What Integration Would You Pay For?

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. Itā€™s moving to a core capability. The market is too competative and as weā€™ve already seen home brew solutions can be perfectly acceptable
Alarm panel: Yes as itā€™s an add on product requiring specific development work with a 3rd party.
Remote cloud: I have no idea what this would be?

C

I was thinking like an app store. That is well maintained. LOL
Open to developers to.

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Romote cloud would be non local access.

If you could code you would do it yourself and no need for cloud.

Ahh, well yes. That would be paying to a different developer. Totally happy with that!

C

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But you simply donā€™t 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 ā€˜Absolutely not. This is a totally core requirement and Iā€™d be buying a different productā€™

C

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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.

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Some people are not as capable, They might require cloud assistance.

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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 (Iā€™ll 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 thereā€™s 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€¦

C

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Forget Vera. Think in term a a solid local box that does from OP. This fictional box works locally very well.

So my original question, would you pay for extras, and if so what, the amount and the period of contract.

I donā€™t think that was your original question :slight_smile:

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)

C

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I think it kinda was

ā€œBeyond 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€

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Iā€™ll play! For the following integrations, Iā€™d pay:

  1. ($10/yr.) Google Drive ā€“ allow two-way variable store, backup/restore repo, codebase, offloading of video/images, remote FTP access
  2. ($10/yr.) Alexa/VOIā„¢ ā€“ already high WAF and perhaps the holy grail toward full integration with heterogeneous ecosystems
  3. ($5/yr.) Synology/NAS ā€“ like #1, but requires $ hardware and additional setup prowess (e.g. running a VM or updating server app)
  4. ($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. ($5 flat) VeraMobileā„¢ app ā€“ I never use it, but others will
  6. ($10 flat) Weather stations ā€“ basic UI for HTTP/UDP data streams
  7. ($10,000+ per developer) port plug-ins ā€“ ezlo should pay this directly to devs whose proven functionality ā€œmagicallyā€ appears in upcoming firmware, because the company got this far on their backs
  8. ($100 credit per user) forum Leaders ā€“ ditto for community members who bore the brunt of a decadeā€™s chronic FAQ-ing!! :slight_smile:
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Iā€™m actually struggling to disassociate myself from my view of Vera but there is no way Iā€™d pay any of that on a box that cost me Ā£150 already.

C

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Great response cheers

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!!

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The idea of the question was to give Ezlo some idea where users stand.
If the box cost more i would think/hope the charge for extras would be lower.

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Iā€™ve no idea what the box cost is likely to be. Not seen it mentioned anywhere?

Itā€™s 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

C

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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.

Iā€™d 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 Logitechā€™s ā€œHome Controlā€.

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