MyServer or CQC Anyone?

[simplextech]

7 minutes ago, Michel Kohanim said:

@simplextech, and what does CQC bring that what I suggested doesn't?

With kind regards,

Michel

So people want a nice GUI.  For what?  So they can see the temperature in full color?  Or see that a Switch is On or Off or some other canned value?  Nahh they want to see those same things on their mobile device right?  Which they can today already.  Ohhh but wait they want to see that same information from Nodeservers now being supported in a mobile app so they can see on/off or a numeric value.... right?

There's no argument about the need or want for an improved UI experience.  But don't do it just because without it having any meat or substance that provides actual functionality beyond what exists.  Doing something just because and making it colorful is simply appeasement.

What would a new improved UI bring today?  Nothing.... not a thing.  The limitation is a core issue of the design and purpose of the ISY.  The ISY was not built to be a multimedia controller or a to display dynamic or media content to users.  It was designed to control devices, run programs and do that with Insteon.  Even the Z-Wave addition in my view is a tacked on piece that still today isn't fully functional... ahem multisensors???.

You can tack on a UI that provide no new value.....

You can start making core changes that will take years to complete and be mostly failures along the way losing most customers in the process and not gaining any new....

You can build a broader range system around the ISY expanding capabilities... this again will take years and I think... was the idea goals of Polyglot which is what 5 years in the making but it (sorry dream crushing) will never meet the "wants" or expectations or device integration expectations because the core it's built on is the limiting factor.

You can buy or partner with a system that is designed from the very beginning to be device agnostic that wraps whatever into a cohesive interface environment for event programming all the way up to UI presentation.... that is what CQC is and does.  Not to mention the existing integrations with hundreds of low level controllers, devices, other ecosystems.  The pipe dream of being able to plugin a system whether it's an ISY or multiple ISY's even and a z-wave controller and a Lutron Radio RA2 system and your AV equipment and controls (harmony, rti, etc) and have all of these different systems accessible through a single event programming interface and all available for use within your own custom built UI that's you design and you dictate the look and feel and skin or icon or text not someone else which can run on a touchscreen or a mobile device....

Can you do all of that in a time frame of reason or just build a UI and mobile app that presents on/off and numbers?

 

[Michel Kohanim]

@simplextech

Apologies, but I don't understand. Or what I think you are saying is that CQC is already a full featured system that ISY and Polyglot cannot replicate. If that's the case, then? To morph ISY and Polyglot to CQC? Do the reverse? Integrate the two? One eat the other? I just don't understand.

Please be explicit with what you are suggesting.

With kind regards,

Michel

[simplextech]

1 minute ago, Michel Kohanim said:

@simplextech

Apologies, but I don't understand. Or what I think you are saying is that CQC is already a full featured system that ISY and Polyglot cannot replicate. If that's the case, then? To morph ISY and Polyglot to CQC? Do the reverse? Integrate the two? One eat the other? I just don't understand.

Please be explicit with what you are suggesting.

With kind regards,

Michel

Here's explicit and direct

CQC already integrates with ISY.... the devices and information is already pulled in and usable from CQC... I posted a auto generated UI the other day... easy...done.

So options.  Partner with CQC to make the ISY integration a bit tighter and to integrate nodeservers into the driver which is not done today (shocker).

OR....

Make an acquisition proposal to CharmedQuark... get the whole menu not just the garnish.  Now all of those features for UI, mobile, device integration capability, physical connections, rs232, ip, etc all of those requests are possible and most are done.  You're now positioned literally as the Crestron of the DIY market.

Of course with the right arrangement acquisition is not the only way a cross-benefit partnering and sales split are options.... but you work out the business problems

Explicit enough?  More details needed?  Should I get crayons and make a chart and some diagrams? 

[simplextech]

Oh and no.. not one eat the other nor merge them.  They are separate and should stay separate as by design they both work perfectly independently just for different purposes.  They both are built for integrations utilize that strength.

[Michel Kohanim]

On Windows? 

With kind regards,

Michel

[simplextech]

3 minutes ago, Michel Kohanim said:

On Windows? 

With kind regards,

Michel

Today... it's being ported to Linux as now there's demand for it... it's all C++ with minimal external dependencies....

And today Windows 10 and Windows Servers are pretty stable.  But of course there's always the stigma of Windows from bad installs or drivers and such... bad updates happen across all OS's even Linux or BSD.

[Michel Kohanim]

So, if customers want an app, the will have an ISY, Polisy, and a CQC running on Windows? Or, mobile apps are not included?

With kind regards,

Michel

[simplextech]

1 minute ago, Michel Kohanim said:

So, if customers want an app, the will have an ISY, Polisy, and a CQC running on Windows? Or, mobile apps are not included?

With kind regards,

Michel

What? 

[Michel Kohanim]

The mibile app communicates with which system? CQC? If so, and in the near future, customer need an ISY, a Polisy, and a CQC? If not, which systems are needed?

With kind regards,

Michel

[simplextech]

7 hours ago, Michel Kohanim said:

The mibile app communicates with which system? CQC? If so, and in the near future, customer need an ISY, a Polisy, and a CQC? If not, which systems are needed?

With kind regards,

Michel

Lets play the scenario where ISY and CQC are utilized.  CQC provides a UI/Mobile layer already.  As the ISY is just another device controller under CQC those devices are immediately available for inclusion in a CQC UI template.  The entry point would be through CQC which can see and interact with all of the devices or systems underneath it.

This today works with CQC and it's not the only option today.  Also MyServer provides an excellent UI and mobile experience and works with ISY and everyone's favorite free option today of Home Assistant it does the same.  These systems sit on top of controllers and other devices and provide a UI.  I've seen today where lots of users are using HASS for their front end and HASS components instead of Nodeservers because then they all integrate within their UI as well as hundreds more integrations not available as nodeservers and everything can be automated from a central source for disparate devices from different sources.

Point being whether it's CQC, MyServer, HomeSeer, Home Assistant all of those provide a UI layer on top of other controllers like the ISY and they bring in hundreds of additional integrations and functions that do not exist with ISY and many of which are not even possible with ISY and won't even be with Polisy.  The core of the ISY does exactly what it's meant and designed to do so why mess with that when it's cleaner to integrate upwards to expand capability than try to redesign. 

Hints were added for mobile app use and to this day have not been utilized and at least in public minimal discussion about them.  My view is this is an app problem not an ISY problem for a basic mobile app in the current design. 

People are using other systems on top of ISY/Polyglot today already and always have this is nothing new.  UDI taking a step to provide a tigher integration with a system would be beneficial all around and doing a partner integration with another commercial entity would ensure quality and longevity as open source projects are not stable by nature as they are in constant flux of development.

[simplextech]

If there's any confusion let me clarify.  I don't care about a UI or mobile app.  Those are the least of my interests. 

What I want is a higher powered cohesive environment for all of my devices to be accessible and automated within.  Where I can interact fully with anything to full device capability and not by the limitations of a single underlying component.  Polyglot is a great system for cohesively integrating devices into the ISY construct and it works great.  However it is limited by the construct of ISY Node Definitions and performance limitations of the ISY hardware.  Let the ISY do what it does best and not try to coerce it to do something it's not meant to do by re-writing profiles and requiring restarts.  Do interactive/dynamic integrations at a higher order level.  The fact that these other systems I've mentioned provide a UI is only bonus for those wanting a "app".

[Michel Kohanim]

In short, stop Polisy and Polyglot enhancements and move everything to CQC. No?

With kind regards,

Michel

[simplextech]

6 minutes ago, Michel Kohanim said:

In short, stop Polisy and Polyglot enhancements and move everything to CQC. No?

With kind regards,

Michel

No.  Not what I said.  Polyglot has a purpose to bring devices into ISY but those nodes are still limited by the ISY node construct.  This is fine for a lot of devices but it's limited which is why people are adding on things like Home Assistant and actually NOT using Polyglot.

Polyglot is a easy way to add basic devices but the limits of the ISY restrict what can be done.  The ISY itself is resource limited and I can't even run all of my own nodeservers without it bringing the ISY to it's knees from too much network traffic so I'm looking at MY options which was the point of this thread to show what's out there and how they can fit together.  Not a discussion about mobile apps or UI's those are so minor in my explorations.

Example... I'm giving serious thought of changing out my lighting to Radio RA2... but I have a lot of Insteon devices still like my outlets... so I would need to manage RR2 and Insteon... I can't do that with ISY or Polyglot.  I can do this with HomeSeer or CQC or MyServer or even Home Assistant.  The converse of this is that it's very easy to develop a Polyglot nodeserver for some things compared to a plugin or driver for any of those mentioned systems.  So having the power of ISY and Polyglot for easy integration of some things then presented upwards to a master controller brings the best of all devices, components, capabilities under a single control pane.  This has nothing to do with a UI or app which I could care less about but about being able to expand/control and more importantly USE whatever I want without being limited by the limitations of a single component.

[Teken]

7 minutes ago, simplextech said:

No.  Not what I said.  Polyglot has a purpose to bring devices into ISY but those nodes are still limited by the ISY node construct.  This is fine for a lot of devices but it's limited which is why people are adding on things like Home Assistant and actually NOT using Polyglot.

Polyglot is a easy way to add basic devices but the limits of the ISY restrict what can be done.  The ISY itself is resource limited and I can't even run all of my own nodeservers without it bringing the ISY to it's knees from too much network traffic so I'm looking at MY options which was the point of this thread to show what's out there and how they can fit together.  Not a discussion about mobile apps or UI's those are so minor in my explorations.

Example... I'm giving serious thought of changing out my lighting to Radio RA2... but I have a lot of Insteon devices still like my outlets... so I would need to manage RR2 and Insteon... I can't do that with ISY or Polyglot.  I can do this with HomeSeer or CQC or MyServer or even Home Assistant.  The converse of this is that it's very easy to develop a Polyglot nodeserver for some things compared to a plugin or driver for any of those mentioned systems.  So having the power of ISY and Polyglot for easy integration of some things then presented upwards to a master controller brings the best of all devices, components, capabilities under a single control pane.  This has nothing to do with a UI or app which I could care less about but about being able to expand/control and more importantly USE whatever I want without being limited by the limitations of a single component.

I'll keep this simple which is has anyone considered asking just at a high level if some kind of licensing deal could be worked out with any of the above applications? The way I see it if I was CQC & ISY and have almost no market presence when compared to Smartthings etc.

As you noted *Asking is free* and to just have a quick high level discussion of cross sales / integration and let those first interactions let the ball roll.

Having said this I would really prefer not having another *Black Box* running 24-7-365 in my home unless its going to be based on a micro computer system like a RPI. I have enough hardware consuming energy in my home which I'm trying to reduce which directly impacts my pocket book.

Perhaps the Polyisy would be house this extra layer? 

[simplextech]

9 minutes ago, Teken said:

I'll keep this simple which is has anyone considered asking just at a high level if some kind of licensing deal could be worked out with any of the above applications? The way I see it if I was CQC & ISY and have almost no market presence when compared to Smartthings etc.

As you noted *Asking is free* and to just have a quick high level discussion of cross sales / integration and let those first interactions let the ball roll.

I'm nearly certain something could be done in this area with some platform.

 

12 minutes ago, Teken said:

Having said this I would really prefer not having another *Black Box* running 24-7-365 in my home unless its going to be based on a micro computer system like a RPI

I don't like *black boxes* either.  Depending on the system like HASS will run on a Pi but if you have a largish system it too will fall over.  Pi's are great development throw away boxes but not something I want to run my home from.  Could something run on Polisy... unlikely as it's a highly custom BSD image *black box*

[Michel Kohanim]

@simplextech,

Thank you for the details and I would definitely entertain this if I could justify the business case:
1. Spend UD resources/money on resurrecting CQC and migrating it to something like Polisy
2. Don't spend any money/resources on enhancing ISY/Polyglot (unfortunately we do not have unlimited resources)

Can you help me justify the case by providing ROI in terms of how to recoup our investment? Can you raise money for this venture? Can you start a kickstarter for this venture? If you can, then I am all ears.

With kind regards,
Michel

[lilyoyo1]

I'd be great with a CQC partnership. Keep the Isy itself the same but work with them so that adding the isy to it is as smooth of a transition as possible. 

Personally, I don't need garnish on a great tasting steak. Sure it looks pretty but if means a great looking steak with a terrible steak then it's not for me. I use the admin for what it's designed for.... Configuring devices. Nothing more. The isy was designed for automation not monitoring. There are options for that. 

I just hate to see the isy go from being a matter of what it does to one of these Jack off all trade systems that's buggy and unreliable (here's looking at you homeseer)

[simplextech]

Just now, lilyoyo1 said:

I just hate to see the isy go from being a matter of what it does to one of these Jack off all trade systems that's buggy and unreliable (here's looking at you homeseer)

Thank you.  Exactly what I'm trying to get across.  The ISY does NOT need to change.  What it needs is a optional top layer that it can sit under that provides all of the higher level functionality that some people want.  Not everyone needs this so not everyone will pay the extra for it.  However having OPTIONS is always good and being able to grow an ecosystem beyond the base limits of a SINGLE system and SINGLE protocol (Insteon) is always a good thing.

 

7 minutes ago, Michel Kohanim said:

1. Spend UD resources/money on resurrecting CQC and migrating it to something like Polisy

You have two options available acquisition or partner.  Partner is cheaper and faster and would be more beneficial for both parties and both customer bases as I'm sure most of the CQC customer do not care about ISY.  Polisy is the WRONG direction for a system like CQC and again would impose artificial limits on a system that is designed to be horizontally scaled to meet requirements and connections options (serial, ip, remote systems, etc). 

9 minutes ago, Michel Kohanim said:

2. Don't spend any money/resources on enhancing ISY/Polyglot (unfortunately we do not have unlimited resources)

ISY/Polyglot to me are the same and should stay together.  There are some development guidelines/standards that need to be put in place and a lot of documentation and clean up and overall organizing of Polyglot to turn it into part of the core product and not a hobby project.

10 minutes ago, Michel Kohanim said:

Can you help me justify the case by providing ROI in terms of how to recoup our investment? Can you raise money for this venture? Can you start a kickstarter for this venture? If you can, then I am all ears.

If I could raise the money myself I would buy CQC myself and restructure them and have a dominant force in the mid/high end DIY home automation arena... but alas I'm a poor geek that works for somebody else.  Honestly in today's world of self-entitled-everything-free people... I don't think a kickstarter compaign would actually go anywhere as people will throw out the excuse of why not Home Assistant and it's FREE...... free as in money but not in time invested to make it work and then it be completely hosed the next day because of some update that breaks everything you spent weeks building... been there done that.

[lilyoyo1]

26 minutes ago, simplextech said:

Thank you.  Exactly what I'm trying to get across.  The ISY does NOT need to change.  What it needs is a optional top layer that it can sit under that provides all of the higher level functionality that some people want.  Not everyone needs this so not everyone will pay the extra for it.  However having OPTIONS is always good and being able to grow an ecosystem beyond the base limits of a SINGLE system and SINGLE protocol (Insteon) is always a good thing.

 

You have two options available acquisition or partner.  Partner is cheaper and faster and would be more beneficial for both parties and both customer bases as I'm sure most of the CQC customer do not care about ISY.  Polisy is the WRONG direction for a system like CQC and again would impose artificial limits on a system that is designed to be horizontally scaled to meet requirements and connections options (serial, ip, remote systems, etc). 

ISY/Polyglot to me are the same and should stay together.  There are some development guidelines/standards that need to be put in place and a lot of documentation and clean up and overall organizing of Polyglot to turn it into part of the core product and not a hobby project.

If I could raise the money myself I would buy CQC myself and restructure them and have a dominant force in the mid/high end DIY home automation arena... but alas I'm a poor geek that works for somebody else.  Honestly in today's world of self-entitled-everything-free people... I don't think a kickstarter compaign would actually go anywhere as people will throw out the excuse of why not Home Assistant and it's FREE...... free as in money but not in time invested to make it work and then it be completely hosed the next day because of some update that breaks everything you spent weeks building... been there done that.

I say work with them on a partnership and offer integration as an add-on module. Pricing can be worked out between CQC and UDI so that both are satisfied. 

Using the 25% that UDI offered, a developer can build whatever is necessary to integrate the 2 together. 

It's all speculation but if it could get done, this will allow people to put their money where their mouth is. Many act like they are willing to pay what it costs to get what they want so this would be their chance. The complaining and wanting XYZ stops as they will have something spectacular in front of them from UDI. Those who don't need or want an app due to wanting automation are satisfied as the Isy stay the great system that it is.

[simplextech]

2 minutes ago, lilyoyo1 said:

Using the 25% that UDI offered, a developer can build whatever is necessary to integrate the 2 together. 

That's the best part... the CQC driver for ISY already exists and is 95% complete.  It's just missing some of the new things.... fund those updates and the integration is then done....offering a supported integration of the systems brings a lot to each party as UDI has the portal that could be integrated into CQC as well for easy/direct Alexa/Google without port forwarding or tunnels and CQC could bring all of the media capabilities and the UI people want.  I think partnering would be beneficial for both parties and if not the divorce is cleaner.

[lilyoyo1]

11 minutes ago, simplextech said:

That's the best part... the CQC driver for ISY already exists and is 95% complete.  It's just missing some of the new things.... fund those updates and the integration is then done....offering a supported integration of the systems brings a lot to each party as UDI has the portal that could be integrated into CQC as well for easy/direct Alexa/Google without port forwarding or tunnels and CQC could bring all of the media capabilities and the UI people want.  I think partnering would be beneficial for both parties and if not the divorce is cleaner.

Hopefully Michel can reach out to you/them. If it's something that can be done, the 5% still needs to be completed

[Michel Kohanim]

@lilyoyo1, thank you.

@simplextech, now, you are doing precisely what you expect us not to do: imposing limits. ISY and Polisy will not remain static. 

Also, I am still having a hard time with the ROI: if existing CQC customers don't care about ISY and Polyglot, then how do we recoup the investment of developing and maintaining the driver? How much would you, yourself, pay for this integration? How many of you are out there? Would you yourself take it upon yourself to self fund developing the driver and managing it? If so, what do you need UD for?

Quite confused.

With kind regards,

Michel

 

[simplextech]

Just now, Michel Kohanim said:

, now, you are doing precisely what you expect us not to do: imposing limits. ISY and Polisy will not remain static. 

No see you think standards are limits where actually they are guides that keep things functioning.  Those guides YOU already have in place for the ADR aspects.  Apply the same narrow guides/standards to nodeservers in general so that common devices all follow common UOM's and such. 

2 minutes ago, Michel Kohanim said:

How much would you, yourself, pay for this integration? How many of you are out there? Would you yourself take it upon yourself to self fund developing the driver and managing it? If so, what do you need UD for?

Let me break that down...

Would I pay for it?  I have no choice as my current home automation is now beyond the capacity of a single ISY's limits.  I have to look upwards to something to be able to interface multiple ISY's or multiple systems to have a consolidated "event engine".  So will I be paying for it?  Yes.... will it be CQC or MyServer is yet to be determined or <shutter> do I revert back to using HomeSeer which I used before I came to ISY. 

Would I take it upon myself to develop.  I already have to some degree of working with Dean on CQC and working with PyISY for Home Assistant.

What do I need UD for.... hmmm...... I'll stay friendly and skip this one.

Time for me to place my order of Radio RA2 dimmers and CQC license.

[Michel Kohanim]

30 minutes ago, simplextech said:

No see you think standards are limits where actually they are guides that keep things functioning.  Those guides YOU already have in place for the ADR aspects.  Apply the same narrow guides/standards to nodeservers in general so that common devices all follow common UOM's and such. 

My limit comment was related to:

1 hour ago, simplextech said:

The ISY does NOT need to change.  What it needs is a optional top layer that it can sit under

I don't like this limitation. Polisy is future of ISY and will support integration to anything. It may have limitations now, but it does not mean that it should become a cog in someone else's wheels just because.

You are welcome to revert to anything you want alas I still haven't figured out why you cannot just develop a CQC driver for ISY?

With kind regards,
Michel

[bpwwer]

35 minutes ago, simplextech said:

That's the best part... the CQC driver for ISY already exists and is 95% complete.  It's just missing some of the new things.... fund those updates and the integration is then done....offering a supported integration of the systems brings a lot to each party as UDI has the portal that could be integrated into CQC as well for easy/direct Alexa/Google without port forwarding or tunnels and CQC could bring all of the media capabilities and the UI people want.  I think partnering would be beneficial for both parties and if not the divorce is cleaner.

I believe all of the mentioned HA software packages have existing integrations to the ISY.  The actual level of support varies somewhat from package to package, but why should UDI expend resources to help one of them?  You're lobbying pretty hard for the one that you feel is the best (and maybe is objectively the best, I probably too biased to know).  Having the integration between the HA software package and the ISY is good thing, but it is also very difficult.  I would be very surprised if the CQC driver actually supports 95% of the ISY features today. I would rate my HomeSeer plug-in at about 65% maybe less because to actually support nodeservers is a huge undertaking. 

Certainly if CharmedQuark thought it would increase sales, they'd already be working on getting that remaining 5% but I suspect that they can't make a business case for that. 

The problem I see with this approach is that you end up with a system that has a lot of duplicate functionality.  One of the questions I see often for my HomeSeer ISY plug-in is "why do I need both the ISY and HomeSeer?" For less complex setups the overlap can be nearly 100% and you end up paying significantly more just to get a small incremental capability.   Someone from this proposed partnership will have to evaluate all the cases where there's overlap to be able to help customers understand how to configure their systems. Should their alarm be managed by the ISY or by CQC?  Why? Is there a cost advantage for one over the other? Is there functionality difference? Is there a reliability advantage? This is not a trivial problem.

UDI has had a focus on stability and reliability.  That does mean that the ISY evolves slowly but that doesn't mean that it's not evolving. I'd still rather see UDI focus resources on improving the ISY and adding functionality over time than have to split their resources to support an existing package.  I guess I have more faith that UDI has a plan to improve the ISY core to handle more than numbers and on/off and that it won't take 10 years or more.