New Feature Ideas

[ad-ha]

Hi everyone,

So based on my use case and in a way to improve the integration, I am thinking into add more functionalities and options.

Here are some of the ideas that pop into my mind and that I might include on upcoming versions:

• Rewards Status Sensors (a sensor for each reward, per kid, to show Not Claimed, Claimed or Approved

• New Select Entities: may ease the creation of services and automations

  • List with all chores
  • List with all rewards
  • List with all penalties

• New Services:

  • Manually Reset All Data
  • Manually Reset All Chores

Should you have any ideas that you would like to suggest and see implemented, please share your thoughts here.

Cheers

[ad-ha]

Hi,

Adding to the list above, which have all been fully implemented, I am now thinking of working on:

• Setup HA actionable notifications.
  Each parent/kid might have an HA companion app and receive direct notifications (with actions to approve/disapprove, where applicable) on their devices. Option to link the devices on parent and kid steps in ConfigFlow and OptionsFlow.

• New Achievements step
  A new section for users to configure "Achievements": 10 days in a row making the bed, 20 days in a row doing chores....
  Maybe add some "Reward" points for achieving the goals
  Some extra badges?!?
  Sensor to track record streak for each achievement

• Integration with HA Calendar
  Integrate chores with HA calendar and provide insights on due dates for chores

By the moment, these are some of the things I put on my plate. Let's see how it comes up 😄

[lkkliffen]

It would be cool to be able to add tasks specifically for week days e.g. school days vs. weekends

[ad-ha]

HI,

Thanks for bringing that up. Nice idea.

I will have to go around and see how I could implement this on the actual structure, but should be something doable.

I just have some other features on the pipeline, so I will include those as well.

[lkkliffen]

This could also just be my lack of skill. But I'm unable to get the button to change colour on my HA Dashboard. I've tried triggering it based off the state but can't figure out the best way to do this as the state is time based.

This would help kids (and me) see what's been done vs. what's outstanding at a glance.

Please correct me if I'm wrong!

[ad-ha]

@lkkliffen
So I am managing that with custom mushroom-template-card. You may see more details here: https://community.home-assistant.io/t/beta-testers-kidschores-family-chore-management-integration/827719/17

[tkurnik]

Feature Request: The ability to define a minimum age (or maximum age) for a chore, challenge, or achievement.

Use cases: I would like to be able to define chores for cleaning the pool; however, those chores should only be offered to my 11 year-old and not my 6-year-old. In the interest in fairness, I would like to set up alternative chores for just my 6-year-old that my 11-year-old should not be offered credit for.

My apologies in advance as I just stumbled across this integration and I’m still getting ramped up on it. But this request assumes there are concepts of individual chores — like brushing teeth — and global chores that are only done by one person in a period of time — like scooping the cat litter once a day.

[ad-ha]

Hi,

You can do that directly on the Chore settings directly. No need for age, you can assign a chore to one kid only or multiple kids.

The chore will only be showing for the kids that you assign the chore to, for example:

[tkurnik]

So how does that work? If you selected both Martim and Victoria, would the chore show up on each kid's list? And if one kid completed the chore, does the chore then disappear (or become disabled) from the other kid's list?

Use Case 1
For example, I might define a chore: Brush Teeth
And assign it to all 3 of my kids. I want them each to independently complete that chore and get the points for it.

Use Case 2
Similarly, I have a chore that has to be done -- for the house, but not for each individual kid. For example: Empty the dishwasher.
I want that chore to be available to all 3 kids, but whichever kid does it first gets the points and the other kids need to wait until the next day (when the chore resets) to attempt to get the points.

I have a variation on Use Case 2 where cleaning the pool needs to be done weekly. I'd like either of my older kids to do that chore. If one of them does, the other doesn't get that option until the next week. However, I don't want my youngest to have that chore as an option ever.

Does that make sense?

[ad-ha]

Hi,

So if you select each kid, the chore will be create for each one of them and the claim/approval will be individual.

Only if you select shared chore it will have effect on one kid claiming and the other not. In case of shared chores you will get an additional sensor with global state.

[tkurnik]

OK cool.

So my original "New Feature" request is still desirable -- a minimum and/or maximum age for shared chores. :)

Unless you're saying that I create the shared chore but then only assign it to my older kids. Is that the workaround?

[ad-ha]

While I appreciate that, this is something that I will not develop into.

Even on shared chores you may define the kids assigned. Shared chores will populate only for the assigned kids, not for all of them 👍

I believe this use case is properly covered with the assignation and no need for age checks 😉

[m1ckyb]

Hi,

I like this so far, I know this is for kids chores, but I would love to see being able to assign chores to adults as well..

[ad-ha]

That's a great point.

Well, in theory you can. Just create new kids with the Adults names and HA usernames and you will be ready to go. I know you would maybe prefer it separate, but this will ease the whole logic of the integration and still be able to achieve your goal.

Let me know if that works for you.

[m1ckyb]

Hey, that solution didn't really cross my mind.. Will look into it.., :)

[ccpk1]

I just did a few quick tests, and it works fine even for parents creating themselves as "Kids" in the system. I just created an FAQ where that is now the first Q&A. Thanks! https://github.com/ad-ha/kidschores-ha/wiki/Frequently-Asked-Questions-(FAQ)

[ad-ha]

Thank you both for the idea and for checking it. Glad it works 👍

[bossdjay]

Is there an biweekly/every other week option? My kids live with their mother every other week. But I would like to have recurring chores for when they are at my house, which is every other week.

For example right now I can only assign them to clean their bedrooms either daily (too frequent) every week (meaning it will be missed on the weeks they are at their mom's house) or monthly.

Having any option for "every 2 weeks" would be perfect.

[Raia-Jicin]

Compliments for what is already there, I believe this is a gem in the making. When playing with it to familiarize myself with the system, I noticed a few additions/tweaks I'd think are worthwhile:

• More per-child customization: Between a 6-year-old unicorn princess, a 13y/o potterhead and a 17y/o fortnite player, it's quickly apparent that whatever is "fitting" for one, isn't for the others. It's already possible to customize the "points" name and picture, I'd like to be able to do this on a per-child basis. The same is true for rewards and penalties - we neither want the 6-year old playing fortnite, nor does the 17y/o long for bedtime stories any more. If I've missed how to already accomplish that, a pointer would be great (but since it is hard to miss for the other things, I assume it's not possible yet).
• Challenges to stay penalty free (or below a certain number) - practically the inverse of the chore challenge, both as a general and as a focused challenge to target a special problematic behavior.
• Maybe an automatic penalty for letting a chore become overdue (could also use this as a challenge to promote proactiveness). With the possible shared nature of chores it probably preferably would be a neg points for all assigned rather than diminishing the possible reward, thus making it even more important (to limit losses) to be the one to quickly claim it.

[ad-ha]

Hi @Raia-Jicin

Thanks a lot for the compliment and the comments, really appreciate. The integration is growing a lot from what I initially thought and is becoming hard to come with all the requests, although I am trying to do my best to accommodate them all, as far as I can and see them as viable.

I believe I have a solution for almost everything you posed, although it will require more tinkering than you would expect.

• I'd like to be able to do this on a per-child basis. The same is true for rewards and penalties - we neither want the 6-year old playing fortnite, nor does the 17y/o long for bedtime stories any more. If I've missed how to already accomplish that, a pointer would be great (but since it is hard to miss for the other things, I assume it's not possible yet).

Best course of action on this is for you to setup a unique dashboard for each kid, instead of the auto-populate dashboard. I will be introducing labels on the next version (using HA current built-in solution) so maybe you could level these to build the dashboard. Or maybe @ccpk1 can incorporate those as a filter option, as long as you get those defined by kid, for example.
You can certainly change the icon and name for each entity on HA, so you may personalize each of the entities for each kid as you prefer.

• Challenges to stay penalty free (or below a certain number) - practically the inverse of the chore challenge, both as a general and as a focused challenge to target a special problematic behavior.

This one is quite trickier. Honestly, although I understand the reason behind, I don't see me implementing this option, as it would mess with a lot of the functions already in place... but... I believe I have a solution.

You may setup a challenge (with start and end date) and define it without any reward points. You can then setup an automation that if by the due date the challenge is not earned, you call the apply penalty service/action and apply the penalty. This should be a straight forward and easy setup.

• Maybe an automatic penalty for letting a chore become overdue (could also use this as a challenge to promote proactiveness). With the possible shared nature of chores it probably preferably would be a neg points for all assigned rather than diminishing the possible reward, thus making it even more important (to limit losses) to be the one to quickly claim it.

This would be pretty much the same as the point above. Just set an automation triggered if a defined chore state goes Overdue, and then call the apply penalty service/action, defining the penalty you may consider (it goes by name, so you need to define the penalty before on KidsChores configuration.

Here is a brief example that should work:

[Raia-Jicin]

Thank you for taking the time to write a reply :) Up to this point I've only used HA for Data Tracking (PV, Utilities), so I'm very much a beginner..

So if I understand you correctly, the same rewards and penalties showing up on all 3 kid's dashboards is not really something that's on the integration side, but rather part of the dashboard setup? All 3 do have their own dashboard (built with the provided yaml code where you replace Kidname), although they are sub-pages of the same 'main' dashboard, if that makes any difference.
I'm not much of a programmer tbh, I thought that since there were already elements present when setting up/adding things that asked about specific children it would be straightforward to just add that portion to the other things too, to have it neatly settled in the interface and have a consistent design.
So would those 'labels' then provide a way to group rewards/penalties to as to whom they are applicable when they are introduced? That's pretty much what I was looking for :)

I'll need a little time to wrap my head around the other suggestions and try them out. The example seems straightforward and makes sense to me. I believe communication didn't really work out on the second one, but you gave me an idea nonetheless. I'll report back on that once I fiddled with it. I just wanted to reply in a somewhat timely manner ;)

Cheers!

[ad-ha]

Hi @Raia-Jicin

No worries, whatever I can do to help, I will do my best.

The thing is that the dashboard is not really a part of the integration and is being done by @ccpk1, who kindly is sharing is own dashboard and work so everyone may use the integration with minimal effort to start with. As every other integration in HA, building personalized dashboards is always on the user side, so each of them can set it up to their own needs and goals.

To give you an idea, my dashboard looks nothing like the auto-populated dashboard from @ccpk1.

As an example:

With that said, if you want to do a deeper personalization, change points' names for each kid and so on, you can, but you will have to do it on each dashboard and as per your own needs using whatever cards you may consider on HA.

Labels will be helping a lot for your purpose. Check here #74

Any other question, feel free to get back and I will try to get it around.

Cheers

[ccpk1]

I'll add a couple more comments for context:

More per-child customization: Between a 6-year-old unicorn princess, a 13y/o potterhead and a 17y/o fortnite player, it's quickly apparent that whatever is "fitting" for one, isn't for the others. It's already possible to customize the "points" name and picture, I'd like to be able to do this on a per-child basis. The same is true for rewards and penalties - we neither want the 6-year old playing fortnite, nor does the 17y/o long for bedtime stories any more. If I've missed how to already accomplish that, a pointer would be great (but since it is hard to miss for the other things, I assume it's not possible yet).

The integration supports only one method of tracking points but allows customization of the label. In my case, I use "tickets" as the label for both of my kids. However, in the background, all entity names still include _points because dynamically renaming them based on user-defined labels would be complex.

For the auto-populating dashboard I built, it was designed to always reference the label and icon set by the integration. That said, you can manually customize the frontend however you like, adjusting labels and icons as needed. If you want to modify the auto-generated dashboard, you can update each kid’s dashboard by replacing all references to the points_label and points_icon variables with custom values. These variables appear multiple times due to the modular structure of the dashboard. Just keep in mind that any manual changes will need to be redone if you upgrade to a new version of the dashboard.

Challenges to stay penalty free (or below a certain number) - practically the inverse of the chore challenge, both as a general and as a focused challenge to target a special problematic behavior.
Maybe an automatic penalty for letting a chore become overdue (could also use this as a challenge to promote proactiveness). With the possible shared nature of chores it probably preferably would be a neg points for all assigned rather than diminishing the possible reward, thus making it even more important (to limit losses) to be the one to quickly claim it.

Good example given above and that's probably how I would do it, but if you look at the developer tools \ states you'll see there are status sensors for all chores, challenges, etc. and they're all named pretty intuitively. You can easily build some automations to key off one or many of those status sensors. For instance, as soon as the dog_chore goes overdue, a penalty gets applied. Or if more than 3 things for that kid go overdue at once, apply a penalty. Keep in mind that would all be custom templates in the automations, but if you look at the Tips & Tricks in the wiki, there are some good examples to start from if you look at the auto approvals and the alerting for overdue chores.

So if I understand you correctly, the same rewards and penalties showing up on all 3 kid's dashboards is not really something that's on the integration side, but rather part of the dashboard setup? All 3 do have their own dashboard (built with the provided yaml code where you replace Kidname), although they are sub-pages of the same 'main' dashboard, if that makes any difference.
I'm not much of a programmer tbh, I thought that since there were already elements present when setting up/adding things that asked about specific children it would be straightforward to just add that portion to the other things too, to have it neatly settled in the interface and have a consistent design.

One of the great things and terrible things about Home Assistant is that you can make it do most anything you want. The question is only how much time and effort do you want to put in. As @ad-ha started this project, I quickly saw a lot of potential in what he was putting together, but the amount of time it would take for most people to try to understand and leverage all the features built in and then build their own dashboard is really significant. In my opinion, most people would not get very far past creating the chores and using the approvals. So the dashboard was really created as a launchpad to very quickly expose all major features in a quick and fun way.

The dashboard was designed to be modular, so if you don’t like a particular card, you can simply delete or modify it to fit your needs. You can also copy specific elements, like the parent cards with penalties, to another page since kids don’t have access to those buttons anyway.

For example, by default, the integration creates rewards that all kids can use, and the dashboard automatically displays them. However, if you wanted to customize it, you could modify the card displaying rewards to show only specific ones, such as “Unicorn” rewards. Making this dynamic—filtering by name, label, or other attributes—would require some light programming.

A quick and simple approach (taking about five minutes) is to delete the rewards card entirely and replace it with a native dashboard entity card. Then, manually select and display only the specific reward_claim buttons you want to show.

Hope that helps give you some ideas. There might be some future updates to the dashboard that would help with some of these, but nothing immanent.  

[Raia-Jicin]

Thanks again to both of you for elaborating so kindly. I've so far not done much of dashboard-building myself so I guess I didn't see the forest for the trees. @ccpk1 is spot on with his assessment I think: The potential of the integration is huge, but as a beginner with HA, it's really easy to get overwhelmed with it throwing dozens (or hundreds) of entities at you - and the dialogues for setting up just made life that much easier, as did the pre-populated dashboard. So yes, you completely succeeded with showcasing the underlying potential and thereby fostering the urge to leverage it.

But I see now that by sticking to this convenience I'm only limiting my options :) I guess I should look into setting up a test system for some educative messing-around...

Cheers!

[jacobmrhodes]

Please add the ability to update the text of the notification text. I currently do not use the points system so I would like to remove that portion of the push notification

[ad-ha]

What's you suggestion, then? How would you like the message to be, so I have a better understanding of your idea.

[jacobmrhodes]

So I was thinking about it and all I'd personally other is way to remove the subtext that says how many points were awarded. The reason is because I'm only using this for my wife and I at this time and neither of us need points!

When my baby gets older I'd like to meet the option to give her points though

[icornish72]

For me, the one killer is the need to use Devices to add a new chore to the list. This means I have to do it myself, but it's often my wife that hands them out, and she uses the tablet in Kiosk mode.

[ad-ha]

Considering all data needed to create a chore, this is the best (and only) way to get it setup. I don't foresee any change that could cut through those steps to make it easier for anyone to setup.

[ad-ha]

I am open to ideas though...

[ccpk1]

@icornish72 - Here's a link to some discussion around the streamlined chore creation in case you missed it.