Ezlo like ever company has to make a profit. Beyond z-wave, zigbee, logic engine, scripting and http requests. What integrations would you pay for, and how much, and how long? Or if you feeel it should be free?
e.g.
Voice integration - $1-2 per/year
Alarm panel - $50 till manufacturer changed their api then a fee for update.
Remote cloud - $1-2 per/year.
Great question! Would these services ideally be offered as trialware? (I.E. only pay after the fact if it works for you; otherwise, remains locked)
Or do you envision payment being made in advance, with the expectation that features and upgrades would roll out on a set schedule? (because waiting 5 years for a new integration, for example, is indistinguishable from nothing happening)
From the same supplier?
Voice: No. Itās moving to a core capability. The market is too competative and as weāve already seen home brew solutions can be perfectly acceptable
Alarm panel: Yes as itās an add on product requiring specific development work with a 3rd party.
Remote cloud: I have no idea what this would be?
But you simply donāt need cloud to enable this. Unless you deliberately design your system around cloud or local access only.
So if the question is: Would you pay extra to access your HA system when away from home, I would have to say āAbsolutely not. This is a totally core requirement and Iād be buying a different productā
Agreed. I think the company Twilio has craftily and correctly walked that fine line between ALLOWING local processing and hand coding vs. FORCING customers to use their established API and services.
They left plenty of room for external developers while ensuring their home base was totally solid and always evolving. People will pay to play either way.
Well yes, they might. But given the rest of the technical capability required to make Vera work, it seems less of an issue (NB: I wonder quite how reflective this forum is of the overall user base)
However in terms of limitation, to make a device accessible via some kind of internet (Iāll say it carefully) connection without user interaction is trivial. And cheap. Hell Team viewer (at least) do it free on their non-commercial offering. Pretty sure LogMeIn and a load of others do as well.
So if an NFR of your product is that it should be accessible remotely with zero customer setup then you might have a minimal internet connectivity set up. Really needs to be optional. And thereās a whole can of worms about when there will be a breach that exposes Vera and a load of other HA services to the rest of the dark webā¦
Would I pay extra:
Possible, if I thought the extras were of value. In the same way I might pay for new functionality in a new version of OS X
Would I pay a subscription: Possible if I thought the subscription added value, but less likely.
What amount? It would depend entirely on the extra
Period: See above: Unlikely (or less likely)
āBeyond z-wave, zigbee, logic engine, scripting and http requests. What integrations would you pay for, and how much, and how long? Or if you feeel it should be free?ā
Iāll play! For the following integrations, Iād pay:
($10/yr.) Google Drive ā allow two-way variable store, backup/restore repo, codebase, offloading of video/images, remote FTP access
($10/yr.) Alexa/VOIā¢ ā already high WAF and perhaps the holy grail toward full integration with heterogeneous ecosystems
($5/yr.) Synology/NAS ā like #1, but requires $ hardware and additional setup prowess (e.g. running a VM or updating server app)
($12/yr.) Alarm panel ā basic functionality to interoperate with 5-6 most common home security systems (bonus points for selling me the required hardware/board!) #brainstorm: WiFi keypad unit!!
($5 flat) VeraMobileā¢ app ā I never use it, but others will
($10 flat) Weather stations ā basic UI for HTTP/UDP data streams
($10,000+ per developer) port plug-ins ā ezlo should pay this directly to devs whose proven functionality āmagicallyā appears in upcoming firmware, because the company got this far on their backs
($100 credit per user) forum Leaders ā ditto for community members who bore the brunt of a decadeās chronic FAQ-ing!!
I was predicating most of my response on the unit costing me $30 up front, lol. If you charge me $180, then you better include all the bells and whistles and hope to God that I preach your gospel to other buyers so you recoup your costs with improved sales!!
Iāve no idea what the box cost is likely to be. Not seen it mentioned anywhere?
Itās all a bit moot though, in my case. If I have to start again from scratch, which pretty much looks likely, then there will need to be a compelling reason to move to Ezlo as opposed to $other_system
I think Ezlo will have to offer Alexa and Google native integration out of the box with no extra charge for those services. In order for their hub to compete.
Voice assistants are a gateway drug LOL in to the HA world. Most users start with a voice assistant and then think about a HA hub to integrate everything together in to one GUI etc.
Yes they can use the Alexa and Home apps but still once they get more in to HA I think most people want a decent HA hub and GUI.
Iād pay for the Logitech Harmony plugin on the Ezlo platform. Maybe Ā£5 to Ā£10 per plugin?
It would have to have all the functionality of the current 3rd party Harmony plugin however and perhaps also native support for Logitechās āHome Controlā.