Keeping up with Mac OS releases

[matt (support)]

In regards to the questions in the original post, the problem boils down to bugs and issues that we can work around and those that we cannot work around. We actually spend a huge amount of our development time working around OPB (Other Peoples' Bugs). Both Insteon and Z-Wave both have lots of bugs (or at the very least undesired behavior) that we jump through hoops to avoid causing problems for the user, and lately macOS has gotten less stable requiring even more gymnastics on our end. Some of this is because of deprecated APIs and frameworks, but lots of times it is plain old bugs, some of which can be difficult to quarantine off in a manner that doesn't cause end-user grief. We report the bugs to Apple, but that feels pretty much like sending photons into a blackhole. Although they might acknowledge something is a bug, they won't tell us when or even if it will ever be fixed. It is very frustrating, and has gotten worse.

The driver issue which is the latest one to cause grief (and resulted in our complicated workaround that involves deleting Apple's built-in driver) is not something we can avoid at the application level. It occurs at the driver/kernel level. To make matters worse, the problem is indeterministic in how it presents itself, and it doesn't occur on all Mac hardware (making it much less likely IMO that Apple will ever fix it).

I don't want to go into too much detail about what our future plans are in regards to Indigo running on other platforms. However, we are not happy with the trend of problems in recent macOS releases. We have no plans to ever run on Windows. The Indigo Server and plugin APIs/framework were architected to be highly portable, but there is still lots of work to be done and lots of decisions to be made.

lately macOS has gotten less stable requiring even more gymnastics on our end... It is very frustrating, and has gotten worse.... I don't want to go into too much detail about what our future plans are in regards to Indigo running on other platforms. However, we are not happy with the trend of problems in recent macOS releases.... The Indigo Server and plugin APIs/framework were architected to be highly portable, but there is still lots of work to be done and lots of decisions to be made.

To me, that says a whole lot and makes me think that Indigo won't be a Mac application in the not-so-distant future. It is what it is until it isn't, so I'll just keep on keeping on and see what the future holds.

[matt (support)]

Don't read too much into anything (especially timeline estimates). Also keep in mind there are lots of Indigo pieces and a server platform change wouldn't necessarily mean the end of Mac integration.

[matt (support)]

I hope you are correct, but my fear is that Apple doesn't consider this a big bug because it (might) only occur on older Macs.

<insert standard disclaimer about not using beta software on production machines>

FWIW, Indigo Client works just fine on the Mohave Public Beta.

Also wanted to say that the Home application in Mojave works just like it does on an iDevice. All the device/room stuff shows up as normal.

That is why it will be a snapshot...a few seconds to take one...and few seconds to restore to the previous snapshot.

What software do you use to do snapshots?

Don't read too much into anything (especially timeline estimates)

Ha, that is a losing battle, when has the forum ever NOT read too much into anything like that... ?

I won't add my comments to the thread as nobody will agree anyway, but I must compliment everyone on an enjoyable-to-read discussion on a topic that can often get people fired up and out of hand. Even @Durosity made a sensible comment. Impressive!

... Both Insteon and Z-Wave both have lots of bugs (or at the very least undesired behavior) that we jump through hoops to avoid causing problems for the user, and lately macOS has gotten less stable requiring even more gymnastics on our end. ....

Non IP based devices - insteon zwave zigbee etc - have very poor end user troubleshooting tools. I therefore avoid them. I prefer IP based end device solutions with open API's.

Would love to see a linux baseed version of Indigo without any insteon/zwave support.

I couldn’t have said it better.! I have expressed exactly the same thoughts about Steve Jobs and his tempering the feature creep and guidance for perfection over Tim Cook’s pursuit of the almighty dollar. Without Steve around nor a suitable surrogate, there’s just this untamed ‘build it because we can’ or ‘put that feature it - it’s cool’ mentality.

I have several times actually compared Apple to the state of DEC or SUN in their later days - Lost and wandering in the technology arena.

I’ve never seen so much garbage coming out of Apple as of late that crashes often. The last time I felt like this was when I worked with OS 9 which surprised me when it actually ran and didn’t crash.

Marc

Some of us have been around Apple for a long time. I go back to the Apple ][ days. I turned down a job offer to go work for Apple on something new which turned out to be the Lisa. Lisa was the precursor to the Macintosh. (Yeah, we are talking about the early 1980's here.) I would have been working on the creation of Appletalk. So I have seen Apple at work over several decades.

The sad thing is that I am seeing what appears to me to be the same path that led to Apple's near demise before Steve Jobs came back and created MacOS X. MacOS 6 and 7 were eminently usable, albeit not a real multitasking OS with memory management. Apple kept adding "features" and "improvements" until MacOS 9 was effectively unusable. Apple almost went out of business. Fortunately Steve Jobs was still around and was willing to return. I believe that his rigid, draconian management style and unwillingness to accept anything that wasn't near perfect is what made Apple what it is today. Now Steve is gone and I am watching the return to mediocrity that nearly killed Apple before. Unfortunately there is no Steve Jobs waiting in the wings to come back and fix the problem again. I fear for the future of MacOS and things that depend on it.

I have watched many aspects of MacOS become unusable. MacOS server has stopped being a useful network filesystem. I can no longer keep my home directory on the server as nearly all of the Apple apps fail with network-attached storage. Apple can't tell me why. I am tired of conflicting information from Apple on my complaints and their willingness to close issues that never get fixed.

But I am wholly dependent on Indigo now. All my lights, HVAC, blinds, and AV are controlled by Indigo. My AV system is so complex that I am the only person who can run it without using Indigo as a front-end. Roon handles my audio and Indigo all the switching to get everything to play nicely. I am afraid of what Apple is going to do in the future to f--k up MacOS and render Indigo unusable.

So here comes the $64,000 question: what about the idea of making Indigo run on Linux or other Unix operating systems? Hardware that runs Linux is cheap. I suspect even a Raspberry Pi could run Indigo. I have made the decision to start migrating off of MacOS towards a more stable and secure platform. (I won't mention Windows, not even as a joke.) Right now I have a Mini running MacOS Server, Indigo, and Roon Server. It is the core of my home. Storage is SSD and RAID-5 for integrity. If need be I can keep MacOS around to run Indigo but that would necessitate one more processing box. I'll do it if I have to but I would like to remain consolidated on one central server.

Thoughts?

As someone who threw in the towel on a Hackintosh and decided to experiment with Linux One More Time, please allow me to offer my thoughts and experiences:

I chose Elementary OS to experiment with for its "ease of use" and simple install. I do have to hand it to them on the latter--where I've struggled for literally days trying to get this home built i5, carefully chosen for compatibility to boot as a Hackintosh, with the Elementary installer all I had to do was boot from the USB (which happened automatically) and chose to install the OS. It found all the hardware, installed quickly, and booted fast.

But.

You know there's a but, right?

The Sharing settings panel doesn't have a FILE sharing option. Turns out EOS doesn't have file sharing installed. Makes it tricky to move multiple gigs of movies over to start using it as a Plex box!

Speaking of... Plex installed more or less easily, but if I wasn't technical already, I don't think I would have gotten it done. Turns out EOS doesn't read package installers or something and there was no Plex installer for anything but Debian or some such, so there were multiple searches and multiple directions for where to go to fix that. But hey! Plex runs now!

But.

When browsing for media folders inside the Plex interface, the directory tree structure is some hallucinatory variation of what appears in the Files app or via terminal. And Plex totally fails to see some folders, including every one I've created to hold my movies.

When I DO get Plex to see a folder I have movies in, movies that VLC plays just fine locally on the linux box... Plex says "there are no files in the folder."

Back to file sharing: Managed to get samba installed, after many false starts having to do with EOS's underpinnings, I guess. Oh wait, installing samba doesn't install a GUI for configuring samba. Cut to the end: I spent approximately 4 hours of my free time getting file sharing to work. That's four hours at the terminal or reading how-to guides, none of which were exactly specific to my OS or version. None of which offered the slightest suggestion or confirmation about how to specify the smb connection TO the EOS box on a Mac, so until it worked, I was never quite sure if I was actually just asking the EOS box the wrong thing.

Seemed like some remote desktop for the Linux box would be handy so I looked into that. Not built in. No such thing in the EOS app repository. Options to install one were either frighteningly complex/obtuse/ or simply failed in the most annoying way: completed without error, yet no sign at all that anything has changed or been done.

I also thought I'd look at ZoneMinder for cam management, but the list of prerequisites for it was severely daunting, and based on my experience that almost NOTHING in Linux is a double click install, or even a simple

Code: Select all

sudo apt-get install mysql

I decided not to try.

My dip back in the pool of FOSS has once again convinced me that while the waters are inviting, they are deep, dark, tentacles of dependencies await to pull you under, almost all the other swimmers are far away from you and unwilling to do more than toss a brick labeled "READ THE MAN PAGE" to help, and every config file is a shark waiting to bite you if you get one parenthesis wrong.

When talking about Linux based Indigo, I think there are two facts many people are not taking into account:

1. Linux is only suitable for people who are already running Linux.

2. People who are into HA and already #1 above are already using Home Assistant or Domoticz or OpenHAB. All of which have 0 dollar cost, gigantic open source support and development efforts, and huge installed user bases compared to Indigo.

So, aside from those of us in this forum who for some reason feel that Apple's record stock price, continuing high marks from the overwhelming majority of its customers, and post-trillion dollar valuation means the company is about to implode, where is Indigo's market for Linux based Indigo?

I have an iMac 27” (2017) with 32 GB memory. First let me say I have been running Mohave since the first public version. I was using Indigo version 7.1 at the time and everything was fine.. Now jump ahead to 10.14.1 Beta (18B67a) and Indigo 7.2 and stuff starts to go haywire. A thermostat stops acknowledging commands. Long working devices stop working and won’t even define and sync. I get the “device must be asleep” message and these are dual band pluged-in devices. Powerlinc (2413U) stoped working altogether. Added new Powerlinc (2413U) but the other issues remain. I am a long time indigo user but I could not make these issues go away. I have restarted everything, still the problems exist. In order to try Indigo on another Mac using Hi Sierra and Indigo 7.1, I have to move my license to that Mac etc. So right now I’m stuck and wondering if I really need to stay with Indigo or look elsewhere for Mac based home automation software.

I have an iMac 27” (2017) with 32 GB memory. First let me say I have been running Mohave since the first public version. I was using Indigo version 7.1 at the time and everything was fine.. Now jump ahead to 10.14.1 Beta (18B67a) and Indigo 7.2 and stuff starts to go haywire. A thermostat stops acknowledging commands. Long working devices stop working and won’t even define and sync. I get the “device must be asleep” message and these are dual band pluged-in devices. Powerlinc (2413U) stoped working altogether. Added new Powerlinc (2413U) but the other issues remain. I am a long time indigo user but I could not make these issues go away. I have restarted everything, still the problems exist. In order to try Indigo on another Mac using Hi Sierra and Indigo 7.1, I have to move my license to that Mac etc. So right now I’m stuck and wondering if I really need to stay with Indigo or look elsewhere for Mac based home automation software.

There is no other Mac based HA software, unless you're talking about a generic Unix system that runs on MacOS.

The developers have warned all Indigo users about running it on new OS versions. You ignored those warnings. They've said multiple times that Apple keeps breaking USB support in each new release.

Indigo is very stable, if you run it on an approved system configuration. Maybe that should be your next step.

Sorry to hear you are having problems. Here are a few ideas for consideration.

PowerLinc's fail. I'm on my third one and others I know who use Insteon have gone through multiple units as well. There may be some relation between Indigo 7.2 and the failure, but from what I know, I would say it is also possible that your unit simply reached the end of life and it so happens that it happened near the time you started using 7.2. Btw, the cause of PowerLinc failure seems to be linked to bad capacitors. There are sites that will show you how to replace components and restore them to operation if you are handy with a soldering iron. Otherwise, you'll just have to buy a new one and hope that SmartLabs/Insteon has learned from their problems and improved their component quality.

Also consider that other devices come and go from your home power network that can have an impact. Over time working with Insteon, I've seen a single malfunctioning lamplinc take down an entire Insteon house network. I've seen an innocuous looking emergency flashlight that when plugged in would instantly knock transmission success rate on the Insteon network from >99% to less than 50%. Chargers with switching power supplies and UPS's are other known devices that can sometimes be problematic. When problem devices are identified, they can sometimes be fixed by adding devices like FilterLinc's.

You mention you saw a thermostat stop working and other "long-working" devices also, but you are not specific about what these are... Are these also Insteon devices? If so, the failure of your 2413 could account for your problems. If not, then there are too many possibilities to even guess at - you'll have to provide more details if you want further help or suggestions. You don't mention if there was any reason to think that there was some problem with your Mac. Offhand, I would not be too quick to move from one machine (previously working) to a different machine, unless you have a strong reason to think this is likely to solve the problem. This seems likely to introduce more variables and make the problem harder to diagnose and solve rather than easier.

Absent specifics about your problem, I have a few general things to suggest. Look carefully at Indigo's logs during startup; I sometimes find little tidbits "hidden" in the voluminous startup messages that indicate problems. Also, try to pare strip your system down to a simple, minimal configuration. Look for something simple that works and then start adding thing back until you identify the source of the problem. To do this, you can unplug peripherals and devices from your Mac. (If necessary, create a virgin system on a spare drive and try working from that.) You can also turn most of your home electrical network by flipping off circuit breakers to eliminate signal transmission issues (noise, or signal-suck).

Ok after extensive research here's what I discovered. Original PowerLinc died, new one added. I believe this had nothing to do with MacOS nor Indigo 7.2. It just died. Secondly the issues with the hard wired devices seems to emanate from a loose connection in the junction box for the Kitchen overhead track lights. The SwitchLinc dimmer shares a wall box with a standard wall outlet. I plugged in a dual band On/Off module into the outlet and was able to define and sync with no problem, but the dual-band SwitchLinc right next to it would not communicate with Indigo at all. Then I tried connecting the white and ground wires from the SwitchLinc together and WaLa everything worked fine. That gave me notice that the problem was a hard wire problem, so with meter in hand I went searching for the culprit. I found it in the ceiling junction box for the Kitchen overhead track light, and yes the track light is incandescent. The wires in that junction box were loose. So now comes the strange part. After fixing the hard wire problem the Thermostat that was acting erratically suddenly started working as expected again. Living in a house that is over 110 years old does present challenges and with over 100 insteon devices I am kept on my toes. BTW the only non Insteon devices I use are ZWave motion sensors reporting Motion, Humidity and Temperature which trigger response actions. Whew that's solved now for some wine.