Right?!? I mean… That’s a really pretty case!!
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I agree with you wholeheartedly. I don’t mean to sound like an asshole but this feels more like a way to make money off of other people’s work. Your selling a device with code you didn’t write to people that will need support that doesn’t come from you but from the community members.
So why are you getting a cut of the money at all? For putting an rpi in a box?
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So you’re selling a product to people that lack the intelligence to do the simple setup and then what do they do with the difficult part of setting up home assistant? Now that you’ve done the easy part they can come here for help.
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It’s not so much that they are selling the hardware with HA pre-installed. I’m OK with that.
It’s that they are doing that and then the business model explicitly expects the HA forum volunteers here will then provide free customer support for their products.
And yes, Nabu Casa is profiting off of the website here and the HA software. OK. It’s their website I’m using - for free. And it’s their software I’m using - for free. I’m getting a benefit from all of this. My contributions to this website and software are an acknowledgment of the benefit I get from using this and it’s my way of providing a sort of ‘in kind payment’ for it’s use.
And let’s not forget that the use of the Nabu Casa service is completely voluntary and optional. It’s a value added service and is in no way required to use HA. Even if Nabu Casa started to sell Raspberry Pi’s tomorrow with HA pre-installed and told people to come here for support then I wouldn’t even have much of an issue with that. The owners of Nabu Casa made HA and this website.
As far as us here helping other businesses that were mentioned above, again, that’s true but they aren’t explicitly telling their customers to come here for support. the support we are offering them is only tangential to their business as it’s specifically related to the use of HA. If those companies were telling their customers to come here for support (for non-HA related topics) instead of to them I’m sure the people here would be up in arms then, too. There have been many threads started here that asked for help directly related to a non-HA/generic use and people have said “sorry, this isn’t a support forum for x. Go to their forum for help”. And that’s completely appropriate.
It just seriously rubs me the wrong way that we are expected to provide free customer service while someone else is making the profits. Those profits are in no way helping us except increasing the support load for people who by the very nature of the type of people who would be interested in something like this.
Most people who get into home automation and more specifically HA are at least interested and somewhat willing to get in and dig thru the code. At least they made the effort to research what was necessary and the took the time to buy the equipment and put in the effort to install the software. That weeds out a certain number of people who are the “I just want it to work” types. Could you imagine the number of threads started by those types of people who have no clue how HA is supposed to work, have no real interest in learning how it’s supposed to work and just want to come here for answers because “the company I bought it from told me I could come here for tech support and I want that right now”?
The popularization of hassio has already started to bring in more of that type of person already. Why should we encourage it even more by not pushing back on the expectation of using us for free customer support for another for-profit venture?
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I agree. It should not be part of their business model to say “Hey! Get your free support over here in the forums”.
I understand this feeling. And I agree with it, mostly. It’s just that, with Home Assistant and Home Automation as it is right now in general, lots of people make lots of money for producing products that don’t do what we want out of the box, and then we come here for help to make it work the way we want.
Unfortunately, Home Assistant is there already. As a very active helper in the forums, I see LOTS of people who were able to follow the simple hass.io install instructions, and now, here they are, with questions that don’t make any sense, documentation that hasn’t even been read, and no clue at all. hass.io alone is very very simple to install. And a Raspberry Pi is very easy to setup. So, even without hassbox, people are doing exactly that. Sure, they don’t have ZWave or Zigbee controllers. So, those questions don’t happen as often. But, they are still tons of them.
I’ve been using FOSS for long enough that I’ve seen it happen this way time and time again. When a project is new, only the developers are using it. Then enthusiasts who know what they are doing and know how to read docs. Then the people who really want to learn but just aren’t quite there. And then the absolute newbies who don’t know how to do anything for themselves and expect you to just do the work when you help them.
I agree with that. And, since you are a person who provides free support, you can choose not to support hassbox users. Absolutely. I’ll help them, though. If they are willing to read docs, and try on their own, I’ll offer direction. If not, then I won’t help them either, just as I don’t now. They have to be willing to help themselves before I’m willing to get involved. Otherwise, I’m just doing their work for free.
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I can’t believe you are posting this here without even clearing your business idea with the devs. The people who did all the work. I would be pissed…
You are offering an “easy” way to get started with Home Assistant. But HA isn’t easy and if your costumers are uncomfortable with flashing an sd card just imagine how much help they will need with yaml and MQTT. And what about breaking changes with every update? Are you prepared to help your customers with that? Are you teaching your customers how to create automations and a proper Lovelace or are they just shown the way to this forum?
HA is not a set-and-forget type of system. It requires work and maintenance. The initial setup you offer is the easy part - and your business idea seems a bit easy on your part as well…
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You guys are hilarious. I wonder if Redhat and Ubuntu ask Linus and the developers for permission.
The OP had poorly communicated on the support part but the goal they are trying to do is putting together a ready-to-go kit so to speak and let the users experience. I found the inclusion of cc2530 out of the box is helpful as for sure I’m not going through all the hassle of buying extra hardware and flashing it, etc.
Grab a beer. It’s Friday!
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It seems not. But we are expected to do it for free.
Well, I guess the OP did say that they would “try to answer questions”. At least there’s that. 
Probably not, but I also doubt that Redhat and Ubuntu created their OS’s and then told their customers that if they had any questions to send an email to Linus either.
That is the glaring difference.
Nope. It wasn’t poorly communicated. They told us exactly what they were going to do and what the expectations that they had for us here on the forum.
What was poorly done was the prior thought put into the “support system” in the first place.
Good idea, let me open a business selling someone else product!
(EDIT: This survey is only made to be sure, that most of the community like the idea, else we will stop working on the project)
Hey guys,
Back from 8 hours cooldown 
We are happy to see all your comments, both those who likes our project, but also those who give us critique.
Since we see differing opinions on our project and we don’t want to move on with this, if the majority of the HA community is opposed to the idea, we have decided to make a survey to see if this is something we should keep working on. The answers on the survey is available for all.
Appreciate the help.
I find myself a bit torn with this project. On one hand, I think the idea of packaging everything needed for a user to get started is a great idea as that can be a bit daunting at first. The product looks good and comes with a nice variety of options. Further, it runs the core OS and doesn’t require the end user to have to track a separate upgrade path.
However, the very nature of Home Assistant is geared to the DIY user. Part of using it is learning how it all works. The price point is also kind of high when compared to other similar products. SmartThings, Hubitat, and Wink all offer hardware at a decently lower cost and have their own community of support and development. OpenHab and Home Assistant are far more appealing to the users that want complete control.
While HASS is getting more user friendly, it’s still not quite at the point of being as easy to use as the other paid options.
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I like the idea more than private support tbh… I’ve bought some things and been told ‘we have other customers who have got it working with HA’ but they couldn’t give me more information
If it was all.in an open place, the company could still reply and answer but at the same time more experienced people can provide input. Nobody is forced to use these forums, we do it because we want to help people, I don’t care if someone bought their HA or did it themself, if I know the answer and nobody else does I’ll probably help
It’s a good idea. It remind me of Jeedom which is an open source home automation software like HA. The difference is that the company behind Jeedom does sell an all-in-one box with either Zwave, RFXtrx or enocean. But they let others sell their own Jeedom boxes. But if you want official support (forum are only for community) you need to buy a one-time pack.
I think that everyone should be able to buy an home automation solution with local control that gives you the choice for end devices. HA is a bit difficult at first so if this box can help why not.
Regarding this hassbox, I will wait for an official release of HassOS with USB boot (currently in beta) and ship it with it. It is the official OS for Hass.io with everything bundled. Way more simple and user friendly than hassbian
I am not taking any side and I won’t buy the OP’s product at all.
But, why is this situation different to a PC?
Some people build their own desktop or get a pre-built one from the shop and they all chose to install the free Linux.
Some people go straight to the shop when they have problem and the shop may be able to help or may not. Some go to some linux forum for help instead of the shop since it may be more a software than hardware.
PC == Hassbox or whatever
Linux == Home assistant
As long as the OP is not selling the Home Assistant but only the hardware, I think they will be fine.
No one is selling PCs with home assistant pre-installed.
I think that was just an analogy.
But…
The difference is that if you buy a PC with Windows pre-installed then you are paying for a license and that establishes the customer support relationship to Microsoft.
If you buy a PC and then install Linux on it yourself then it’s the same as buying a RPi and putting HA on it yourself. The seller of the PC or the Pi hasn’t established a customer support relationship for the software because YOU are the one who put the software on the hardware.
If you buy a PC with Linux pre-installed then I think that at that point if you have any customer service needs then the seller needs to also support the software since they sold you the entire product, not just the hardware. I would also have a problem in that case with the seller telling the customer that they need to contact the software maker for support and that they won’t support it themselves.
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Totally agree with you about the Windows. But that’s also why I didn’t mention Windows in my post as HA is not a payware.
So like I said originally…
What if the OP put a disclaimer that the HA image came with the hardware is only for sharing/giveaway. By this way, technically they dont have to provide support service for HA.
Again, I am not rooting for OP but only want to discuss.
I guess, technically, you could then argue that the buyer has acknowledged that they won’t get any support for the software.
But I still say that’s a pretty shady business practice. There is still some level of “implied warranty” that a seller takes on when providing products to people. And intentionally putting that “burden” of support on non-related and unwilling individuals or entities is kind of crappy.
In my opinion, it is bound to be happen that Home Assistant will be shipped on a preconfigured hardware device. On the other hand, as I have read all the discussion, I think that Nabu Casa should have a say in this hassbox first. Further, I don’t think Home Assistant is ready to be shipped as a product yet.
I think it’s a good idea, but it’s not being sold as generic hardware. It’s being sold as an easy way to get home assistant.
The business model depends on the work done by ha devs and support from the community. So, they should make a contribution per unit to the ha devs, which benefits the whole community.
It could be their contribution is how they give back to the community.