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Priority in zipato development plan ?

xmeslin shared this question 10 years ago
Answered

Hi guys,


Don't make me wrong : I like nice icons and nice colors (even if I'm not sure to understand the last color char with blue etc etc) but could you explain us how you define priority in dev because we are a lot waiting for show stopper bug fixing and we see you playing with color so help us to understand ?

I guess there are different teams for web UI and firmware but even the web UI is a bit buggy and is waiting for real feature (hysteresis, variable in http request, etc etc)


Tks,

Replies (23)

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Certainly, there are different teams working on different issues, but we are working on the bugs constantly. This is an issue number one but we need to distinguish the basic functionality from the advanced one. "Real feature" which you are mentioning are not the basic features and will be published in premium version. The features which are available now, plus some improvements on which we are working now will be part of the basic functionality and will be completely cleaned within a next couple of weeks.


As mentioned features are already developed, as well as some other features, we will publish them as soon as we are finished with the cleaning of the basic functionality. We spent a lots of time with the previous upgrade as we upgraded the Kernel and lots of other things, but we will be faster now.


Premium feature package will be available soon for testing by our most active power users...

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hum ... Are you saying that currently free-of-charge fonctionnalities (HTTP requests for exemple) will soon require payment of a monthly premium ???

Please Zipato, clarify this statement as I (and maybe I am not the only one) choose this box because I didn't want to pay monthly for additional services ...

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ardillon wrote:

hum ... Are you saying that currently free-of-charge fonctionnalities (HTTP requests for exemple) will soon require payment of a monthly premium ???

Please Zipato, clarify this statement as I (and maybe I am not the only one) choose this box because I didn't want to pay monthly for additional services ...

"...The features which are available now, plus some improvements on which we are working now will be part of the basic functionality and will be completely cleaned within a next couple of weeks..."

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Sebastian,


Tks for answer. Please note I'm fully ready to actively help to clean the thermostat code since there are still lot of issue. It seems my setup is somehow different of what you have but I think I'm representative of a normal use and each time I change something, something stop working correctly. I'm still wondering how all can be fixed since you do not seem the investigate actively my issue. I hope you are working on similar with other customer.

Please let me know when everything should be working. In the mean, I'll stay calm


Rgds,


Xavier

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Sebastian,


Can you explain the difference between the Basic functionality and the Premium version? Why 2 versions?

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Sebastian:

Previously I have gotten the impression that some additional services would cost extra. An example of such: check/alarm that zipabox works, alarms for security companies, repairers.

I have had the perception that the zipabox and its functionality would be to remain part of the price we bought it for. Given that zipabox not a fully developed product when we bought it, I then assume that over time it will get the full "normal" functionality of the type one would expect.

Even though you are aware that some extras services may cost if you use them.


But now you are saying is reached quite different.

I can not interpret it any other way than that the plan now is to start charging extra for the functionality of zipabox ... functionality that I clearly anticipated that I bought and paid for. Even though I bought a product that was not fully developed.


If that which I fear will prove that certain features in zipabox will be in the premium and the existing today will be in a basic so I regret to say that I feel visions literally cheated!


Believe that many of us will be very annoyed and feel cheated if they are not going to get it that can be "expected" to be included in terms of functionality for a product that zipabox.

We bought and paid for a pre 1.0 product and expect clear that this will be developed further without having to pay extra!


Services is one thing, functionality is another!

If Zipato will require payment for me to be able to write rules to control my modules, so I will be very angry!

This was NOT what I payed for...


Okey charging for extra services like text messaging, monitoring, calls to security companies, etc. ... but functionality ZipaBox! NO!!!


I hope not that the reason that we don't see fixes/updates for some bugs/and lost functionality in ZipaBox is that what Zipato is doing is working on the Premium version... and will release that as a paid version later! :-(

and the Basic version will be... more or less as it is...

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@HB : I got the exact same impression from Sebastian's answer... and I fully agree with you.

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Fully agree. We all have bunch of issues with the pre 1.0 release and I feel a bit strange/inappropriate to already position premium at the current stage while we are strungling with basic stuff.

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apart from that... We have bougth the Zipabox, software is buggy and the users are used for the feedback and improvements and then they splitup the software making us pay for the "working" version?


Please clarify Sebastian, this type of response really causes rumors...

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We will not charge for the current services. They are available for free.


Also we are still working on some improvements of the current services, and we will continue working on them even after the version 1.0. You don't have to be worried, as we won't start charging for what you already payed for.


As this is the cloud service, we will also maintain the servers, in order to provide 24/7 monitoring of each Zipabox. This will be free of charge, as well.


As for the messaging, customers will be able to use email, push, http, sms and voice messages. Some of them will be free, some of them will be almost for free, and some will be charged under very competitive conditions. With the version 1.0, we will publish the price list of the messages, but there won't be surprises, neither disappointments, as the prices will be comparable to other cloud messaging services.


However, in the future, we would like to continue developing new tools and services, as we have lots of ideas, but those will be used for more advanced automation tasks, which will certainly require more expensive support from our side. Usage of those tools and services will be charged, so that we can finance higher level of support necessary. Those tools and services are still not even developed so we can't charge them or publish them yet.

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Oke, Sebastian that's a clear answer. Thank u.

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  1. so that we can finance higher level of support necessary.

Sorry for being sarcastic but I'm usually a pretty good customer to buy add-on but you first need to demonstrate you hability to correctly support us today for what we paid for.

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And thats why they havent released this i guess.

When you start with paid things, it should be working at least 99%... or you loose customers.

Us early adopters cope with not 100% working software as long as we know it will get better. having the ability to give imput is a great bonus as well.

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ouahhh ! fantastic discussion! i will be happy to test these "premium" function and write some article on it. Thanks for this clarification and these informations all the "Zipa-Community " waited for that informations !!

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So, variable in http request it's a premium feature ? I understand better now why you decide to remove this feature from the web interface ? http://community.zipato.com/responses/no-attributes-or-variables-in-http-requests-after-update


Because this feature are in the lastest Firmware : http://community.zipato.com/responses/zipabox-firmware-upgrade-0997-will-be-available-tomorrow


HB wrote:

I hope not that the reason that we don't see fixes/updates for some bugs/and lost functionality in ZipaBox is that what Zipato is doing is working on the Premium version... and will release that as a paid version later! :-(

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This is an interesting posting.


As a commercially aware IT solutions Director I am well aware of the pressures to introduce new functionality to an early, and potentially unstable, code base especially if new functionality leads to a revenue stream. But a balance always needs to be struck where by critical and key functionality is stable and working first or run the risk of building on sand. That said, every business needs revenue to survive and charging for some services is likely as there is little scope here of income from advertising or click-through leads which is common place to fund free Internet services. Even free services have a cost to provide. Personally I would be prepared to pay a small subscription for certain services, including enhanced availability of cloud services.


I will now take my commercial hat off;


I believe that Zipato have potentially an excellent product with aspirations to improve functions and features over time.The architectual approach is sound so long as the home device can truely operate without an internet connection once configured. Recent outages of the Zipato server has demonstraited that some improvement is still needed here. Even if Zipato servers were 100% available, the Internet connection between customer and server is not gaurenteed and hence in this situation the home device must continue to operate.


Whilst Zipato has a great product, there is competition from the open source community and others. The Raspberry Pi is less than 25 quid, a z-wave usb dongle is about 50 quid and software such as DomotiGa is relatively mature with extensive integration options but where Zipato currently wins is relative ease of setup and use.


What would be useful is very clear visibility of known problems, which problems are fixed by each software release and a published advanced schedule of planned software releases including which problems are expected to be fixed by each release. This visibility would set expectations, demonstrate progress and assist (Zipato) in prioritising resources. Problems could be rated as critical, high, medium, low priority or "nice to have" and target fix times published. This might be too much of an ask but the basic information to create and maintain such visibility on problems is likely to already exist. Basic promised functionality must work for the device/service to be "fit for purpose" and this must be a priority. Free or not, if the overall application is unacceptable to many, then a migration to the next equivalent will natrually happen over time. I moved from Vera Lite to Zipato as the Vera documention was lacking, software full of bugs, bugs took too long to get fixed and you needed to write code to do anything apart from simple device control. I have great hopes for Zipato.

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So, variable in http request it's a premium feature ? I understand better now why you decide to remove this feature from the web interface ?

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I hope not because when I bought the box it was because zipato said it will come and I thought it was part of the price since they never mention premium package so far

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@colin hooker Thank you for nice elaboration. Your suggestions seems very reasonable and we are already discussing them. During the last period we were dealing with many architectural issues and we didn't consider as important to keep track of them publicly as it will be in the future. After the v1.0, we will certainly keep an open bug tracking record, so it will be easier to follow up.

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Please Zipato, clarify as precisely as possible which functionnalities will be considered as premium and will need a fee.

Your statement : "Some of them will be free, some of them will be almost for free, and some will be charged " is really confusing and causes a lot of questions as you can see the reactions in this thread.

I also bought the zipabox last week, thinking I will get the variables in HTTP request as a basic functionnality. May I have to reconsider my choice ?

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@ardillon We still don't have any features which we consider as "premium". Http requests are available as basic feature.


As for the cited statement, this is related to the messages as some of the messaging systems are free of charge (e.g. emails) and some of them are being charged by all the global providers (e.g. sms, voice...)

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@ Sebastian: Thank you for this very satisfactory answer, which I think will enjoy and reassure many Zipabox users. ;)

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ADN182 wrote:

So, variable in http request it's a premium feature ? I understand better now why you decide to remove this feature from the web interface ? http://community.zipato.com/responses/no-attributes-or-variables-in-http-requests-after-update


Because this feature are in the lastest Firmware : http://community.zipato.com/responses/zipabox-firmware-upgrade-0997-will-be-available-tomorrow


HB wrote:

I hope not that the reason that we don't see fixes/updates for some bugs/and lost functionality in ZipaBox is that what Zipato is doing is working on the Premium version... and will release that as a paid version later! :-(
Answer of my question here : http://community.zipato.com/responses/no-attributes-or-variables-in-http-requests-after-update

Attributes in HTTP request is certainly a premium features !!!

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I just bought my zipabox, if I had known what he prepares, I never would have bought it! I feel deceived.

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