indilinq - an alternative mobile app & plugin for indigo

Posted on
Fri Mar 17, 2017 10:47 am
durosity offline
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Re: indilinq - an alternative mobile app & plugin for indigo

roussell wrote:
I did some cursory snooping, and as Jay mentioned he's been around a few years. I won't reveal anything since for some reason he is wishing to remain anonymous; not really sure why that it unless that's just his culture, but I would have imagined the app would have been more warmly-received if an "announcement" post of some sort would have come from his other, known account. We're a world-wide collection of individuals, but still a pretty "close group"; it's one of the great things about Indigo. With that being said, we do welcome the likes of Durosity with (semi) open arms, so this guy has to be ok too. :wink: :D


Perhaps it's me*. I've been here for a few years.. i've been suspiciously abscent for the last couple of months.. i've been spending a fair amount of time learning Python.. and Jay trusts me.. if he didn't why would he have made me a 50% owner of his house?




*It's not me.

Computer says no.

Posted on
Fri Mar 17, 2017 12:17 pm
roussell offline
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Re: indilinq - an alternative mobile app & plugin for indigo

durosity wrote:
Perhaps it's me*. I've been here for a few years.. i've been suspiciously abscent for the last couple of months.. i've been spending a fair amount of time learning Python.. and Jay trusts me.. if he didn't why would he have made me a 50% owner of his house?


*It's not me.


Welcome back! I have to say it's been rather dull around the old water cooler without your wit. You didn't miss too much, other than Jay promising that a RaspberryPi version of Indigo would be shipping any day now! :twisted:

Terry

Posted on
Fri Mar 17, 2017 3:16 pm
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Re: indilinq - an alternative mobile app & plugin for indigo

durosity's been calling me a LOT recently - I assume it's him, some unknown caller from country code 44. I picked it up once and yelled obscenities and threats but that didn't seem to help. So I'm just assuming it's him...

Jay (Indigo Support)
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Posted on
Fri Mar 17, 2017 4:20 pm
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Re: indilinq - an alternative mobile app & plugin for indigo

Sorry but it's not me, Jay. I'm going to guess it's that damn howartp.. I told you not to give him your number but did you listen to me? And what did you get.. some angry Yorkshire man who's missed too many cricket matches, if you catch my drift!

Computer says no.

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Fri Mar 17, 2017 4:30 pm
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Re: indilinq - an alternative mobile app & plugin for indigo

durosity wrote:
And what did you get.. some angry Yorkshire man who's missed too many cricket matches, if you catch my drift!


Um.....

Sorry, I have no idea what that means! :lol:

Jay (Indigo Support)
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Posted on
Fri Mar 17, 2017 5:16 pm
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Re: indilinq - an alternative mobile app & plugin for indigo

Hehe don't worry, I don't even know what it means. But people from Yorkshire love their cricket!

And I love that video. It's exceptionally funny and entirely accurate... I bought an echo dot a while ago.. seriously awful at understanding me. I asked it to turn on the lights.. she started reading the news headlines to me!

Computer says no.

Posted on
Sat Mar 18, 2017 1:22 am
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Re: indilinq - an alternative mobile app & plugin for indigo

durosity wrote:
Hehe don't worry, I don't even know what it means.

Neither do I!


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Posted on
Sat Mar 18, 2017 11:23 am
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Re: indilinq - an alternative mobile app & plugin for indigo

roussell wrote:
Welcome back! I have to say it's been rather dull around the old water cooler without your wit. You didn't miss too much, other than Jay promising that a RaspberryPi version of Indigo would be shipping any day now! :twisted:


Oops missed that! Thanks.. although I did tell Jay explicitly that they need to focus all their energy on the ZX-81 port. (In all seriousness a few years ago someone sent an email to my work seriously requesting that we port the programs we make to the ZX-80. Strange people out there.)

Computer says no.

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Sat Mar 18, 2017 11:40 am
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Re: indilinq - an alternative mobile app & plugin for indigo

durosity wrote:
roussell wrote:
Welcome back! I have to say it's been rather dull around the old water cooler without your wit. You didn't miss too much, other than Jay promising that a RaspberryPi version of Indigo would be shipping any day now! :twisted:


Oops missed that! Thanks.. although I did tell Jay explicitly that they need to focus all their energy on the ZX-81 port. (In all seriousness a few years ago someone sent an email to my work seriously requesting that we port the programs we make to the ZX-80. Strange people out there.)


Yeh it's gonna be really nice; Jay's really stepped up his game lately (I think he missed you). Cudos to you and the mentoring program you put in place for him!

ZX-80 port? What does your company make, acoustic modem software?? :D :D

Terry

Posted on
Sat Mar 18, 2017 12:29 pm
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Re: indilinq - an alternative mobile app & plugin for indigo

First of all thank you all for trying out indilinq and giving your feedback! It means a lot to everyone working on this little project!

First of all to answer some questions about the company, forum account and so on as by all means everything is in the open and nothing is secret and there is no need for anyone to be suspicious.

My name is Kostas and I have been an indigo domotics user for many years now (my user account is KostasV) after migrating from a horrible Fibaro experience. Over a year ago I founded Pegnio Ltd as a limited company based in the UK in order to create and publish some of the projects we have been working with friends under that company name. The reasons are mainly legal around potential liability, tax, accounting among others and also because we are developing a number of other initiatives including mobile games. We are a team of passionate developers who love getting things done! :)

Jay has been kind enough to share the low-level API and we will have a look and evaluate if it is maybe better to migrate to that instead of having a plugin, there are pros/cons but it looks like a fun project anyway! Also here I need to say a big thanks to everyone supporting indigo domotics for all the helpful answers they have given, it is vary rare these days this level of friendliness and support!

I have been taking note on some of the features that have been requested and we will discuss with the team as well to see what we can include in the next release. A bit thanks to all those taking the plunge and giving us their honest opinion.

On the questions of Terry around the security, we have taken every possible measure, maybe overdone it a bit as we have SSL certificates created on the first time the plugin is activated (so they are unique per installation) and also encrypt the messages using AES that are transmitted back and forth between the plugin and the mobile app. The password you enter into the plugin config screen is also stored encrypted (we opted not to use the key chain for now for other reasons). Also the app when switching from Cell plan to WiFI will check via Bonjour if the indilinq is there locally and will connect there again for both security and to avoid using external connections where possible. Keys are combination of static and dynamic, will not go into more detail, it was part of the fun of creating it! :)

As for Cython, we opted to use it for both speed, integrity of data (so users can't alter things and then comms get all messy) but it has many many limitations. We ideally wanted to compile the entire 'package' as a library but Cython doesn't work this way (yet) so we opted to include all the Open Source dependencies inside the plugin. Not the best way to distribute an application but the guys at indigo made it so easy as the 'package' can have directories and they run in an isolated python shell not affecting the user's experience in any way.

Once more a big thanks and please keep the feedback coming - good or bad - it is useful for us!

Pegnio Ltd

Posted on
Sat Mar 18, 2017 9:37 pm
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Re: indilinq - an alternative mobile app & plugin for indigo

Jay has been kind enough to share the low-level API and we will have a look and evaluate if it is maybe better to migrate to that instead of having a plugin, there are pros/cons but it looks like a fun project anyway! Also here I need to say a big thanks to everyone supporting indigo domotics for all the helpful answers they have given, it is vary rare these days this level of friendliness and support!

For what it is worth, I chose to do a combination of the options in Domotics Pad (Android client)... I use the Indigo-provided API for all basic operations, but had to add a plugin to give me some advanced options that simply were not possible with the built-in API. You may find some value in doing a combination of approaches.

Also, if Matt & Jay get around to changing the Indigo Web Server to utilize the IOM in its plugins, we could get the best of both worlds - a plugin that "lives" in the web server and thus has full access to the included SSL-secured reflector implementation. They've been talking about that for years, however. (Not a dig on them, just mean that if they get around to doing that, your plugin might be the way to go in the end!)

BTW, I am not an iPhone user, but the screenshots on the App Store look nice. :)

Adam

Posted on
Sun Mar 19, 2017 12:45 pm
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Re: indilinq - an alternative mobile app & plugin for indigo

RogueProeliator wrote:
Also, if Matt & Jay get around to changing the Indigo Web Server to utilize the IOM in its plugins, we could get the best of both worlds - a plugin that "lives" in the web server and thus has full access to the included SSL-secured reflector implementation. They've been talking about that for years, however. (Not a dig on them, just mean that if they get around to doing that, your plugin might be the way to go in the end!)


It's very high on the priority list. Well, I'm not sure moving IWS to the IOM will do everything you think, and that's the very high priority. Having the ability for a plugin to expose new end points via IWS (like the old IWS plugins) is probably more of what you're looking for and that, while on the list, is slightly lower in priority.

Jay (Indigo Support)
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Posted on
Sun Mar 19, 2017 8:36 pm
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Re: indilinq - an alternative mobile app & plugin for indigo

It's very high on the priority list. Well, I'm not sure moving IWS to the IOM will do everything you think, and that's the very high priority. Having the ability for a plugin to expose new end points via IWS (like the old IWS plugins) is probably more of what you're looking for and that, while on the list, is slightly lower in priority.

Obviously depends on the end result, but I think that either would work for the vast majority of the customizations I do via the IWS-to-Plugin model that I employ now. Exposing an endpoint from the main plugin would probably indeed be the better of the two from my perspective, but I could work it out with IWS / IOM I believe.

Posted on
Mon Mar 20, 2017 9:14 am
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Re: indilinq - an alternative mobile app & plugin for indigo

It's not an either or - from our perspective they are two different things. For your use (and likely for the developer of this solution) having both gives you the ability to use the same API (IOM) and keep all communication going through the same channel (reflector) rather than having some communication go through a different network connection. Customers can feel more confident/secure in the knowledge that your plugin is only communicating using the standard, built-in and supported communication paths provided by us as part of the product.

Jay (Indigo Support)
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Posted on
Mon Mar 20, 2017 10:35 am
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Re: indilinq - an alternative mobile app & plugin for indigo

gives you the ability to use the same API (IOM) and keep all communication going through the same channel (reflector) rather than having some communication go through a different network connection. Customers can feel more confident/secure in the knowledge that your plugin is only communicating using the standard, built-in and supported communication paths provided by us as part of the product.

And that is exactly how Domotics Pad works right now -- and this information is for the other developer just in case he is interested -- basically Domotics Pad has an IWS plugin that receives communications over the built-in reflector and forwards them to the standard Indigo plugin. Just that those other solutions that you mentioned would take some complexity out of the equation and eliminate at least a tiny bit of latency.

Adam

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