[quote=“anthonyris, post:1, topic:191477”]I was a Vera Beta tester way back in 2008. It was more like being a Wright brother trying to get the plane to fly… without wings.
Over the years, I basically stopped trying to improve Vera, install new things or further customize it due to the absolutely ridiculous level of instability and gawd awful interface. I got it to some mostly-working/stable level and left it at that. The weekly Telnet and SSH sessions weren’t my idea of having “fun with Home Automation”.
The work on this UI is the furthest forward leap I have seen to date. Frankly, it is heroic.
The underlying instability and madness still remains, but at least with this UI I am sure that what I am clicking is actually responding. I can troubleshoot network/zwave issues visually, and the checkboxes/buttons/fields are well-explained and do something. OMG, I can view a legible log! Amazing.
Well done, my friend. Donating via PayPal in 3… 2… 1…
The Micasaverde guys should pay you a boatload of money. Seriously, a freaking boatload.
.//A.[/quote]
Anthony
thank you for your kind words, very well appreciated.
in fact I wanted (still want) this to be UI8 and offered in Jan 2015 directly to MCV ( florin & others ). this is still on the table if they want. it would have been a great way for them to leap frog as it was bridging smoothly the old world ( with current plugins compatibility and restricted JSON based user interfaces ) to a completely new API, fully javascript based which offers plugin authors much more freedom. Vosmont Rule Engine with its Blockly interface as an example of that.
not to mention the things UI7 did not and still does not have like icon display support in remote mode, the single view for multiple controller, the blockly editor for watches, the direct support of watches as scene triggers, the data storage provider integration to chart variable history without having to have any database , the fact the same application works equally well on a iPhone4, a tablet, or large screen PC thus not havnig to dedicate development teams to these mobile OS applications one by one which do not support custom plugin well still despite recent improvements etc… Too bad the speech reconition works only on Chrome PC/MAC but it is fun to say "turn of blue lamp’ and see it turning off
Despite the underlying backend weirdness and low cost approach to HW selection , from what I read in french forums it is really the UI that killed the OEM deal they had with Orange. People where just not happy with an early , cripped down version of UI7 ( imagine that ) and no way to install a plugin ( so they could not take ALTUI ). Orange will likely not renew that deal.
overall it would have been a great strategy for MCV developpment to get much more bang for the buck , get lots done on UI with less resource and invest to fix the backend scalability issues. I am still quite estonished by the deafening silence I got back from them after some initial contact we had when they said they would contact me back… seems they did not want to change strategy
Now akbooer with openluup and vosmont with the rule engine are opening a whole new world with a much more power full backend and rule / trigger engine… and altui works with it too transparently with one 2 or several of these things in the back of it.
I just hope the momentum continues, the community grows ( hoping people make noise about it in the other forums/threads ) and more and more developpers take benefit of the user interface framework that ALTUI brings to them.
amg0