"No active sensors" text is misleading and too long (could be better represented/designed)

[Paul Sladen]

The "No active sensors" text is displayed in the following situations:

  1. First use
  2. When the user has intentionally de-selected all sensors
  3. When zero sensors are currently available.

Conditions (3) could probably be better represented to the user via a blue (pure information) sensor icon. This state is actually "No sensors available" and so is probably incorrectly shown.

Condition (2) could be treated the same way with a blue icon, but if it's something that the user has intentionally done should probably be taken as-is. The label "No sensors active" would be correct in this situation.

For situation (1), the idea would for the user to never see it, as it is evidence of the indicator not "just doing the right thing automagically" (aka "just works"). Ideally 'indicator-sensors' should start up for the first time, and enable all possible sensors immediately. The user, if they which could then choose to disable certain ones from display.

Either way, the text "No active sensors" would probably be removed from visible display and replaced with the more appropriate and useful representations.

[Alex Murray (alexmurray)]

Thanks for bringing this up - I've been meaning to try and make this better but haven't yet got a good design for how to handle all these cases - will hopefully have something soon though.