Indigo Domotics

A website post that clarifies (somewhat) how non-MFI certified devices can connect either directly to iPhone or indirectly via a bridge and some of the limitations. Specifically mentions Insteon devices, so worth a look:

http://www.macworld.com/article/2874486 ... -work.html

The restrictions on Homekit are designed to ensure the security of a home automation system. While I currently use Insteon and Z-wave devices, I'm perfectly aware and perfectly uncomfortable with the complete lack of controller and responder authentication in either of these products. While it's possible to institute a more secure exchange with Z-wave (e.g. door locks), it's far from the proposed HomeKit architecture (I do not have an NDA with Apple).

Although it's common with nascent technologies to avoid the additional complexities of secure authentication or transmission encryption, there comes a time when the technology has to "grow up" and support security and privacy. I doubt many people would enter a credit card on a non-TLS enabled web site these days, but at one point it was common. The bad guys start seeing opportunities and systems need to address countermeasures.

Using an embedded chip is a conservative way of rolling security enforcement into a large variety of products. I'd like to see Insteon adopt it, even if it means replacing my existing devices. While software only devices can be certified as secure, it's difficult to set up such a program and the certification process is usually expensive and long (e.g. FIPS 140-2 http://csrc.nist.gov/groups/STM/cmvp/index.html).

Beyond controlling a porch light, the extend of home automation projects can be impressively extensive, with critical HVAC, plumbing, lighting, and other systems under control. Think like a burglar and you can imagine how nice it would be to remotely turn off all the lights, open gates or garage doors, and power down burglar alarms, motion detectors, and other occupancy sensors.

I get the reasons why....
I would still prefer it to be my choice.

If it is a security issue, they could still allow non-mifi devices or software to integrate with your home automation, but add a splash page or put those devices on a red background or something to inform you that you are doing tasks or adding devices to a non-apple secured part of your home automation network and let the consumer decide if they want devices or software running in that atmosphere.

It's a fun debate, but I guess we have to wait for it to hit shelves before we can see what we can or can't do with it. Either way, if it can or cannot integrate with Indigo, there is just way too much stuff I can do with Indigo that I don't see another platform replacing anytime soon.

The way I interpret the public information is that Apple is allowing non-MFI hardware devices (Insteon, Z-Wave, etc.) to integrate with HomeKit but only via hardware bridges (and with some limitations of what kind of devices and what they are allowed to do).

Insteon announced a new Hub which will be HomeKit certified (I have already pre-ordered one to play with).

Apple is not allowing any kind of software bridge and that is the category Indigo would fall into. If Indigo was a hardware box and not software on a computer, then Apple would allow some level of HomeKit integration. Of course, don't automatically assume that if Apple allowed software bridges, Indigo, as a company, would be willing to do the engineering work and pay the certification fees/license fees. In my prior career I dealt with companies that built networking hardware for Novell Networks. The time, effort, and cost to be certified "Runs with NetWare" was non-trivial and a tough call for some companies / some products.

In theory we should all have choices. Everyone loves choices and that's what makes capitalism great. However, try to buy a car without a door lock or ignition that isn't secured by a key/chip. Unlike SRS or fuel cutoff switches, ignition keys are not mandated by the government. They are mandated by common sense. People tend to make choices based on cost, and the return on investment for security has always been a hard sell. Everyone knows that risks exist but it's easy to ignore them when the mitigation costs are substantial. People buy waterfront property in Florida and hope for the best all the time. There choice, their risk assessment.

I'm guessing that most people on these forums are consumers of domotics, but if you were to think like a systems architect you realize that security is a common requirement. The cost of security tends to be minimized when it's amortized over many products, so you want to build it into everything. Giving the consumer the option to turn off security is a nice idea, but why would consumer of a well crafted product with ample security want to do so? I can only think of cost as a reason. Amortize that cost as aggressively as possible and it becomes less of an issue.

......and the point is???


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

"Runs with NetWare"

... you are dating your self ..... looooong time ago. Still remember the transition from netware 2.. 3 .. 4..



Karl

There are so many clever ways to implement home automation.... to any degree you'd imagine. So many great hobbyist's here in these forums. But the Favorite Fruit Company caters to the masses... sweet, simple, no-brainer... does little, but "it just works" philosophy. This is NOT what Insteon, X10, and more germane, Indigo, was meant to integrate with.... SIRI or no SIRI.

I've been using or trying to use SIRI a lot recently. Frankly, it sucks. As an electrical engineer and former musician.... I know how difficult it is to integrate voice recognition and voice commands, regardless of the number of MIPs you throw at the problem. Perhaps it is just MY voice that is the problem... perhaps for some, SIRI is their best friend... but not in my case. So that being said, I don't really see what Apple is currently offering as any big contribution. As most of us know, when you get into home automation... your home is as plain dumb and stupid as the software you write... no intelligence whatsoever, and to integrate, coordinate, and fascilitate the entire system to any degree which will impress even Bill Gates (cough cough... his home is a leading example of a smart home... so I've heard), it takes a massive amount of work, coordination and smoothing; even then you can't make everyone happy.

Apple is not up to this task.

My meager home automation skills get better all the time... sometimes the equipment we can buy improves a little but not in gigantic leaps and bounds; someday perhaps security and device command validation will come to the Insteon sphere; it's needed. But our software is a different story; Indigo is just about the most flexible, automation tool that is available. Yeah... we need to clone Jay and Matt a couple of times to bring in a few more features... but I marvel at the current capabilities. I can say with near certainty that the fruity homeKit will not be a big part of my system for at least a very long time.

I think the major contribution of Homekit is that it is going to introduce--and legitimize--home automation to Apple's hundred's of millions of users.

Our home automation market is now just a tiny niche of people with a near-masochistic desire to invest time and money to make things easier for ourselves. We get as much enjoyment from the process of automating something as we do from the later *results* of that automation. We are not like most people.

Homekit offers near-instant gratification. Siri is the sexy demo that gets people excited and ready to lay down their credit card (or bump the terminal with their Apple Watch!). They buy one smart bulb|outlet|lock|whatever and very quickly get a taste of what is possible. So maybe they buy a few more Homekit accessories...

At this point, I think 2 interesting things happen. We suddenly have a mass-market for Homekit-branded home automation devices. Hopefully this attracts competition and drives prices down which feeds the adoption cycle. Also, folks with multiple automated devices start to perceive the benefits of them working together. Really, that is 'just' software. A set of conditions occurs and the software triggers a set of actions. Again, if this is a mass market, clever folks will figure out ways to make the programming of those conditions and responses achievable for the average joe. Like most other fields, there will be a range of users from very sophisticated through to extremely simple.

As I see it, Apple is in the best position of kickstart this adoption process. The Thread group seems to be 1-2 years behind and Samsung possibly further.

I'm really looking forward to WWDC for more concrete information!

Craig

With more and more vendors supporting HomeKit as a common integration model, would it not be beneficial to the entire Indigo community to build support for HomeKit into the product? Wouldn't that make it painless to support new devices now and in the future? Wouldn't it take all the effort and cost out of supporting new protocols, etc? Seems to see there's nothing but upside for Indigo to do this especially with the new aTV just a week away. Indigo could be THE rules engine for HomeKit...

HowmaNoid wrote:

With more and more vendors supporting HomeKit as a common integration model, would it not be beneficial to the entire Indigo community to build support for HomeKit into the product? Wouldn't that make it painless to support new devices now and in the future? Wouldn't it take all the effort and cost out of supporting new protocols, etc? Seems to see there's nothing but upside for Indigo to do this especially with the new aTV just a week away. Indigo could be THE rules engine for HomeKit...

There's some old threads on this from the time HomeKit was first announced. Apple is only supporting hardware vendors for HomeKit. Since Indigo is a software only product, they can't get access to the HomeKit API.

Having played more with Insteon Hub Pro (the one certified for HomeKit) I have some added thoughts:

Insteon is still pushing the non-HomeKit products. Although they were (apparently) booted out of Walmart over the summer (I picked up some starter kits dirt cheap - worth it for just the included appliance/lamp modules and throwing away the basic hub), I now see a freshly stocked Insteon Starter Kit with the non-HomeKit hub at our Costco - clearly part of their Christmas-before-Halloween-and-Thanksgiving new stock Holiday season merchandise. So Insteon is pushing non-HomeKit and not just to the Android crowd.

As I mentioned in a prior post (it may not be on this thread), the only slight benefit I see right now to HomeKit integration is the use of Siri for voice commands. In theory, this is nice, but in current implementation, with both Apple and Insteon bugs/limitations, this is pretty useless. With the strict syntax and errors in understanding what I am saying along with strict naming rules for devices, it is faster/easier to pull out my phone or find a physical switch.

Here's my new comment -- Indigo's greatest strength is "Home Automation" not "Home Control". There is a subtle difference. Siri/voice command is about home control -- the fun/novelty of using your voice to turn things on or off or run a scene/macro.

Home automation is about having things happen, fully automatically and without intervention. Indigo triggers that I have configured based on sunrise/sunset, motion sensors, door open/close sensors, etc. are true "Home Automation". Once configured, it simply works and for everyone in our house, not just the geek/guru (me).

Obviously, most of us use "Home Control" alongside "Home Automation", but the more we automate (geolocation triggers, Nest learning thermostats, etc.) and the less we need to use manual control (even if by "cutesy" voice recognition), the more we are happy.

For true DIY Home Automation, Indigo is still the best and I don't see Apple/HomeKit heading in this direction for quite a while. The core architecture of HomeKit - local personal device/scene database kept physically inside your iPhone and sync'd through iCloud to multiple iDevices is problematic when compared with the client/server architecture of Indigo.

spiv wrote:

...Home automation is about having things happen, fully automatically and without intervention. Indigo triggers that I have configured based on sunrise/sunset, motion sensors, door open/close sensors, etc. are true "Home Automation". Once configured, it simply works and for everyone in our house, not just the geek/guru (me).

Obviously, most of us use "Home Control" alongside "Home Automation", but the more we automate (geolocation triggers, Nest learning thermostats, etc.) and the less we need to use manual control (even if by "cutesy" voice recognition), the more we are happy.

For true DIY Home Automation, Indigo is still the best and I don't see Apple/HomeKit heading in this direction for quite a while. The core architecture of HomeKit - local personal device/scene database kept physically inside your iPhone and sync'd through iCloud to multiple iDevices is problematic when compared with the client/server architecture of Indigo.

It is still early days for Homekit. Homekit in iOS 9 added event triggers in which an accessory reports an event to HK and, if other conditions are met, an action is taken automatically. The example used was:
Event: door unlocked
Condition 1: motion detected
Condition 2: certain time period
Action taken: set a scene ("I'm home")

Including timer triggers that were in iOS 8, Homekit can currently trigger based on:
Time (before, after, on)
Sunset/sunrise (before, after and including an offset such as "30 minutes after sunset")
Accessory characteristic change (motion detected on, door unlocked,
Geofence (iOS devices enters/leaves location)

So, Homekit is designed to include much of the Home Automation that you are looking for. The implementation isn't there, yet. Elgato have posted that their Eve sensors require a firmware upgrade to support triggering in iOS 9.

[url]https://help.elgato.com/customer/en/portal/articles/2150056-eve-door-window-—-do-i-need-to-be-in-bluetooth-range-to-see-whether-my-door-or-window-is-open-?b_id=360[/url]

We also need apps that give us access to set up triggers. I've been using MyTouchHome to test out sunset triggers. After some back and forth with the developer, I'm hopeful that the next version will make this work reliably. Other reports praise the "Home" app by Hochgatterer.

iTunes links:
MyTouchHome ($) - https://itunes.apple.com/ca/app/mytouch ... 42360?mt=8
Home ($$)- https://itunes.apple.com/ca/app/home-sm ... 94352?mt=8

Maybe some of the new products coming to market will kick off support for triggers. For example, opening the garage door at night would be an obvious trigger for a scene. As we've been doing for 18 months, now, we just need to wait some more!

Craig

pvrfan - let's keep on topic here. This thread was originally about the Insteon Pro hub with HomeKit support. Random musings about HomeKit outside of the context dilutes the purpose.

Sorry but one last comment,

The ARCHITECTURE of HomeKit seems to be problematic and would not work well with Indigo (or other HA) in simpler/consumer installations that do not include smart hubs/gateways:

Since the HomeKit database is inside my iPhone, including rules, alerts, and triggers - how do my outside lights go on automatically at sundown - 30 minutes (which Indigo does for me), if I am not at home and my iPhone is actually powered off?