I have been monitoring Home Assistant for the last few months, and while this is not my main home automation system at the moment (using OpenHAB), I do like the fast pace of its development.
I’m also the creator of alternative UI for OpenHAB (Project Rotini) which currently in closed beta stage through G+ community. The original plan was for the app to be closed source and paid after the beta stage is over.
It is available for Android mobile only at this moment (native app). Android wear/TV integrations, as well as iOS is planned in the future.
I’m posting here to see if there is an interest from HA users in a similar UI as Project Rotini.
If you are interested, please respond.
Very very nice! Interested and personally I also do not have an issue for paying for an Android app (Still using Imperihome in combination with a Vera hub)
There is currently an open source project for this based on Dashing called HADashboard
forum:
GitHub:
but there is always room for more. I too have no problem with paying a reasonable price for an app and would be interested. The layout and graphics are certainly appealing and I like the camera support.
I’m sure there will always be interest in the option of additional 3rd party interfaces, and I am sure you will get some willing to pay, but I doubt you are going to get a whole lot to actually purchase it. If you were going to make it free, definitely, but it just feels kind of selfish to come into an open source community like Home Assistant, having all of the developers spend all of their time and expertise on this project and not charge for it, and then have someone come along and build a frontend using their API just to try and make money off of what others are doing for free.
Look at HADashboard, a port of dashing for Home Assistant… @aimc works his butt off on these projects, including AppDaemon, which is a huge undertaking, and it is available for free!
Now there is an iOS project being developed as a native app for Home Assistant by @robbiet480, but there is no plan for him to make an Android version, so if you want to make an android app, there is already those asking for it in the iOS thread, so there is already people looking forward to the idea of an Android app. Whether you charge for it or not is up to you, and if @robbiet480 charges for his, I won’t purchase it either, especially since it is being called the “official ios app” for home assistant, but personally, I’ll stick with the default web interface and continue to support the open source nature of Home Assistant.
It is rather ironic to make a paid app for “OpenHAB”… the name itself shouts OPEN SOURCE, yet your project is closed source lol and yes, I know the word OPEN in OpenHab does not mean open source, but it was just kind of funny lol
Your application does look very, very nice though… good work!
I agree partially. The fact that one thing is for free (and people work on it for free) doesn’t mean something else related can’t be sold for money.
Like Kodi is free but for some parts of Yatse you also need to pay.
Now that I think of it, if a basic dashboard is build and available for free, you could ask money for some additions (like more icons/theme’s or something).
I do like the idea of having something simple to setup and good looking, and am willing to pay a small amount for it.
I’m in the same boat. While I support WHOLLY @jbardi’s views and principles, I’ve found that in other open source projects I’ve worked in, third parties writing add ins and extensions and charging for their work hasn’t necessarily impacted projects in a negative way.
Joomla! is a perfect example of this. The core system is and always will be free. We fought for this when we forked the project from Mambo. But there has always been a ecosystem surrounding it of free and paid extensions and plugins. It hasn’t hurt the project and in fact having such a diverse and active development ecosystem has only helped Joomla! grow. Even within a specific category, there are extensions that do the same thing that are free and paid. The end user now has a choice; if they want X feature or Y feature, or if they need support they can get a paid extension. Otherwise, if the feature set isn’t as important there are free options.
Unless the core developers in a project have a policy that no one can use the API to produce a for profit project, I don’t see a problem with someone developing an add on and getting paid for their work. And I haven’t seen any such statement from the HASS CoreDevs. (In fact when I asked if there was a way I could donate to help operations I was told there wasn’t any mechanisms in place and likely not to be in the future.)
That being said, charging for work raises the bar significantly. Support must be in place and available with expected service level agreements. Development and bug fixes must be at a regular pace. There are expectations that have to be met before I will pay for something; the contributing devs here have set the bar high and @jbardi’s observation about @aimc is a perfect example of this.
IMHO, a for profit dev will have to exceed those levels of support in order to be taken seriously. If this project can do that and charge a reasonable price with features that aren’t available elsewhere and/or is easier to implement, then bring it on and let the community decide which path to take.
I consider myself an active user of HASS but due to lack of (coding) skills and time it’s very difficult for me to really contribute to real development of the project. I try to do my best with follow ups on the forum to tell others about my experiences and learnings and if I find a bug, I report it.
As soon as a good project (like HASS) starts getting traction there will be more if my type of users and we will be dependent on others like many of of you that actively contribute to the code.
For me personal, I would be happy to donate money to the project (which I do not ask anything in return, eg I do not suddenly expect active support, I just would donate because I want to reward the time other put in it) or pay for certain components (like an app or anything else usefull). As @rpitera states, in that case I would expect some support and active development.
Anyway, don’t think anyone (at this stage) can really make a living out of building any app for home automation…
I used it with openhab but since moved away from openhab to smartthings/small HASS setup. I would love to see a more universal version of Rotini that uses MQTT then you will only need one version for all platforms.
At this time, I’m just gathering community feedback and waiting for more responses, so no new updates yet.
In general, I’m leaning towards supporting HASS, but nothing has been decided.
it has been articulated very well in an earlier post. Paid for software raises the bar in expected support. I’d expect it to be supported for multiple years and be in sync with HA’'s (somewhat rapid) release cycle. or at the very least managing my expectations around when to update and it being no more than a week behind.
So if I could easily set up dashboards I would pay a few quid. If it’s an android app I’d like a tasker plug in, and would pay an extra quid.
