Home Center 3 is comming ?

[fingusio 12]

Hello

 

I heard some news that new Home Center 3 comming in first quarter 2020.

 

Any other info someone have ?

Edited October 7, 2019 by fingusio

[10der 830]

5 hours ago, Sjakie said:

the new box cost around 600 euro

Yes.

old zwave Chip/glitch software/bad-ugly-client support  

that’s all why I said goodbye Fibaro

[jgab 1,954]

7 hours ago, Sjakie said:

BIGGEST issue will be if my developer of Event Runner will not support HC2 anymore. Than I will be forced to switch or just stay with a complete stable running HA system .

 

I feel sorry for people that have invested time and effort to get a lot of scripts to finally do what they want - but there are voices in the forum that doesn't think that this is a problem...

 

When it comes to ER I'm looking into how to support the scen on the HC3 - it may be doable (some initial trials) but I don't know for sure. In any case it will require some rewriting.

-If I move to HC3 I will probably freeze the HC2 version.

-A second alternative that I already have working is to run ER offline and use the HC2 (or HC3 or whether) as a device GW.

-A third alternative is that I stay on HC2 (as we already get HomeKit and all other protocols from Nodered)

-A fourth alternative is that I move on to some other open source platform that provides a more interesting environment to code in.

So I have some choices and some thinking to do.

 

The HC3 is an anti-climax for me as it only comes with new hardware that there is no support for yet and support for those kind of devices (HomeKit, zigbee etc) is already great on other platforms. So for end-users it's kind of "meh" at the moment (actually, more like "ouch" as they can't use their old scripts)

 

The thing that could have interested me as a developer were if the development environment had been more powerful. Better APIs, shareable Lua libraries, debugger support (just include

Please login or register to see this link.

and we could have had remote debugging like all other embedded Lua platforms!).

 

Wasn't any beta tester a developer? Any beta tester that had any opinion about the development model/environment offered? Any beta tester trying the new block scene editor and trying to do something more elaborate? Any beta tester that tried to code something useful in a Lua Scene? Any beta tester trying to write something bigger in a VD and tried to debug it?

 

Of course it's something that could come later (if we continue to complain ) - but if I had speced the next HCx that is stuff that I had improved, low hanging fruits that would have been useful from day one and allowed HC3 developer to build  really new cool applications we haven't seen before and at least on par with other platforms - now we just got extra hardware that there is no support for anyway... yet ? (that's an emoji of someone holding his breath)

 

And once again: There is no contradiction in supporting users with good high level tools so they don't need to code - and at the same time supporting developers with a powerful environment to create, among other things, good high level tools so users don't have to code...   that's how to create a network effect, attracting customers and developers...

 

No, and home automation is not just a couple of sensors and switches to turn on/off - there is a lot of cool use cases around the corner and Fibaro's choice is if they want that developed on their platform or on some other platform.

Edited January 19, 2020 by jgab

[petergebruers 1,261]

@jgab Being under NDA I am not allowed to voice my opinion here.

 

You can speculate what you want, say what you want. You can tell it is crap. You can tell it is awesome.

 

I am not allowed to talk about it.

 

IMHO it is Fibaro's task to explain to users what it is an isn't and why that decision was made.

 

If you think I can influence Fibaro's business decisions, even after all my posts on the forum, you are wrong. I have near zero impact on business decisions.

 

Are you a beta tester? If you do not trust me, here is a deal: I am on old, tired man and I will send my HC3 to you if Fibaro agrees.

[Sjakie 135]

Jan,

Good to hear!

If there is "something" what can do the same as HC2,including a nice working app I am in.

I like the HC2 for the back and restore that works great for me.

I dislike the new app because I cant see witch part of the house is armed yes/no.

First I am not so smart in software but 20m years ago I had my own linux server under the stair, Ubuntu if I am not mistaken.

Later I became lazy and bought  router to do the job.

Perhaps a combination to start arming with HC2 and HA with ...... (If devices can be used in both systems).

Or an other operating system on the HC2 because its more power full as the pi

Time is plenty available money less :).

So in fact your options let some lights shine at the end of the tunnel (not in Poland).

 

 

[cag014 628]

3 hours ago, jgab said:

No, and home automation is not just a couple of sensors and switches to turn on/off - there is a lot of cool use cases around the corner and Fibaro's choice is if they want that developed on their platform or on some other platform.

 

Yes, it is... ER, AOS, UHAS, Scene Timer and etc are just a nice and easy to use wrap up. At the end all rules and actions are IF.... THEN... that's all.

As I understand you probably an engineer and as I said we never satisfied and continue to search for more and more options. It's never ends.

By the way I do appreciate and admire this approach to do it better and better, this drives the progress of our lives.

As we not all developing mobile phones, but using them (for better and worse) as consumers... same for HA controllers. 

I'm curious if any one has submitted ticket to support when your phone is freeze? or just did a "hard reset"  and continue to use the phone.

Just as an example, I have updated my Smart TV with a new SW and Netflix doesn't work anymore. I'm waiting for an answer from support for three weeks now. At the end have found workaround in forum.... sounds familiar?

HC2 and few other controllers provide some level of "development" that we need appreciate and not to complain.

 

But this is just my opinion and I believe it's not a popular one among us.

Edited January 19, 2020 by cag014

[10der 830]

1 hour ago, petergebruers said:

Are you a beta tester? If you do not trust me, here is a deal: I am on old, tired man and I will send my HC3 to you if Fibaro agrees.

Jan already has HC3  send to me ha ha but Fibaro not trust to me  

[jgab 1,954]

1 minute ago, 10der said:

Jan already has HC3  send to me ha ha but Fibaro not trust to me  

No, I don't own a HC3 and is not a beta tester.

[petergebruers 1,261]

2 minutes ago, jgab said:

No, I don't own a HC3 and is not a beta tester.

You want to become one (a beta tester) and want mine?

Edited January 19, 2020 by petergebruers

[jgab 1,954]

2 minutes ago, cag014 said:

 

Yes, it is... ER, AOS, UHAS, Scene Timer and etc are just a nice and easy to use wrap up. At the end all rules and actions are IF.... THEN... that's all.

Yes, but it's a lot of interesting stuff that can happen  between the IF and THEN and after the THEN

Between the IF and THEN it's about capturing the state of the world and after the THEN it's about capturing the intention of the user.

That's not easy.

I'm sure many customers on this forum have that experience.

I believe that developers, if given the platform to work on, could come up with better abstractions that would make it easier for everyone to capture the world and express their intentions.

 

Neural networks can be seen as if-then rules too but it kind of misses the point...

2 minutes ago, cag014 said:

But this is just my opinion and I believe it's not a popular approach among us.

Well, it's just not very progressive...

[cag014 628]

6 minutes ago, jgab said:

Well, it's just not very progressive...

not very complaining...

The ‘No Complaining’ Rule ...

Please login or register to see this link.

Honestly none of us has any idea what HC3 will be... but we're already talking about how bad it is!!!

 

Edited January 19, 2020 by cag014

[jgab 1,954]

3 minutes ago, cag014 said:

not very complaining...

The ‘No Complaining’ Rule ...

Please login or register to see this link.

 

Is there a similar rule for the "no complaining customer" ? 

[cag014 628]

3 minutes ago, jgab said:

Is there a similar rule for the "no complaining customer" ? 

Yes, don't complain on product that no one has a clue what it is! (HC3).

We'll have enough time to complain later, but with some knowledge what we're talking about... don't you agree?

By the way, do you agree that most of complains on HC2 have been created by the users...? and I think this is the reason why ER, AOS UHAS and others are great tools.... to minimize user's mistakes.

Edited January 19, 2020 by cag014

[cag014 628]

I don't know if it could help, but I'll try to send it to appropriate channel in Fibaro.

Let's gather some major improvement points that we want to see in HC3 based on our experience with HC2

Do you have any suggestions?

[10der 830]

@cag014 if something bark like a dog, bites like a dog... maybe probably it’s something dog is.

yes we can’t know what in the black box named HC3 but according specs + according the current situation with HC2 development we can clearly understand what will be in the output... 

[cag014 628]

7 minutes ago, 10der said:

@cag014 if something bark like a dog, bites like a dog... maybe probably it’s something dog is.

yes we can’t know what in the black box named HC3 but according specs + according the current situation with HC2 development we can clearly understand what will be in the output... 

I'm curious, what do you think it will be?

Let give some credit to Fibaro's team that they have learned from HC2 and may be HC3 will stop to bark...

[10der 830]

Amen

[jgab 1,954]

21 hours ago, petergebruers said:

@jgab Being under NDA I am not allowed to voice my opinion here.

You can speculate what you want, say what you want. You can tell it is crap. You can tell it is awesome.

I am not allowed to talk about it.

 

IMHO it is Fibaro's task to explain to users what it is an isn't and why that decision was made.

Yes, and they haven't so far - and customers will find it out when they bring home the box -- good way to care for your customers. However, I don't think we home automaters are the main customers for the fibaro box (see below)

Quote

If you think I can influence Fibaro's business decisions, even after all my posts on the forum, you are wrong. I have near zero impact on business decisions.

Sorry, not my intention to drag you into my rants 

Quote

Are you a beta tester? If you do not trust me, here is a deal: I am on old, tired man and I will send my HC3 to you if Fibaro agrees.

No, I'm not a beta tester - but it was my feeling that there were not a lot of developers (people having time to sit down and try to develop something real) among them. Do I want to be? Let me think about it. Doesn't seem like they listen anyway, or?  

 

I make some noise here on the forum in the hope that someone at fibaro would pick it up, or someone that have a channel could forward  - namely that they are making a really really bad business decision by not trying to woo developers...

 

So, I would expect that most of their profit would come from devices (I have spent far more on devices than on the box and people use their devices on other platforms). Probably better margin on the box than on a device (higher competition) but volumes make me bet on devices. However, boxes are probably starting to sell in bulk to installers working on larger housing/apartments projects - and I guess that it what they are seeing as the main market for the boxes going forward?  ...and there is after market for installers to continuously support these installations with customisations and updates - kind of a KNX light. That may explain who their customers are and what they prioritise.

 

I can understand this market framing but it's as sexy as the plumbing and just virtual wires... Look at their own marketing, futuristic cool use cases and AI etc. Do they believe that they can stay ahead without the help of developers? Not even Microsoft, Google, Apple thinks that. HW without excellent SW is called paper weights. In best case the box becomes an (expensive) protocol GW and someone else will own the end-user relationship .-  and protocols GWs are easily interchangeable based on cost.

19 hours ago, cag014 said:

I don't know if it could help, but I'll try to send it to appropriate channel in Fibaro.

Let's gather some major improvement points that we want to see in HC3 based on our experience with HC2

Do you have any suggestions?

 

I think we had this discussion many times over the years...

Top of my head this is what I miss - but it requires that fibaro makes and appreciate a distinction between end-users and developers...

 

A. They have to make better built-in end-user tools

- Some high-level scheduler with a nice GUI to schedule actions - all HA platforms have them. Shouldn't need block scenes for this.

- Improved block scenes for people that would like to try to do some more advanced if-then-elses. Graphical, use blockly and support some more constructs (didn't even have 'else' ??)

- Some event statistics that is easy to export for non-programmers.

- Floor plan maps where devices can be placed

- A wetted 3rd party market with one click installs and update notifications

- ...

B. For developers

- Enable more of Lua; loadstring, coroutines, metatables - now they have a powerful box so it shouldn't be an issue.

- Some more builtin libraries (networking - websockets, full HTTPS, authorisation, encryption, MQTT, server sockets? , parsers/lexers etc)  and even better, a place to store and share code and libraries. Maybe even a small filesystem or mount a remote filesystem?

- There is of course an issue about security - However, libraries can be sandboxed from destructive ops, and a working market place can be used for wetting and promoting trust in scenes and VDs. Today user anyway cut and paste code from everywhere and bad things are waiting to happen... They could add also some authorisation mechanism for certain APIs. Like when you download an app to your phone today and it needs to ask your permission to do/access certain stuff.

- More and better VD widgets to make more expressible VD GUIs

- Some inter-scene/VD communication. Global variables for communication are terrible and there is no lock mechanism to avoid race conditions.

- Some event callback mechanism in "long-running-scenes" so people don't need to busy-poll /refreshState?last... to get events (and add all kind of changes as events - globals too)

- Make it optional to enable mobdebug for VDs and Scenes when developing for remote debugging.

- I will wake up tonight and remember more...

 

The HC3 has come pretty far and is soon in the stores and so far I haven't seen anything of the above (and I have peaked inside) - but I'm starting to understand that it's not in their mindset 

... but maybe for the HC4?  

 

 

Edited January 20, 2020 by jgab

[10der 830]

Jan, ?

[Bodyart 229]

3 hours ago, petergebruers said:

I am on old, tired man

@petergebruers the devil is old and tired engineers do not contribute on different domains like you do Peter and i sure hope you will not really get tired at least a few decenia

[Bodyart 229]

1 hour ago, jgab said:

I make some noise here on the forum in the hope that someone at fibaro would pick it up

Jan @jgab please just continue making loud noise here. Your published insights are extremely valuable and many of us developers, learners and other can learn very much from you! Thank you very much and i dare to speak in name of many users from this forum

If you ever decide to leave this forum, the forum will loose all LUA beauty you brought here ?