The cloud model is flawed, local control and local api, means reduced costs in maintaining a cloud services. The cloud can be maintain by subscrption for support (after a period of free support) and remote access and one of charges for third party integration.
If we look at the where a HA company might require money is:
1-Firmware development and maintenance (continuous cost to the company)
2-Cloud infrastructure development and maintenance (continuous cost to the company)
3-App/Web services development and maintenance (continuous cost to the company)
4-Hardware Design (one off cost to the company)
5-Integration work (continuous cost to the company)
Just some thoughts.
1-Firmware development and maintenance (continuous cost to the company)
Agreed a cost, could be offset with a period of free firmware(unless security flaw) 5 - 10 years
2-Cloud infrastructure development and maintenance (continuous cost to the company)
Localise most things to minimumising cost of servers. Charge for support after 1-2 years. Possibility of hosting cloud on users own server.
3-App/Web services development and maintenance (continuous cost to the company)
charge for upgrade which adds functionality, allow users to pick and choose functions.
4-Hardware Design (one off cost to the company)
There is an on going cost of support and warranty. Possible to charge for hardware support after 5+ years.
5-Integration work (continuous cost to the company)
Possible to charge fee to add integration functions that users may want. Open up the possibility of user help integrating as Smartthings and Habitat does.
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who will pay for the initial investment? Are you suggesting big upfront fee first?
who will pay for the initial investment? Are you suggesting big upfront fee first?
who will pay for the initial investment? Are you suggesting big upfront fee first?
who will pay for the initial investment? Are you suggesting big upfront fee first?
Don’t users want everything integrated natively? So how much would you charge each user for everything they want to integrate something? Is there some integration at the launch? if so who will pay for those costs?
1-4 the company that wishes to do so.
as to fee did i suggest big no, but reasonable yes.
5 I would like what i use integrated, so i was thinking sell a standard local native integration box (z-wave, wifi zigbee), and charge for specific integration(i.e an alarm panel or Tezla etc) As a user if i really wanted a device integrated i would pay a fee.
how much?
How much would you charge?
Also “what is already integrated” cost the company money to develop…how much would you pay for that?
1 what do i get? i can’t answer how much till i know the spec and contract.
5 Say i wanted an alarm panel ÂŁ50 one off charge, off the top of my head. That is if enough people wanted it and the company thought spending time integrating was worth thier investment. Obviously extra (monthly) if i wanted you to monitor etc. Really the price would be dependant on number of possible users interested.
Some standard HA product (that you can control 231 devices for)…So how much would you pay for that?
thats about $70 one off, on top of the above costs.
1 say a veraplus firmware for 7 years, support for 2 years , will run all standard zwave, zigbee and is able to send a receive http request ÂŁ150
5 $70 from 100 users of same panel $7000, would that be enough to build a plugin for the most common alarm panel/s If you update plugin with more functions only give functions with aditional cost.
@sorin can you move my conversation with @melih to a new topic as i don’t want to hijack this one.
£150 is approx $200…
7 year investment
Forgetting all the integration costs etc…
how about a model where you pay
$2 a month ($24 a year)
and every 4 years you receive a new hub as part of this subscription. (of course you can pay all upfront or annual etc)…free hub/hardware every 4 years that simply plug&play.
And as part of this model…the company will do all the integration…no need to worry about paying or finding others.
is this an acceptable model for you?
ÂŁ150 for 2 years support then more for extra support
The firmware you would be updating for new users anyway, or fixing bugs(your issue as you created bugs), Many vera users have been getting firmware for more than 7 years. Extra for certain integration as well.
As to new unit and monthly. Yes and no.
Yes its cheap seems a better deal than the above.
No to new hub, I would like to get used to the old hub and i don’t like the implications on the enviroment.
You seem to be missing my point. users are willing to pay, Just give us the contract and costs and we will make our decision. Vera wasted its place and failed to capitalise on its users. Instead of making the app store work and make money for vera and developers, it allowed it to fall into a place of broken promises.
Tell the user what the service contract length is and cost to renew, don’t be greedy and the users will come in thier droves.
If you build it they will come.
If you maintain it they will stay
If you add functionality they will pay
I am just trying to point out where you can charge to recoup costs, that wont piss users off and what an end user is thinking and willing to pay for.
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One simple question with two possible answers…are we a hardware or software company. Depending on the answer the relevant development strategy can be adopted.
The idea of buying a family saloon and pimping it up to race in the Indy 500 (possible but not very practical) is not too appealing to anyone.
I purchased a Vera Edge as an appliance to do a job and it did reasonably well. Like purchasing a TV, another appliance, it served me well for approximately three years. Once I began to demand more from it, it started to show its limitations. I didn’t expect it to last for seven years so I wasn’t disappointed.
Since the proliferation of home automation through the open source world and the introduction of the single board computer the home automation world has changed dramatically. I feel the integrated device model is the direction Vera/Mios/Ezlo should be going and leave the tinkering option to the open source world. Mixing the two concepts is just inviting trouble.
Never been to a car meet then. My analogy would be - Buy a jag and add the extras.
I never expect any electronics to last beyond 2 year, but if it does i expect firmware support for at least 7 years if there is an inherent fault/bug. Uk law gives warranty for 6+ years for inherent faults on electronic goods.
If Ezlo is going down the spoon feed route, i will pobably not be joining them. I like to control my own enviroment.
you are thinking that new hub means “rip and replace”…not in our architecture…its just plug and play…remember we are decoupling hardware from the software…
I was thinking of the enviroment more, Unless it’s broken i don’t like to throw things away. I miss read your question and thought the hub was replaced every 2 years.
I also prefer the original title of this topic.
edit/
The idea of one time payment cloud service is flawed and not in the end users benefit. As i was trying to point out move to local support and api, try to remove the expense of the cloud and the frustration with outages.
the discussion is “NOT” limited to cloud, but to whole HA ecosystem and how it should be priced…
I wasn’t limiting any of my discussions to cloud.
My topic and the discussion is about the cloud as in my first post. If you wish to expand thats fine but don’t change the title without discussion and agreement.
One off payment for non cloud is not flawed in my opinion.
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I think Vera had a good product - which was running locally.
Leaving aside it’s issues and upgrade failures and missed upgrades, I think the only thing you guys had to do was to put a RTC in the a new hardware and fix issues. Profit.
From my point of view Ezlo missed completely on what was to larn from Vera and the proof is that you’ve released 3 new controllers and none of them has a RTC and you’re focusing on cloud side (agreed some changes have been done lately to move towards local - but I think that was because the forum complained).
Also atom v1 doesn’t seem to run locally - at least from my understanding, that being the reason for the v2.
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