Tile Types

Learn about numeric, multi-choice, toggle, and folder tile types

Motion tiles take data sourced using any supported protocol and distills them into consistent, useful types.

Types

Numeric

A numeric tile is a point-based tile that displays a number at all times.

The underlying raw data is also numeric, and often requires transformation of some kind to be presented to the user in a way that makes sense to a typical end user. Some examples of transformations:

• A thermostat provides current room temperature in degrees Celsius, but the end user lives in a region where degrees Fahrenheit is the common temperature unit.

• A water loop temperature sensor outputs the current temperature as an integer (i.e. no decimal points) that actually includes float information (i.e. digits that come after a decimal point).

  • For example, the device may output the value 10275 to indicate a temperature of 102.75

Numeric tile configuration provides tools to accommodate these and many more types of transformations, and allows you to customize how units are displayed to the end user (e.g. "°F" instead of "degreesFahrenheit").

Numeric tiles can also be configured to only permit an end user to set values within a particular range, which can help prevent innocent but costly errors, or even simply help enforce energy savings goals.

Multi-Choice

A multi-choice tile is a point-based tile that always has a finite list of possible values, any one of which can represent the current state. If the tile is read-only, then the current state displayed on the tile will only be one of the values in the finite list. If the tile is read+write, the end user can change the state to any of the choices in the finite list.

Different protocols may have different names for this concept. For example, BACnet points that follow this concept are referred to as "multistate" points in the BACnet protocol. Although different protocols may have different names for this concept, Motion will always refer to tiles with such choices as multi-choice.

A classic example of a multi-choice tile is one which controls the current HVAC mode in a thermostat. The possible states could be:

• Heating mode

• Cooling mode

• Crossover (automatic) heating/cooling

• Fan only

• Off

While the Motion tile will present user-friendly verbiage for each state, the underlying raw value is always an integer (i.e. a number with no decimal point). So while the user may see "Unoccupied" on the tile, the actual value being send and received in the background that represents cooling mode will be a number, such as 2. The tile configuration is where the installer manages these value mappings:

Multi-choice value mappings

Toggle

A toggle tile is a point-based tile similar to multi-choice, but with a few key differences:

1. There are only ever two possible states, whose text representations (i.e. what end users will see) are fully customizable. For example: "On" and "Off"

2. The underlying raw value behind each state is only ever false or true (which can also be thought of as 0 and 1)

Folder

A tile folder is one type of SuperTile™ that is actually rather simple. Like a folder on your computer or smartphone/tablet home screen, it's just a tile that contains other tiles. It is used to categorize tiles that have some commonality within a single app.

A tile folder is itself a tile, so it can be shared and is configured similar to the other tile types. When a tile folder is shared, its contents are shared automatically.