Indigo Domotics

Hi,

I have been a long-time Indigo user and realized recently that the promise of the subscription model resulting in more updates faster and more hardware support may not be matching reality. It's been almost a year since the last update. Can someone share hard data that shows that forking over more money has benefitted the consumer (me!) ?

-Jonathan

There was another post by them a little while ago about this. There’s been some delays and problems, but Indigo 7.2 is now getting close to being released. I’m hoping after that updates flow more frequently!


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We explained that feature releases (i.e. 7.1, 7.2, etc) were going to contain significant new functionality that we used to "save up" into a major release (i.e. Indigo 5, Indigo 6, etc). Historically it has taken almost 2 years between major releases of Indigo, but both 7.1 and 7.2 halve that:

04/20/2009 Indigo 4 Release
11/15/2011 Indigo 5 Release (31 months after Indigo 4)
08/10/2013 Indigo 6 Release (21 months after Indigo 5)
11/02/2016 Indigo 7.0 Release (39 months after Indigo 6)
10/17/2017 Indigo 7.1 Release (11 months after Indigo 7.0)
09/28/2018 Indigo 7.2 Release (11 months after Indigo 7.1)

Now, although the last couple are better than before, to be honest, the frequency still isn't near where we would like it to be. There are several reasons for that, including some internal development hurdles we've had to jump through as well as significant time devoted to rolling out the plugin store, so we are hopeful we can have even more frequent (and more feature packed) releases going forward.

[MODERATOR NOTE] moved topic to a more appropriate location. Updated the post with the actual 7.2 release dates and links.

jay (support) wrote:

... There are several reasons for that, ...

You forgot about Durosity sabotaging you at every opportunity. Trying to support his sodding tea kettle addictions can't be easy!

Keep up the great work guys, looking forward to 7.2 and beyond!

Terry

roussell wrote:

You forgot about Durosity sabotaging you at every opportunity. Trying to support his sodding tea kettle addictions can't be easy!

We try not to point fingers...

roussell wrote:

jay (support) wrote:

... There are several reasons for that, ...

You forgot about Durosity sabotaging you at every opportunity. Trying to support his sodding tea kettle addictions can't be easy!

Keep up the great work guys, looking forward to 7.2 and beyond!

Terry

If they’d just do it we’d be able to move other other less important tasks. Of course I’d love support for that IOT toaster.....


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How about the new amazon microwave - just kidding

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07894S727

Hehe thing is that’s actually a good idea in some ways. Same with an oven. Imagine an oven that you can stick food into in the morning, can keep it chilled until a certain time, then turn on when you’re leaving work so your dinner is almost ready when you get home. And if you happen to be stuck in a jam it’ll automatically lower the temperature, etc.

Anyway it’s all rather off topic. M&J just get i7.2 out the door. :p


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With the cost of all the HA hardware, the software expense is negligible .

I agree 100%

indigo software cost is < 2% of my setup at home. Happy to pay 4% if that improves development / support.

Karl

I don't think it is about cost or even big new functionality. I like Indigo very much, certainly as a stable platform but with the new subscription model my expectations were that the following points would be addressed. I am sorry but after 2 years that's not what I, and think other users, are seeing and makes you not looking for a lower cost platform but for a platform that suits your needs better:

- Pace of adding new devices
- Supporting more devices
- Major platform Pluggins like Sonos, Hue, Alexa and Homekit etc would be part of the central Indigo platform and not depending on individual developers

Would it be better to make it more open with a (selected) group of developers to create the above. The community is fantastic and has a lot of dedication so why not take that advantage. Look at Homey by Athom and Domoticz. Give this model with your supervision and approval a faster pace of adding devices and make big pluggings part of the core/support of the Indigo platform.

https://apps.athom.com

Was comming form this https://forums.indigodomo.com/viewtopic.php?f=77&t=20716&p=167598&hilit=steinel#p167598

Look how it is done by Homey, created by a user:

https://apps.athom.com/app/de.steinel

There is no way we will be rolling in functionality for all those HA protocols/platforms into Indigo directly. Maybe some of them, but our goal is to build a stable and robust platform on which others (Indigo users, partners, etc.) can extend.

I think there might be a misunderstanding here as to what "would be a part of central Indigo" means. Later you say "would it be better to make it more open with a (selected) group of developers to create the above" but that is exactly what we are doing by creating the plugin architecture, creating the plugin store, and working with the developers to create the APIs and examples needed. I don't think any of the developers would turn away help to contribute to their plugins and indeed many of them are now hosted on github where others can make pull requests for new features or bug fixes. I guess I'm not understanding what you mean, because I think we (as the entire Indigo community) are doing what you are describing.

We sometimes have complaints about Indigo not adding new features fast enough. People love the software but not the pace. That is, however, how we develop Indigo and now the Indigo platform – methodically, with stability, usability, and extensibility as top priorities; not cranking out half-baked functionality or marketing bullet points. We have lots of new functionality under development and on the drawing board. We are also sometimes frustrated at what can feel like a long wait for a new feature or release, but stability has to be the top priority for this class of software. When I step back and look at all the new functionality added to Indigo over just the last few years, as well as how the the community has grown (over 180 plugins on the plugin store now!), I'm very appreciative as to how far we've come.

Major platform Pluggins like Sonos, Hue, Alexa and Homekit etc would be part of the central Indigo platform and not depending on individual developers
Would it be better to make it more open with a (selected) group of developers to create the above. The community is fantastic and has a lot of dedication so why not take that advantage.

I have a question around this -- what makes you feel this way regarding the plugins needing to be included with the core product versus as being downloadable plugins from the Plugin Store? Based upon the forum messages most don't feel this way, but I am sure you are not alone in this sentiment, so I'm curious why? A few of my personal thoughts...

The plugin architecture, especially with nearly all being open source and on GitHub, as Matt mentioned, essentially makes the plugins an open source component of Indigo... this is not that far off of the other products and methods you mentioned. As a developer, this is FAR safer than if, say, Indigo were open (or partially open) because it is more sand boxed; that is, we can feel more confident in only needing to test OUR code, not worry about regression testing parts of Indigo that we might accidentally affect if we were in the main product.

The only thing I can think of that is "somewhat" negative is the fact that you don't have a "guarantee" of support since it came as a developer or community based plugin. But this is true of any open source product. When I first got into Indigo I admit that I had an inkling of that, though over the past few years I have seen the community take over abandoned or otherwise under-supported plugins and they continue to evolve without the original author. I have not heard of many that were every completely abandoned, save those that may have outlived their usefulness.

That isn't to say that I don't sometimes avoid plugins from developers whose code I don't fully "trust" - not from a do harm perspective, but more from a "is it stable/well designed". What that generally means is you might not install the plugin first version(s) until issues are ironed out, where as a first-party plugin probably elicits immediate trust. The technologies you listed, however, have plugins that are pretty robust.

I am not sitting here trying to argue with you by any means, just laying out my viewpoint and hope to get an understanding of where your viewpoint comes from. As an Indigo user and plugin developer, I am truly interested.

Adam

matt (support) wrote:

We sometimes have complaints about Indigo not adding new features fast enough.

In relation to this comment I feel it may be more to do with new devices being supported. However if we are to be fair, deciding to buy a random new device (which I along with numerous others have) without checking if its already supported and then expecting an prompt update to support "said" device is probably being unfair to Matt & Jay.
A suggestion! Would it be beneficial to have subscribed users highlight the devices they like to see supported first - most popular goes to the front of the queue

looking at the service levels supported by most of the plugin "donors", I don't think you find better support on commercial systems ...

And yes eg Samsung is a much larger company and problems have to be escalated several levels before anyone looks at them. Then they get prioritized and ranked through sophisticated sales forecast models and if you are lucky your issues will get addressed...

My prioritization process is simple. If it is broken it will be fixed within a day and may be 2 weeks when I travel.
My quality check is also not very sophisticated either: try if it works, if not fix it .

Karl