Eternal problems of the Vera app

Apps & Remote Access VeraMobile
#61

This is part of the problem. The bandwidth of that channel is very limited, and with several plugin developers in there at once, you have several people trying to get the attention of basically two very busy people on your end. There is no organized process for reporting bugs and tracking them that is exposed to developers, so we have to track our own issues, and on your end, problems have routinely hit the floor. It seems each person we talk to maintains their own priority list of things they will work on. Fixes and adds routinely have taken not just weeks, but months. What you are currently doing will not scale, and you know it.

What you are doing today is no different from what Vera has done before. You may not be the same company, but you’re making the same errors.

1 Like
#62

Thanks Patrick.
You stopped communicating with me in May, I was available to you, developers were available to you, it was your choice to stop communicating. If you wanted a one on one channel with the developers all you had to do is ask! Instead you just left.
I appreciate your feedback (although I disagree with majority of it).

#63

Yes, I was asking whether an official free, downloadable SDK would be made available so hobbyists could experiment with building apps for the ezlo platform, the way we can with Android, etc.

That would be much simpler than the months of exploring GitHub, Google, etc. to find the slapdash programming environments made available (by other enthusiasts, never by MCV) for the old Vera platforms over the years.

#64

Our plan was to create a group with existing plugin developers (which we did in skype group), interact and learn and build together a good architecture for a plugin framework so that any plugin developer could benefit from it. We created that group and some plugin developers have been very helpful in helping us and some stopped communicating with us.
But with all the good work those plugin developers have been doing with our developers will result in an easy to use plugin framework that you can easily develop a plugin for.

#65

@LibraSun,
Here is the step by step guide about how to create your own plugins with Ezlo API.
Together with sources for the examples.
my_first_plugin.zip (4.2 KB) HowToCreateAPlugin.pdf (92.6 KB)

#66

Hi @melih,
I must agree with Patrick, Skype is not a tool for communicating issues. Even with the few people on there too many conversations mix and I loose track of things. Mostly you team answers, sometimes not and I cannot blame them in between doing their jobs.

And one thing that I do not see improved, is QA. Too many issues make it to the published code just as we know all too well from the Vera updates. I reported plenty, but I am not keeping track if they get resolved.

Cheers Rene

3 Likes
#67

This doesn’t exist today, it has yet to exist, and this is the problem. A framework results from planning and forethought. None of that applies here. You are fire-fighting, playing whack-a-mole, putting in things as they come up to fill a hole, with the hope that that someday becomes a cohesive “framework” (but, a bunch of functions is not necessarily an API, and an API is not a framework).

It’s not a plugin framework. It’s an accidental collection of functions that you’ve by chance been told are needed that may someday be complete enough but will still take much time to fully discover and implement. Good luck to you.

2 Likes
#68

@reneboer

You recently reported an issue / request to the Ezlo development team with the LUA API in regard to the armed / disarmed status of security sensors.

Did you receive a ticket number?

How will you know if that issue has been logged at their end and not missed by them?

How will you know when the issue or request has been completed by them?

1 Like
#69

I’ve been recommending a public-facing bug-tracking system since April (Ideas about how to Migrate Vera FW to Ezlo FW) but nothing has materialized.

Thus I must return to retest each and every previously reported issue to see if it got resolved with newer firmware/revisions, and then move on. Certainly makes the iterative process much, much slower than it would normally be.

A true bug tracker would allow users to be notified at each stage of acknowledgement, acceptance, deprecation, resolution, work-around, merger, rejection, etc. as well as provide direct feedback in situ for edge cases and troubleshooting purposes.

The best example of this setup in my experience was done by Yahoo! when they enlisted a bunch of us to help develop 2.0 of their Pipes product (now defunct). New features and known glitches were typically ironed out in hours or days, not weeks and months because of the powerful feedback loop afforded by their in-house bug tracker.

2 Likes
#70

hi Rene,
you have been great in helping us Rene, much appreciate it. Great feedback.
Reality is no single tool is great for everything.
We need to do
1-Brainstorming
2-Tracking
3-Add hoc communication
and so on

the initial skype group was setup for “Brainstorming” with a hope those discussions would then lead to further methods of communication. Bugtracking is a good idea for example.
So we need to setup all these different communication methods for their intended purposes.
So far I see:
-Skype for brainstorming/adhoc communication
-bug tracking system (public)
what other ideas please?

#71

@melih

We’ve said it all before.

A public facing or login required bug tracking and feature requests system.

If we had this 6 months ago we would all be alot further forward by now.

I have reported more bugs than I can remember or likely can even find some of them again in the forum threads somewhere? and I’ve suggested many feature requests.

I have no idea if any of them are being tracked or resolved or if my feature requests have been taken in to consideration and moved on to the next stage of implementation?

1 Like
#72

Everything coming in, bug or feature request gets recorded in our internal systems. We have been working on how to expose that. Gabriel is leading that initiative and he can chime in.

#73

I don’t know how many bugs I have personally reported in the forums? At least 50 or probably more at a guess.

Who knows? I’ve forgotten and they have been buried in the forum threads.

Will it be read only? or will we be able to directly submit bugs into the system and provide additional feedback?

I would have to re-read all my posts in the forum, which there are many and try to find and list all the bugs I reported, probably a week to do that :thinking:and then compare my list to your list in the system.

Are forum users usernames noted in the bugs on your internal system? So you know who reported the bug?

1 Like
#74

We are working on a public bug tracking solution and are aiming to provide an update next week, on what solution we will install.

2 Likes
#75

Gabi OK this is good news and a step in the right direction, but it should of been done months ago.

Perhaps a bug tracking system such as this will help to retain some of the 3rd party Devs that have expressed their concerns and for those forum users who are beta testing and their enthusiasm may have waned due to lack of knowing if their feedback was really picked up or not?

1 Like
#76

Six months ago? I brought up the non-existence of bug tracking 2 years ago in melih’s first days on the forums.

Which is sad because vera had a public bug tracker back in ui5

https://web.archive.org/web/20160909105514/http://bugs.micasaverde.com:80/my_view_page.php

1 Like
#77

6 months or 2 years what’s the difference.

It’s done now or wasn’t done as is the case.

#78

what else do we need apart from bug tracking?
we have skype groups for plugin developers for brain storming sessions
we are putting bug tracking

what else do we need?

1 Like
#79

Public feature request system?

Dedicated developer relations?

Public plugin architecture road map?

“Public” could be for registered developers but needs to be low bar to access.

2 Likes
#80

Development roadmap would be great; what can we expect?

An app store for publishing and installing plugins.

Cheers Rene

1 Like

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