Which 3 technologies/devices would you like to see supported

Thanks for the explanation. Your points are all very valid.

One thing I'm a little unclear on and maybe it's because I either didn't explain it well or I do not understand the underlying methodology. I didn't mean to imply the reverse engineering of the Hue protocols for this solution. Aren't the 4 current "Connected Home" devices that are supported by the echo using the Lighting API? Would a separate "Service" running locally on the private network be able to bridge the gap between the Echo and Indigo without impacting the security of indigo? This wouldn't need to use the protocols being used by Hue, SmartThings, Insteon or Wink. I was under the impression that the echo talks to these hubs directly using the Lighting API and then the only thing that would potentially break would be the connectivity between the "Service" app (software hub so to speak) and Indigo. I would think this would be no more fragile then any of the other Connected Home devices in that the only thing that could break it would be a change to the Lighting API.

Like I said at the beginning. I probably do not have a firm enough grasp on the technology being used with the Connected Home devices and the Lighting API.

Jeff

[jay (support)]

I was under the impression that the echo talks to these hubs directly using the Lighting API

Incorrect. Amazon built a shim Alexa skill which presents the Lighting API to developers to connect their hubs to the Echo. The hubs have their own APIs (as does Indigo) that various clients use to communicate with them. The Echo integration for each of those hubs is code residing "in the cloud" that talks to their API on one side and to the shim Alexa skill (developed by Amazon) on the other side. The hubs themselves know nothing about the Lighting API - they just present their own control APIs and the developers write the Alexa skill that connects them to the Echo. A bit simplistic, but it gets the point across.

At least, I'm 80% sure that's how it works after spending a bit of time with the API docs.

Very late to this interesting party - but one thing that is maybe already available (and I missed how you do it) is to bundle (like a library) (or is it unbundle) indigo such that it can run in a modern IDE in debug mode. Developing a plugin in Pycharm or Eclipse would speed up my development and debugging a LOT especially for non-expert coders which makes up a majority of plugin developers.......
Is that possible?

[jay (support)]

Not currently possible, but as an avid PyCharm fan I'd really like to see it as well. We have some ideas but don't know when/if we'll have a chance to get to it. Not likely for the initial Indigo 7 release though.

Jay,
is it not possible to do some work(*) in pycharm i.e. through manually importing indigo in a external terminal session..
Karl
(*) not for a full plugin code, but some testing like in server actions/ execute script

[jay (support)]

I realize that and hopefully we can find a solution that works in a variety of scenarios.

Not currently possible, but as an avid PyCharm fan I'd really like to see it as well. We have some ideas but don't know when/if we'll have a chance to get to it. Not likely for the initial Indigo 7 release though.

I have been using PyCharm for a while and threw it out again.
Now that I am getting hooked to IntelliJ and PHPStorm I started using PyCharm again and I must say that I start to love it as much as IntelliJ...

There is one thing that irritates me though.
I don't know how to set things up so that using indigo methods does not give me an 'unresolved method' error.
Can you help me out with that?

Thanks,

Marcel

[jay (support)]

There is one thing that irritates me though.
I don't know how to set things up so that using indigo methods does not give me an 'unresolved method' error.
Can you help me out with that?

If you're just talking about PyCharm showing red errors in the various editor windows, then at the top of any script that uses the indigo module, add this:

Code: Select all

try:
    import indigo
except:
    pass

This is a no-op for any Python script that's run in an IndigoHost process but it will make PyCharm stop showing errors in the editor on every use of indigo.

Well, it is a solution certainly. Thanks for that!

But I would prefer to add indigo to the python path for PyCharm.
Currently I have not succeeded.
It means that I either don't understand how to do it or that it is not possible.

[jay (support)]

As I mention above, it's not currently possible.

Any chance we may see Ecobee3 support in version 7?

How much longer until we see a beta for version 7?

Edmond

[jay (support)]

Any chance we may see Ecobee3 support in version 7?

Not from us in the initial Indigo 7 release. We would welcome a 3rd party plugin for it though.

How much longer until we see a beta for version 7?

We don't pre-announce release dates.

Just posted a pseudo-request under "Hacking": viewtopic.php?f=9&t=15586

The Amazon Echo is the best speech recognition I've seen outside of movies. Any way to grab specific text AFTER a keyword, not just pre-programmed commands, provided it doesn't violate some Amazon legaleze, would be amazing. If this could be done via official Alexa support, it would be amazing.

Oh, and FINGSCAN does an amazing job with occupancy via the router. So does EventScripts via bluetooth, with good range. Integrating either of these would be wonderful for those intimidated by hacking together their own setup.

Just to add my two cents, perhaps a bit late, but: I'm definitely one of those users who prefers official support to 3rd party. I use several 3rd party plugins myself and I very much appreciate the hard work of those users who made them. Some of them are superstars. But the fact remains that if a device has official support, then I can expect that functionality to be updated along with Indigo. For instance, if Jay and Matt were to change (for very good reasons) the API in a way that broke one of the plugins I've come to depend on, I'd have to wait for the plugin developer to update it as well - assuming they are still 1) coding, 2) interested and 3) alive. Also, Jay and Matt have taken my money and hope to take more, so they have a vested interest in being responsive to bug notifications, feature requests, etc. A 3rd party plugin developer does not. In fact, I have seen some posts in which users requested a feature or bug fix from the 3rd party developer, but the developer did not address them either because they lacked the skill or the plugin was feature complete for their own uses. Additionally, as a software company, Indigo Domotics has better access to API and device information than 3rd party developers, which should lead to plugins that are less "hacky." Let's face it, some of the plugins require you to drink a grape NeHi while dancing around a fire holding a dead chicken to get them to work.

I think any plugin that got picked up for official support ought to make the developer quite proud. They were a pioneer in developing for the device, and their solution was valuable enough to move to the big leagues. I think that's awesome. From a user perspective, official support is an important (sometimes critical) factor in my decision to acquire software/hardware.

Best,
Phil

At the risk of everyone clambering for their language of choice, would it be possible to add Ruby scripting support? Alternatively, is there some kind of 3rd party system library that can be used to translate ruby into python calls? Not that I have anything against Python, I just already know Ruby and would rather avoid spending time picking up Python...