GPS source used to mean opening Home Assistant's own settings, which on a Sensa system you cannot do. It is now a control on the Settings, Vehicle tab, and it has grown up in three ways.

  • Far more devices are offered. Any device reporting a real position can be chosen, not only a phone running the Home Assistant companion app. Trackers such as Traccar, OwnTracks, GPSLogger, iCloud and fitted telematics boxes all appear. Things that only know whether you are home or away are still left out, because they have no position to navigate by.
  • Auto ignores a position that cannot be true. On Auto, a phone that has just reported is no longer believed if getting there from your last known position would need an impossible speed. A partner's phone sitting at home is not where the van is, however recently it checked in. This looks after itself: the longer since a good fix, the more movement is allowed, so a trailered van is accepted again on its own.
  • One screen can differ from the rest. The Location device picker at the top of the Cab dashboard now changes that screen only, and its first entry, (System Default), follows the box-wide setting including any later change you make to it.

The map, the nearby search, journey tracking and the Schengen counter all read the same answer, so they can never disagree about where you are.

The driving screens​

The Cab Home and Mobile Navigation screens have been rebuilt around the map, with everything that changes what it shows gathered into one row beneath it: who is driving on the left, what to look for in the middle, and which map to use on the right.

  • Driver faces replace the Driver dropdown. One photo button per person, because this gets used while moving: a face is recognisable at a glance and is a thumb-sized target, where a dropdown needs a tap, a read and a second tap.
  • Fuel and Toilets pills. Press one and every match across the part of the map you can see appears as a pin, and keeps appearing as you drive. Press again to clear. Fuel pins carry the price for the fuel type you set on the Vehicle tab. The list is short on purpose: every entry has to be worth one tap at the wheel.
  • The Mobile Navigation screen is now the same screen as the Cab map, rather than a reduced copy of it. Plenty of people have no cab tablet, so their phone is their cab screen, and it should not quietly be missing things. It had lost the Miles and Kilometres preference that way.
  • The odometer on the Cab Engine tab reads in your chosen distance unit, instead of always in kilometres.
Picking a driver no longer moves your GPS

Tapping a face used to repoint the whole system at that person's phone. It no longer does. That was the right thing in a van with no GPS of its own, and a step backwards in a van with one, and you had no way to opt out of it.

The two are now separate: the faces say who is driving, and the GPS source setting says where the position comes from. If you would like them joined up, name that person's phone as the GPS source yourself.

Radar Premium​

The PREMIUM and BASE badge introduced in the last beta has been taken off the map. In its place, the Sensa Radar button in the row under the map is tinted gold when the driver you have picked has Premium, and plain when they do not. One indicator in a place you are already looking, rather than a second one over the map.

Premium belongs to a person rather than to the van. Your licence comes with a number of Premium places, and the owner of your account decides who holds them in mySensa. If the driver you pick has no place, your system writes a single line into the Log saying so and what to do about it, either because every place is in use or because one that was theirs has been moved. There is no alarm and no notification: this is a decision for whoever owns the account, and it is the only Radar limitation you can sort out yourself.

Smaller things​

  • Temperature dials now always read in your system's unit. A sensor reporting in Fahrenheit could show its raw figure on the Climate tab while the header badge beside it correctly showed Celsius. Both now convert as they are drawn, so changing a unit takes effect immediately with nothing to regenerate.
  • The SONOFF Dongle-M is found wherever it sits on your network, rather than at one fixed address. It gives away nothing but an open port, so its hardware address has to match before it is claimed, and anything else answering on that port is left alone.
  • Devices with no photograph show an icon in the device list instead of an anonymous grey placeholder. A photograph still wins wherever there is one.

Breaking changes​

None.

Upgrade notes​

Beta builds update in place, and there is nothing you need to do. Your existing GPS and Tracking settings carry over to the renamed Vehicle tab untouched, and any people your system creates for the phones it already knows about appear on the People tab ready to be named.

Known issues​

  • Tracking has still not been used on real hardware. It is complete and tested in our own environment, but it has yet to run in a vehicle.
  • The People tab manages people and nothing yet uses the result. Linking a phone to a person is recorded correctly; the presence and journey behaviours that will read it are still to come.
  • The maintenance window does not yet hold back an automatic Sensa update. It governs your operating system updates as described. If you need certainty about when a Sensa update lands, turn automatic updates off and use Update now when it suits you.
  • An acknowledged alarm can return after a restart. If the condition that raised it is still true when the system restarts, the alarm is raised again.

This release is recommended for:

  • beta-channel testers already running 1.0.0-beta.9,
  • anyone wanting the new People tab, the vehicle profile, or proper control over their GPS source.
  • See the installation documentation for first-time setup.
  • See the maintenance documentation for update, backup and support-plan guidance.
  • See the reference section for compatibility and release history.

What's next​

Putting the People tab to work is the next step: presence in the van, and journeys that know who was aboard. Routines remains the larger piece of work still ahead, turning that placeholder tab into the place you build your own behaviours.