Indigo 2022

Posted on
Wed Jan 12, 2022 5:54 am
Turribeach offline
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Indigo 2022

MODERATOR NOTE: Indigo 2022.1 has solved the compatibility issue with macOS Monterey 12.3+.

What are the plans for Indigo releases for 2022? Can you give us a rough idea of what's coming? Now that native Alexa integration and native Apple Silicon support have been delivered what is the next priority? I like to see Indigo move to Python 3 since Python 2 is now more than 1 year out of support...

Posted on
Wed Jan 12, 2022 12:50 pm
jay (support) offline
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Re: Indigo 2022

Given that Apple is going to stop including Python in the next release of macOS (see the super annoying and fear inducing dialog box in Monterey), adding our own Python installation and migrating to Python 3 at the same time is one of the top priorities this year. This is a big task and will take much of our bandwidth. For Indigo scripters and plugin developers, a great way to start looking at the Python 3 migration is to read through this Python 3 porting guide. There's a good bit that you can do now that's backwards compatible with Python 2.7 which will make your eventual migration much less painful.

Take this as your first warning: Python 3 is coming likely around mid-year so if you are a plugin developer (or to a lesser extent scripter) you should start learning about Python 3 changes sooner rather than later. There aren't a big number of breaking changes going from Python 2.7 to Python 3, but enough that you are likely going to need to do some updates. We are currently planning on Python v3.9, but that may change to v3.10 depending on how solid/reliable that version appears to be closer to release. You probably want to avoid any 3.10 specific features until you hear otherwise from us.

The other top priority is getting the next Indigo Touch release out - we hope to have that done soon so we can turn our full attention to Python migration and inclusion.

Jay (Indigo Support)
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Posted on
Wed Jan 12, 2022 2:20 pm
Londonmark offline
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Re: Indigo 2022

Presumably this creates a big risk that HomeKit integration no longer works given C4W’s departure from Indigo shores. That feels like a big problem…

Posted on
Thu Jan 13, 2022 8:48 am
cesarvog offline
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Re: Indigo 2022

Thanks for the update, Jay.
Looking forward to the update Indigo Touch and everything else planned for 2022.
Keep up the good work.

Posted on
Thu Jan 13, 2022 10:13 am
Turribeach offline
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Re: Indigo 2022

Thanks for the update Jay. Moving Indigo to its own Python 3 installation will be great. I always worry that installing Python 2 packages in the main Python 2 OS install might cause some incompatibility with Indigo or the OS. I work in ML in my day job and we soon realised that we can't have a single Python environment, sooner or later you will have an incompatibility. Are you guys planning to support Python virtual environments? In an ideal world I would like to be able to allocate 1 Python virtual environment for Indigo and separate ones for plugins. Also will there be any easy way to manage Python packages in Indigo? Thanks!

Posted on
Thu Jan 13, 2022 11:34 am
ryanbuckner offline
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Re: Indigo 2022

jay (support) wrote:
Given that Apple is going to stop including Python in the next release of macOS (see the super annoying and fear inducing dialog box in Monterey), adding our own Python installation and migrating to Python 3 at the same time is one of the top priorities this year. This is a big task and will take much of our bandwidth. For Indigo scripters and plugin developers, a great way to start looking at the Python 3 migration is to read through this Python 3 porting guide. There's a good bit that you can do now that's backwards compatible with Python 2.7 which will make your eventual migration much less painful.

Take this as your first warning: Python 3 is coming likely around mid-year so if you are a plugin developer (or to a lesser extent scripter) you should start learning about Python 3 changes sooner rather than later. There aren't a big number of breaking changes going from Python 2.7 to Python 3, but enough that you are likely going to need to do some updates. We are currently planning on Python v3.9, but that may change to v3.10 depending on how solid/reliable that version appears to be closer to release. You probably want to avoid any 3.10 specific features until you hear otherwise from us.

The other top priority is getting the next Indigo Touch release out - we hope to have that done soon so we can turn our full attention to Python migration and inclusion.


Jay, do plugin developers get Indigo beta access to test the plugins? Or should we plan to fix when the production version drops?

Posted on
Thu Jan 13, 2022 5:34 pm
jay (support) offline
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Re: Indigo 2022

Turribeach wrote:
Are you guys planning to support Python virtual environments? In an ideal world I would like to be able to allocate 1 Python virtual environment for Indigo and separate ones for plugins.


We would love to eventually, but not at first. We've got our plates full with just the migration.

Eventually we'd like for plugins to have the ability to include their own requirements.txt file that we could use at installation time to create a venv for the plugin. But there are a lot of challenges to do that given how we have to link to the python install.

Turribeach wrote:
Also will there be any easy way to manage Python packages in Indigo? Thanks!


There will be some way, yes. Unclear exactly how that's going to work.

Jay (Indigo Support)
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Posted on
Thu Jan 13, 2022 5:42 pm
jay (support) offline
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Re: Indigo 2022

ryanbuckner wrote:
Jay, do plugin developers get Indigo beta access to test the plugins? Or should we plan to fix when the production version drops?


We will likely have multiple levels of alpha/beta testing given the pervasiveness of the changes. We also know how some of our users love to install beta software, so it's likely our prereleases will be closed, but we will be in contact with anyone who is actively developing plugins to get them involved before we ship the final release.

Jay (Indigo Support)
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Posted on
Sat Jan 15, 2022 10:39 am
7rdr7 offline
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Re: Indigo 2022

Londonmark wrote:
Presumably this creates a big risk that HomeKit integration no longer works given C4W’s departure from Indigo shores. That feels like a big problem…


Same question here. If migration to Python 3 breaks HomeKit Bridge, that makes 2021.2 the end of the road for me. Could Jay/Matt please confirm? I've been hoping that @webdeck would update his "Homebridge Indigo" plugin to the latest Homebridge variant, fingers crossed..... Decoupling HomeKit from Indigo is likely the best way forward due to Jay and Matt's valid licensing concerns. That said, there seems to be a path to licensing now, as demonstrated by Thinka, but I'm assuming it's too costly for Indigo.

Posted on
Sat Jan 15, 2022 2:03 pm
jay (support) offline
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Re: Indigo 2022

7rdr7 wrote:
That said, there seems to be a path to licensing now, as demonstrated by Thinka


There's always been a licensing path for hardware bridges, just not software like Indigo. We are not a hardware company.

We don't have any comment on the HomeKit Bridge plugin at the moment as we are still evaluating options. Note that the ultimate solution is likely to be native Matter support, where we can support Matter devices (and, presumably, present our devices as Matter devices to other clients like HomeKit though that is certainly less clear). We know that there are some of you that already use Siri to control your devices through HomeKit Bridge and it would be unfortunate to lose that capability in the interim, so we will continue to explore solutions.

Jay (Indigo Support)
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Posted on
Sat Jan 15, 2022 2:07 pm
Londonmark offline
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Re: Indigo 2022

jay (support) wrote:
7rdr7 wrote:
That said, there seems to be a path to licensing now, as demonstrated by Thinka


There's always been a licensing path for hardware bridges, just not software like Indigo. We are not a hardware company.

We don't have any comment on the HomeKit Bridge plugin at the moment as we are still evaluating options. Note that the ultimate solution is likely to be native Matter support, where we can support Matter devices (and, presumably, present our devices as Matter devices to other clients like HomeKit though that is certainly less clear). We know that there are some of you that already use Siri to control your devices through HomeKit Bridge and it would be unfortunate to lose that capability in the interim, so we will continue to explore solutions.
Thanks Jay. Really hope you can find a way through this.

Posted on
Sat Jan 15, 2022 3:52 pm
7rdr7 offline
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Re: Indigo 2022

Matter emulation of z-wave devices sounds promising.
https://developer.apple.com/homekit/

Posted on
Sun Jan 16, 2022 7:02 pm
jltnol offline
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Re: Indigo 2022

+1 for Siri. I also got an Apple Watch and have integrated it with Indigo.... not everything but a few "all the time" things... would hate to see this stop working, but understand sooner or later it may...

Posted on
Thu Jan 27, 2022 3:36 am
davinci offline

Re: Indigo 2022

I am a long-time user, but if Homebridge breaks I will be going to some other platform immediately.

Posted on
Thu Jan 27, 2022 4:33 am
Turribeach offline
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Re: Indigo 2022

So that I understand this myself what does Homebridge provide that you can't do with the other integrations? (ie like Alexa plugin).

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