Future of Home Automation

Hi

I've been researching home automation pretty extensively the last few months and I'm interested in taking the plunge and purchasing some devices and choosing a platform.

I have a pretty loaded question which I would be grateful to get some feedback on: What do you think will happen in the medium term (5-10 years) with home automation and Indigo? And why should I chose Indigo? I have already ruled out other platforms such as Smartthings, Wink, Homekit, Homesteer, homecenter 2, Control 4, I could keep going... To put it frankly there is a lot of misinformation out there (marketing), and a lot of varying opinions .

One of my major concerns is Homekit has just arrived, and android things is in development. In the next few years are they going to take over the market when companies make more compatible devices for these platforms? Indigo has been around for 15 years now, which is pretty impressive. The fact that Homekit doesn't support zwave is bizarre to me. Why did apple do that? One of my concerns is phones are now more powerful and homekit and android things probably wont even require a dedicated server (less upfront cost). But in saying that you still need some form of stay at home hub for controlling things when your away. Homekit uses the apple tv or a dedicated ipad. I also wish more recent security platforms were supported in indigo (mostly the security systems manufacturers fault though).

Personally, I think the answer to your question revolves around how you expect to use automation in your home. Indigo is the perfect solution for several reasons.

• The way I use Indigo, it doesn't require the cloud to perform critical tasks. Take climate control for example. The commands to control temperature go straight from my Indigo server to the thermostat. The command doesn't require a round trip to the cloud to be processed.
• We don't use voice control at all in our home and I refuse to have an always-on, Internet-connected microphone in my home. We might use voice one day, when there's a device available that processes voice commands locally and I can block the device from connecting to the WAN. Until then, no dice.
• I like the flexibility of being able to extend Indigo in ways that HomeKit and other systems will likely never allow. The ability to use Python scripting and plugins makes Indigo open to do almost anything and (so far) pretty much anything I want to do.
• I don't like closed systems -- like Control 4 -- which require nearly all programming to be done by a contractor. They've eased up on this, but the fundamental notion of having to pay someone else to do something that I'm capable of doing (and frankly WANT to do) rubs me the wrong way.
• Indigo is designed from the ground-up with the HA enthusiast in mind. That's its purpose. As far as I'm concerned, no other company comes close to supporting our hobby like Indigo Domotics does.
• Community. Check out these forums. If there's a more supportive, helpful and friendly HA community out there, I don't know what it is.

Unfortunately predicting the future is hard. Otherwise we’d all be millionaires! I hope indigo is still with us in 10 years, and I suspect it will be just because they have a very loyal following. And unless something major changes you can use plugins for indigo to add indigo into other ecosystems, or vice versa. So for example I extensively use HomeKit Bridge to publish over 150 devices to HomeKit (I’m so hoping iOS 12 doesn’t break that!) so I get the best of both worlds.. the stability and flexibility of indigo, the Siri control, etc of HomeKit.


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[jay (support)]

First, a point of fact: Matt released the first public release of Indigo (1.0.1) on April 8th, 2003 (the download link in that post still works correctly!), so that's actually 15 years. Amazing.

After 10 years in the industry (just celebrated my 10th year in April), I've pretty much come to the opinion that there will likely never be a "one technology to rule them all". There are just too many competing interests and implementation details given such a complex topic. I suppose time will tell, but as long as there are attempts at openness (or at least the hooks necessary to integrate) across all the competing technologies, there will be a place for platforms that integrate the multiple competitors into a single cohesive view/system. We think this is where Indigo is best situated: we abstract the ideas down to common concepts (or language if you like), and allow anybody to extend the ecosystem as they desire by translating that common language into the specific technology implementation details so the user doesn't have to.

I also wish more recent security platforms were supported in indigo

I'm curious about the details of this comment - care to share specifics?

Thanks for the replies I appreciate it. I edited original post to 15 years. What your saying about their being a competitive open market does give me some comfort. Most device manufacturers would be shooting themselves in the foot if they only developed their product for one platform.

In regards to the security systems I was mainly referring to DSC Neo series. Some of the new Honeywell products etc. it's probably not a big issue though because the power series has a good plugin.

[jay (support)]

I believe (but am not 100% certain) that DSC has walled off the Neo - so they don't provide any way for it to be integrated with other systems. I read this some time ago though and it may no longer be true. There are plugins for some Honeywell systems (Vista/Ademco and Total Connect 2). Anything newer than that is just too new for anyone to actually have one and investigate integrating it with Indigo.

I’ve not seen any integration options for the NEO yet. Allegedly they are going to have something for integration at some point.. but nothing I’ve seen yet.


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And why should I chose Indigo? I have already ruled out other platforms such as Smartthings, Wink, Homekit, Homesteer, homecenter 2, Control 4, I could keep going... To put it frankly there is a lot of misinformation out there (marketing), and a lot of varying opinions .

It would be interesting to know why you have ruled out those other platforms to give a better view around why you should go for Indigo (or not, or course).

For me I started on a Vera. At the time it was the most compatible with z-wave devices (and may still be, I don't know).
That nearly put me off the whole HA concept.

What I should have done, and subsequently did, was answer some questions:

Does the product have user forums? If so, are they busy or a bit dead? Are the comments/questions mostly complaints about the product/about company representatives engagement, or are they about exploring new features/cool ideas/etc?

Is it completely under your control, or does it need company servers and, thus, constant internet connection to work?

Related: How secure is the platform?

What products/technology does it support and how available are those products (that you actually want to use) in your country/territory?

How stable is the platform? And that is the whole software/hardware stack.

At a basic level of functionality, how easy is it to use an get up to speed? Does that basic functionality actually work?

What capabilities does it have to handle more complex set ups as ideas come to you? Will it grow and support your ideas, or is there a limit?

Have others come up with ideas and solutions that look cool, or fill a specific gap in the product? Are these bespoke set ups shareable and available to you? Do they cost money?

Does the product have documentation? How extensive? How up to date? Does it over all the functionality, or just the basics?

How much does the product cost, including everything you need to make it work?

I went through a process of re-asking these questions about 2 years ago, as I looked at the various platforms again (including open source). I came to the same conclusion once again.

Sam.

Of the listed platforms, I think it's worth noting that they aren't all really substitutes for one another. I'm stealing this phrasing from somewhere else (can't remember where exactly), but a lot of what gets pitched out there as 'Home Automation' or 'Smart Home' is really more like 'Remote Controlled Home'. If that's what you're after (the ability to use your phone to turn some lights on or off... pretty much all of those platforms are relevant). But if you're looking for actual Home Automation (things happening conditionally, or in response to other things, with a lot more logic involved then you want automation.

In my view, most of the systems run by larger firms that are in the news the most (Apple HomeKit, Amazon Alexa, etc...) really tend to be more 'Remote Control' and a lot less 'Automation'.

If you really want to automate, and connect to a lot of sensors/devices, you need to look at a different solution. Control4 does a lot of that stuff, but costs a ton, and you don't get all of the control to easily change things you do with some other setups. You need to pay an installer for a lot of things.

For me, the only real viable options to do this stuff were Indigo, Homeseer and CQG. I've long been a Mac guy, so I went with Indigo, but I have zero regrets. In hindsight, I'm pretty sure I accidentally stumbled onto the right one. Homeseer and CQG are more expensive, and I think Homeseer costs money for each new plugin you add (depending on the plugin).

Indigo is also very user friendly to add logic and conditionals, but also offers power and complexity if you need it.

Also, the forums and community are very active. There's a lot of life here, which really helps keep things current and up-to-date with new things that are always coming out.

I'm a little late to this party but let me throw in some thoughts. I have played/dabbled with HA for 20 years or better now, starting back in the X-10 days using IBM software on an IBM computer. I have seen a lot trends over the last few years as HA has finally taken off with the mass consumer market...for better or worse.

The one trend I am seeing right now is many companies are rushing to the market with various systems, but these systems are limited in scope and closed to pre-approved, if not proprietary, products - see Philips Hue for example. There have been some half hearted attempts to merger these protocols together, but with their own limitations. For example, I see HomeKit listed above. My experience with HomeKit so far is it works great...as long as the products you use fit the narrow range of scope permitted by Apple.

Personally, I have spent the last year or so with the Samsung SmartThings. This product supports one of the widest ranges of products I have seen on a retail product. I cannot say how impressed I am with its breadth of scope. The downfall is everything is relayed to the cloud for computing, often multiple times. Latency and reliability are huge problems discussed on their community forum.

The answer to this dilemma is a new product called Hubitat, which is meant to emulate the Samsung interface, but run everything local. The are now running into the same problems many of us ran into with Vera less than a decade ago - there is just only so much you can do with a $100 box.

Ultimately, if you want to do anything more than just remote control, real home automation, you will end up with a software driven system on a computer. I was surprised above to see HomeSeeer discounted so quickly. No issue if you do not like it, but it's limitations are NOT the same as the other items. My issue with HomeSeer is it does not run natively in the OS X environment and does not support HomeKit or Siri. Aside from that, I find the features and community to be similar to indigo. I could be wrong or your impression is different from mine.

For me, the real differentiator for Indigo is the native Apple support. We are an Apple/iDevices house and not having to build another computer dedicated to HA is a huge plus.

My Aeotec stick has been ordered and I hope to finally jump into Indigo next weekend.