Sorry to see you go Ap15e; as one of the members mentions, I have also been looking for a good reason to leave MCV behind and move to a more stable product. Hopefully we hear from you and your findings; I will definitively consider a new head end if it brings stability to my Zwave network.
Actions and comments like this are scary for all of us who have invested in MCV. Scary for us and, I’m afraid, for MCV’s future.
There’s a of lot competition coming. And the competition’s stuff seems to work right out of the box.
This is like a death IN the community. I hope that MCV takes note … I would hate for this to be the beginning of the death of THE community.
Thanks AP15e for all of your help!
We’re sad to see Ap15e go. I’m sending him a private email too.
One of the items he mentioned is the inaccuracies in our documentation, primarily the wiki. He’s right. The decision made back in 2008 to do the docs a wiki turned into a real mess. The docs started out okay, with screen shots from our first user interface (UI1). Then as we released UI2, 3 and 4 it became a hodge-podge of stuff, half of it didn’t apply to any given UI, and as users added more and more content, it became a mess. We did fix the architectural issue for UI5 by having a new docs system that is UI-specific, and we hired a professional doc-writer to do the docs. So hopefully that issue is behind us.
The issue of forum support and support for plugins is trickier to address. The forums are really a community place for users to collaborate, as opposed to a formal place to get tech support from the company. We now have 6 full-time tech support staff, and the volume of support requests is too much to effectively manage through a community forum. A forum has no structured controls to know what threads actually require tech support, something call center staff can’t even tell so easily. We can’t track what issues are open vs. closed, measure the volume of support, etc. Late last year we unexpectedly lost a few support staff and got overwhelmed with tickets sometimes taking several days to get a response. Frustrated users turned to the forums for tech support and it wasn’t good. But when you hire new support staff, it takes months for them to get knowledgeable enough to be effective at resolving issues, so it was difficult to correct this problem so quickly. Right now all tickets are answered within 1 business day, so hopefully that issue is addressed. As far as supporting plugins and plugin development, though, I’m not sure we’ll be able to address Ap15e’s concerns. Normally, when a product has an app store for the public to publish apps and plugins, the original manufacturer doesn’t provide support for them because they come from users and our staff doesn’t know much about them. For example, if you buy an Apple iPhone, Apple doesn’t provide tech support on all the apps in the App Store because they come from 3rd parties. And Apple won’t help developers write iOS code, which is similar to the request that we help developers write Lua code. Ditto with Android apps. I appreciate the frustration that user had trying to create advanced lua scripts, and extend some plugins by writing Lua code. I’m just not sure that a tech support call center will ever be able to handle those types of requests, so I’m not sure we’ll be able to provide a better solution than the community-based forum. Florin is a Lua coder, and we’ve given him the job of monitoring the forums and helping out where he thinks he can, but supporting coders who want to write apps is tricky.
RE: the bug Ap15e refers to about a space being added when adding a UPnP device to control a 3rd party media device. It’s true Ap15e told me about it years ago. It wasn’t intentional that it never got fixed. It’s just that I totally forgot about it. Every week our sales guys tell us what new features are needed for our dealers, and our tech support guys list open trouble tickets they can’t close. And those requests get prioritized and put onto a project plan. Nobody ever opened a trouble ticket about UPNP device control, and the sales guys never got a request. So it was simply my mistake that the issue never assigned a priority and put into the development queue.
I’ll find out what Ap15e is referring to when he says we asked the beta testers to buy something. I’m not sure what that’s about.
I’ll reach out to Ap15e to see if there’s something we can do to make it right for him because we hate to lose such a power user.
I’m happy to see MCV respond. As a former tech support person for many small and large software and hardware companies (I’m old) I do understand the pressures involved, from all angles - internal, end users, resellers, etc.
I do want to comment on a few things you brought up…
Supporting the user forums:
This is critical for success. An easy case study is Homeseer. During the version 1 days they gave a ton of help to the development community and it paid massive dividends in a short few years. They are now a power house in the DIY HA community. Their success is only half due to their own coding (it is not that great IMO) but mainly because Homeseer employees were always monitoring/helping on the user forums - not always the one giving the answers but if no one stepped in, or the user help was not ‘helping’ they did a great job at stepping up. They are still doing this even after they achieved several years of maturity and success.
Supporting the development community:
Again this is where Homeseer made very smart moves… they helped the developers in the user community a TON - at no cost. This provided them a low-cost way of extending their product without requiring them to directly support the end-user on those plugins. They were basically allowing the user community to build Homeseer’s features for them. This is the smarted business move… ever. Just like Apple did - btw, comparing MVC to Apple, I’m not. MCV cannot just blow off developers and think they can succeed like Apple does. They are not Apple.
I highly suggest MCV try to assist user/coders that are developing code/plugins that help the masses… yes, this will be case-by-case decisions but some thing like Altsteon and dataMine are huge benefit to both MCV and their user base… this should be a NO BRAINER.
I could as a lot more but I think you get the thought process here.
I’ve been very happy with MCV when my Vera2 had a problem… it was resolved professionally and I appreciate it. If MCV wants to take their product to the next level… just do what I outlined above. I’ve been a consultant for many small/mid sized businesses building and selling hardware/software based products… the above a recipe for success… at no charge ;D
Micasaverde,
He was referring to the Fortrezz MIMO device.
- Garrett
Bummer.
One less reason to keep my hopes up about the Vera. I noticed that AP15E was one of the only users here that was vocal about the problems with UPnP (both controlling UPnP devices as well as the Vera’s inability to properly broadcast its devices and scenes as UPnP devices). He seemed to have a general understanding of where the problem lay and now that he is cutting his losses and moving on, it looks like this knowledge will lie dormant forever… like a lost, archaic magical art or something. 
I’m glad I didn’t invest as heavily in this as I had with Insteon before I ditched that, too. I’ve been trying to stay optimistic and patiently telling myself that time will tell what holds for the future of the Vera, but if this is another omen, I guess time has told me one more hint.
If losing a power-user like AP15E is what it takes to get MCV’s attention/action, then chances are a few more major bugs will be fixed before this ship finally sinks. Meanwhile MCV will be busy scrubbing the deck while the giant holes in the hull take on water.
And to set the record straight on Apple Developer Efforts… They’ve provided volumes of documentation hundreds of source code examples … And not just pseudo code but fully working example apps as well as ‘developer to apple’ assistance not to mention a week long developers conference where we get to interact face to face with their actual engineers and programmers. People will always complain that apple could do more to support their developers and they’d be right … However for someone to say apple doesn’t help their developers is flat out wrong. Oh and yes apple will help developers write code, quite a few developers have written about them going to the apple campus and working with developer support teams who helped them write code they were having trouble with.
You also have to understand that Apple also has much more resources than MCV.
- Garrett
There’s no argument from me … However even in the times when apple was on the brink of bankruptcy ( right before Steve was brought back into the fold ) they still did as much as possible to support the developers and thru it all still held their developers conference… They knew if they lost their faithful devs they loose everything… and they were right…
“You also have to understand that Apple also has much more resources than MCV.”
All the more reason to actively encourage and reward those people who are/were clearly going above and beyond without being on the payroll. It’s funny how truly dedicated people work… They do what they do out of the enjoyment of being part of something and all it usually takes to keep those people happy is letting them know they are a truly valuable member of the team.
I just recently started trying to write some Luup code myself, and the major problem was where to find documentation on it. The link in UI5 to documentation just goes to a page that says “Coming soon”, so I had to resort to searching Google for any documentation. The pages you do find are not even linked together, so it seems very scattered. Better and easy to find documentation would mean fewer questions or reports of coding problems in the forums. The documentation needs to exist where the UI link points to and needs all be linked together more like a book by providing a linked table of contents and a References or See Also section on each page to link similar topics.
Aaron is right. The more you help the coding community, then less development you have to do to add new features to your product. The first step is by providing quality documentation with small, working examples for developers to test with. The documentation needs to start with very basic “Luup for Beginners” and work into more advanced topics and have all Luup functionality documented and kept up-to-date as time goes on.
As I agree with most of the statements provided by DaveGee and OtisPreslsy, there are still many things we do not have control of as a whole for the developer community. What I mean is that many features, bug fixes, etc need to be done at the level of MCV as they have the source code of the Vera software. The community can only do some much to make the product better.
Lua is just a programming language that Vera uses. There is a lot of information on the internet on how to code in lua. It is the api’s that are Vera specific that are scattered all over the place. Hopefully MCV can get the documentation together in the near future.
- Garrett
There is a lot of information on the internet on how to code in lua. It is the api's that are Vera specific that are scattered all over the place.
The goal was to put all Vera’s Lua extensions on this one page: http://wiki.micasaverde.com/index.php/Luup_Lua_extensions
What’s missing from there that you’d like to see?
[quote=“micasaverde, post:33, topic:171421”]
There is a lot of information on the internet on how to code in lua. It is the api’s that are Vera specific that are scattered all over the place.
The goal was to put all Vera’s Lua extensions on this one page: http://wiki.micasaverde.com/index.php/Luup_Lua_extensions
What’s missing from there that you’d like to see?[/quote]
Here are pages that I am aware of and could find on Google that should be linked together into a table of contents and ordered in a logical flow. The table of contents should be accessible from any of the pages, kind of like an online book. The main page for this content should be linked under Apps>>Develop Apps>>Vera Developers instead of the “Coming soon” page it is currently linked to. A page should also be added there about how to publish your apps on the market and what information is needed and what the process is.
[ul][li]Luup Intro[/li]
[li]Luup Scenes Events[/li]
[li]Luup Lua extensions[/li]
[li]Luup Plugins[/li]
[li]Luup plugins and Luup code[/li]
[li]Luup Debugging[/li]
[li]Luup Variables[/li]
[li]Luup Requests[/li]
[li]Luup Plugins ByHand[/li]
[li]Scripts for scenes[/li][/ul]
I agree that the info on LUUP development needs to be better organized in the wiki.
I usually use this page for all development references: http://wiki.micasaverde.com/index.php/Category:Development
What's missing from there that you'd like to see?So many things...
[ul][li]A cohesive set of examples for each call.
[/li][li]Centralization of the scatter, or formalized cross linking between the pages.
[/li][li]Examples tailored to the different sub-communities (Plugin authors vs Scene scripting)
[/li][li]Libraries and/convenience methods that simplify the stuff for Scene scriptors (time ranges, calling scenes from scenes, deviceId lookup by name)
[/li][li]Obsolescence of all the pages covering seriously historical releases, overlapping/conflicting descriptions, etc
[/li][li]Revised step-by-step instructions for new Plugin authors, explaining/linking the concepts to learn (perhaps multiple relevant examples)
[/li][li]Descriptions of the actions/parameters (etc) for every S_*.xml shipped
[/li][/ul]
I think that you can work on documentation until the cows come home, but if the device/OS itself is still faulty, it’s pointless. Let’s not get too far away from AP15E’s post:
[quote=“Ap15e, post:1, topic:171421”]…
There is no offical documentation for developers, and when MCV does document items, there is no guarantee that MiOS works as documented (e.g., [tt]http://forum.micasaverde.com/index.php/topic,4991.msg70866.html#msg70866[/tt] vs. [tt]http://wiki.micasaverde.com/index.php/UI4_UI5_Migration#New_control_tags[/tt] - yes, the bug was fixed after several months).
…
Installing UI5 on my Vera V2 left the device in a totally unusable state: severe slowdowns, several lockups per week requiring a hard reboot, several soft reboots per day.
…[/quote]
I must agree with the venerable Quixote. I am personally not a plugin developer and most likely never will be. What I am is a user who is highly invested and the bugs, in particular UI 5 which broke so much that it’s unusable for me and brings nothing to the table, are making my experience less than entirely pleasurable. I personally think UI5 is unattractive and its use is convoluted. This is, of course, my personal opinion. Yet I can’t help but wonder why so much effort was spent on the development of a new UI, no matter how functional or pretty it is, when there is a lot lacking from the existing one. Get the bugs worked out and add some more REAL features before anything else. Can I get an “If” or and “And”? If the energy spent on the new UI was instead concentrated on conditional logic would we have it now? How about the ability to make Vera speak? These seem like pretty rudimentary things for a home automation system. Anything can control lights and thermostats. For the effort I’ve put into this I could have instead just gotten up to turn the lights off and on.
Exactly! Just as Apple doesn’t teach their developers objective c nor should MCV teach or be expected to teach a well documented programming language. Unless I’m mistaken blizzard’s WoW plugin framework is also lua based… I’m sure other companies utilize it when they require a plugin extendable system and I’m all but positive blizzard doesn’t have any ‘learn lua’ courses.
However the API that is a unique to WOW and an invention of blizzards is very precisely documented and so should the API that’s unique to MCV. The fummy thing about APIs are that they are easy to create however elegant and well disciplined APIs … not so much. It’s just too easy to glob some routine into an API cause people want it however it might not be the best thing in the long run.
Microsoft was famous for adding really bad code into the window API all because some high profile entity screamed for it to the right (wrong) ears in Redmond. As a result windows really suffered for it and still is.
Hey this stuff is not easy… Not by a long shot and the work MCV has done to date was clearly good stuff… Unfortunately I get the feeling they are trying to pivot way too quickly and perhaps the latest code is showing just that. Now the question is this, do they mush forward anyway since a certain user base is forever wanting NEW CODE … OR, do they sit back and really examine the state of their project to see if it’s really going in a good direction.
Thank you so much for all of your contributions not only in plug-ins, but also in support for the forums. You will be missed. Please be sure to check back occasionally and give us an update if you continue to work with HA.
You make some very good points (as usual).