Thread where i memorialize recruiting Indigo users

I have sworn a blood oath to bring more users in the 18–44 demographic to Indigo. They are all lured by the overwhelming social media presence of Home Assistant.

I say, "Config.yaml files be damned!"

Witness my glorious purpose to turn #indigodomotics into a recognizable hash tag.

Exhibit A (for people over 30): https://youtube.com/shorts/gSJqnq4kEEk?si=HUkJvobDrdVvemUw

Exhibit B (for people comfortable giving their personal information to a nation state with a super snappy UX): https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZT8B1beoq/

It is by will alone i set [#indigodomotics] in motion.

(I'm just screwing around a little bit, nobody take this too seriously

Nice. I have no idea what's trending since I'm not on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, TikTok....so I'll leave that in your capable hands.

One suggestion. Recruit some younguns to write some cool open source plugins.

On a side note, I’ve often wondered about the demographic of who uses automation systems, and indeed how that breaks down in the indigo user base.

My own observations of it seem to be indigo is very heavily dominated by men, and tends to be ones around my age group and older (so 40+). Of course I’m not sure how that plays out in the wider domotics space.


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[jay (support)]

My own observations of it seem to be indigo is very heavily dominated by men, and tends to be ones around my age group and older (so 40+). Of course I’m not sure how that plays out in the wider domotics space.

You would be right most likely (we don't have the actual stats of course, just anecdotal evidence), though I would add tech savvy to that as well.

I suspect that demographic is somewhat similar for the other smaller/more DIY HA systems as well (Ezlo/Vera, Kasa, Insteon, ISY). The big guys (HomeKit, Google Home, SmartThings/Samsung, etc) most likely have a much less tech-savvy clientele. My guess is that the younger you are, the more likely you are to gravitate to open source solutions, 1) because they are free and 2) because they are infinitely tinkerable. Most of our users like our balance of ease of use with built-in capabilites vs the ability to tweak things.

I think that's reflected in our demographic, and it certainly is for the two of us. When I was younger I enjoyed tinkering with stuff - Apache stuff, GNU, linux, early web servers, etc. Heck, I even hacked around with Minix back in college in the 1987.

Now (as I've aged), I'm much more of the set it and forget it mode - I have other things that are much higher priority in my life than techie tinkering. Part of that is likely because my job is in the field, but I think it's also a desire to live life outside of that.

And the easier the set it part of set it and forget it, the more happy I am.

[matt (support)]

(I'm just screwing around a little bit, nobody take this too seriously

If you think such a disclaimer gets you out of your sworn blood oath, you are mistaken buddy.

(I'm just screwing around a little bit, nobody take this too seriously

If you think such a disclaimer gets you out of your sworn blood oath, you are mistaken buddy.

I absolutely love this and all of the other replies. I'm 47, which makes me a) likely at the median/slightly younger side on this form, and b) significantly older than the fairly active Reddit r/homeautomation/ r/smarthome diaspora (note, this area has also been rapidly changingin the past four months or so due to Reddit changing something that I'm too old to pay attention to).

It's funny though, in all of my tinkering, and in all of my embryonic YouTube endeavors, it has become almost impossible to find solutions to home automation integration problems that are not entirely dependent on Home Assistant. I mean, when I was trying to get my zigbee2mqtt coordinator up and running, it took a while to find a home assistant agnostic explanation (on a Mac virtual environment, no less).

The point is, I am really intrigued at what the reaction will be to me posting longform videos utilizing Indigo (which is criminally underrepresented on YouTube, btw).

And for perpetuity, as of 5pm EST (~18 hours after posting these), it's fascinating to see how different social media giants handle this short form crap that I usually just threw together when I'm tinkering and drinking in my shop-bar.
Platform: views/ likes
TikTok: 9k/ 252
YouTube shorts: 2.6l/ 86
Instagram Reels: 900/ 54

I shall fulfill my blood oath

I think another variable to consider for membership in the various communities is the SOAF (significant other acceptance factor). This has a direct effect on the number and types of projects I'm *cough* able to *cough* undertake. Unrelatedly, something is going on with YouTube because I'm subscribed to your channel and should get notifications of ALL your content, but your most recent video (the big switch one) didn't show up in my feed. So I unsubscribed and resubscribed to see if that would make a difference.

I say, "Config.yaml files be damned!"

YAML is terrible, but..... not being able to have the state of my HA system in text files, where I can check it in, diff it, roll it back, and otherwise make use of the great ecosystem of text/source management tools, is one of the things that really irks me about Indigo. If I was starting from scratch today I'd consider the inability to do that to be a dealbreaker.

Dave- thank you as always for your support, you've been there from day one bridging indigo and the YouTube. My most recent switch video for some reason got D prioritized by the algorithm, so that actually makes sense

NathanW- I think I very much get that. Keep in mind, I picked up indigo in 2012 when I had barely programmed at all since college in the 90s, except maybe some JavaScript here and there to make a virtual dungeon master screen, because that is how legit my nerd cred is.

Point being, programmers and software developers are immediately comfortable with home assistant, but I think a lot of people aren't, but are still interested in home automation. While Reddit can (or at least could) be a great source of information for the younger generation, nothing compares to OG forums as far as personal advice and problem-solving that can spend several days. That's the secret sauce of indigo, imo.

Ironically, so many of the regular indigo contributors are either software developers or just incredibly good at programming for others as a hobby. This flies in the face of my original argument that people like that should be drawn to home assistant. Basically, I don't have a great theory yet, but I'm excited to share how are use indigo (especially with the changes of the last two years) with the masses.

Times are very hard if you're young. Hard for me to imagine anyone living paycheck to paycheck with 3 roomies forking over the cost of Indigo, vs. using one nights' tips to buy a Zigbee SkyConnect dongle to plug into a beater laptop inherited from their older sister in order to run HASS.

Make no mistake, Indigo is a stronger, more solid platform with less frustration than HASS, especially when it comes to actually automating devices. But maybe that frustration is better compared as **different.** HASS's frustrations are with understanding how to get something new set up. Indigo's frustrations are that many things aren't compatible.

I understand WHY those things aren't compatible, but it's still a thing.

This is a good point - when I was young and poor (hell, I didn't start making minimum wage until my third year of residency), I was incredibly judicious about where I spent my money. Thar said, this was at a time when it was insane to legally purchase something like the Adobe suite when you could just, erm, discover a craft copy of Adobe CS five. The interesting thing now is that younger creative people are pretty comfortable with paying yearly memberships for software in the promise of updates. Hmmmmm. (I really appreciate this discussion)

Edit:
Above vid views now:
YT: 7k
TikTok: 20k

I shall recruit aged 18-34 Indigo users.

I understand WHY those things aren't compatible, but it's still a thing.

It's definitely a thing. Each time I want to add something to Indigo and find it's not compatible, I usually start with 2 or 3 GitHub solutions that are already baked for HA

I'm curious tho, if you want to push more videos to boost Indigo awareness, why start with something so complex? What about flooding the channel with simple how-to videos showing the simple interface?

Thanks [mention]ryanbuckner [/mention], but my goal is to just share some of my fun projects (projects I've been making and shooting video for otherwise for years now) on the YouTube, mainly for the community (though monetization, an LLC, and a tax haven for all of my projects would be wonderful).

Since I use indigo where necessary, and since a couple other projects of mine have attracted a lot of attention, I'm curious if there will be an interest spike. Maybe that's just my own hopefulness or narcissism speaking.

As far as pure instructional videos for indigo users, I am probably the last person who should be making those

Ah sorry, this statement threw me off a little "Witness my glorious purpose to turn #indigodomotics into a recognizable hash tag."

Sorry, sometimes my over-the-top schtick sounds more adamant than my reality, but I do remain quite curious and certainly think the platform would benefit from more youngins whose freeTime:money ratio is much higher

Edit: thinking about this more, there are tons of young people who figure out simple tutorials and make a fair amount of money from their viewership... that would be awesome if the viewership of Indigo- related tutorials made it cost-effective to make them. Returning to my original point: recruit youngsters for selfish means, as I haven't figured out how to read a plug-in yet.