Featured Community Plugin: Awair

This post is part of a series, featuring the incredible work of plugin authors who grow the TRMNL plugin ecosystem with every contribution. The TRMNL team has individually selected these plugins and authors to be featured.

Awair Plugin

Community member Bryant created the Awair plugin; here are their words on how it was created.

Why did you want this plugin to exist?

I have air quality monitors spread out throughout the home. A smartphone app is great for something that should control a device. If I want something to display status across an array of devices, TRMNL is a great platform for that.

Why were you the person to make it?

This is probably most useful for people who have several Air Quality monitors and for folks who are a bit over-interested in their indoor air quality. I met this criteria.

How did you balance look vs functionality?

This needed to be glanceable. I don't want to have to calculate whether or not certain values were within an acceptable range when I glance at the screen. So I wanted a way to show many values across multiple sensors and easily show whether or not they are in an expected or acceptable range.

What, if any, challenges did you face while creating it?

ChatGPT was great for getting the wiring all hooked up between the TRMNL and the data providers. I had to iterate on my own to make sure that the UX on the layout was actually intuitive and glanceable.

Is there a tip you would give to a new plugin developer?

There isn't a single obvious way to approach each visualization. You just have to iterate through it multiple times.

What could be improved by TRMNL?

Like I said, creating and editing these plugins takes a lot of iteration. You want to see how it generally looks, you want to see how it looks on the actual devices. I would love to see improvements in the process and workflow for allowing for a development workflow that assists in making that painless.