A donation system should be cool to encourage and thanks the developers.
The customers can buy “donation credits” at MCV.
To encourage them, MCV could offer them for example additional space for image/video archiving or something else/better.
Then the user can freely distribute his credits to the plugin developers.
Young developers can receive 40% back and the more they contribute the more percentage they get.
The registered developers could also get a premium support channel to help them.
This is triple win solution as developpers are finally paid for their efforts, MCV increase their income and mostly plugin creation should be stimulated.
This is just a suggestion, I have no interest anywhere except that I really want a Google Latitude plugin and can’t code it myself.
Personally I’d find such a system a disincentive. The moment money is involved it complicates things. Users will inevitably equate money paid to entitlement to a quality of service (cough Kickstarter cough). This changes the relationship between developers and users in a way that I don’t want to see.
I already contribute the time that I can to developing plugins. Extra money won’t change that. (Put it this way: I’m well-off enough to be able to afford Z-Wave equipment, at Australian prices.) And if my day-job found out that I was taking money on the side, they would want a piece of the IP pie. Yes, there are employment contracts like that.
Now, a bounty system, that might get you your Google Latitude plugin, if enough people chip in. There must already be some web site that manages these kinds of contract. You could even set it up independently of MCV and just post a link to it here.
Google lattitude has raised it head before, see http://forum.micasaverde.com/index.php/topic,9141.0.html.
I used to use it with Homeseer plugin call Snevl Latitude and you can read about it in this here Snevl Latitude discussion thread - HomeSeer Message Board
I stopped due to reliability issues reporting GPS locations and there are other plugins in Homeseer to accommodate Geo Fencing.
Apple also released their competing product but this also been criticised for inaccurate reporting.
Maybe there are other options to achieve what you are after?
@futzle : I undestand your point of view about the money. It was one of the reason I opened this topic.
In the “InstallApp” tab of the Vera I recently saw a new “test plugin” from MCV with a “buy” icon instead of the “install” one.
I also prefere to keep the system free but I will be more than happy to make donations to the makers of some plugins I use.
The reason I suggest to “centralize” the donation on the MCV “store” was to make the system more simple for the donators (and allow MCV to take a percentage).
But maybe priced pluggin is even more simple and efficient way.
Can’t finish without thanks all the people who make pluggin and provide support on the forum.
@Brientim : Yes, I’m following this topic with attention. But as far as I understand there is nothing near publication for the Vera.
I was not aware of reliability issue of the HomeSeer solution. thanks for the info.
Sorry if I mislead you, it wasn’t reliability of the Homeseer solution but rather the actual GPS locations being reported via latitude. It would or could be out considerable or bounce from one location to another which could result in reporting you in an incorrect location. The work done by the developer was very good and stable.
Other issues is polling needs to be reasonable frequent. Depending on how much you travel and the nature of your road network, you can travel a long way very quickly. I used to travel different places for work which was great capture this but when I changed job and only travel short distances, it did not fit the bill to provide any great level of accurate data to use as triggered by location. Other issues where running on the iPhone drained the battery rather significantly but there was another app which assisted to reduce the impact of this.
For those reasons, that is why I stopped using it not the app itself. And, I suppose the novelty affect of the geo fencing aspect run out. I hope this clarifies things. Have a good day.
GPS signal is pretty dodgy when it comes to being inside a building, etc. There are a few android apps that use the cell network to limit the battery drain issue and the signal issues that you would experience with GPS. The drawback is that you do not get a fine grain location of where you are.
Thanks for the clarification.
Personally, I was impressed by the very good accuracy of Latitude with GPS turned off. In urban zone precision is arround 100m. Here (inside), two mobile side by side are tagged 18meter distance.
When moving on the highway with GPS turned off, move on the map was smooth and still accurate. The accuracy is probably related to the mobile network coverage/density.
But I agree that if (for example) you want to use it to open the garage door when arriving, you need high precision and reliability.
I admit that I don’t yet take the time to think of wich real life scenario I could use this pluggin but this open a new way of intercation with our HA system.
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