pimatic, What will happen next?

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Hello everybody, I’d like to know if anyone knows where pimatic is going?
I think it’s a very nice and welcoming system. With Pimatic even someone who doesn’t know how to program can build his own smart home, and has even more possibilities than with these other finished products. You even save a lot of money. All these finished products are offered at such an overpriced price…
But somehow the air seems to be out of pimatic for some months now. There are hardly any updates for plugins anymore, there is no pimatic update for the funny 0.9.43 update, (with that many users had problems).
What’s the next step? Is it coming to an end? It would be a shame.
It seems helpers are going, too? I can’t see @leader21 for months. And others don’t either.

I think I will find some time to look into the problems with 0.9.43 and also with the update to node version > 4. I think for most of us it’s just a matter of having no time to work on pimatic.

I agree with @Thrusty and would like to note the following. The concept of plugins is a realy good feature, but the kernel should not be neglected. I’ve been following the project for a few years now and notice that less and less is being done on the kernel and that there is a growing list of open issues.
Regardless of the current and future development power, I think it’s important to have a clear roadmap so that users can assess whether they will continue to follow the project in the future.

Pimatic (core) isn’t updated much for a long time now and the founding father has abounded the project completely. The corrupting 0.9.43 (and not fixing) is the kiss of death for the project.
The only thing holding me back to switch to other projects is the fact that I know how to handle Pimatic blindly. My main Pimatic setup (I use 4 separate instances of Pimatic in my household) is so big and complex it would take a long time to migrate to a new platform. With that being said, I think for my personal (and a lot of users) it’s just a matter of time when I will move to something else.

The plugins are great, and a plugin eco-system gives the opportunity to add functionality without touching the core. But there is just to slow development in the core to keep it alive. Very said to say sow, but that’s how I (and I know for a fact a lot of others also) see it currently.

koffienl 100% agree
Iam also sweet-pi in the project have always rebuilt built etc. unfortunately, it seems as if the project dies the 43 version was the golden shot

@wuschel I definitely don’t agree. If anyone would be testing the new version, then the 43 version would be gone. I can understand the maintainers to release a test version, but if nobody is testing this thing…

And updating to a newer node version isn’t so easy as everybody might think. I could easily update the core to run with the latest node version (it already works on my machine). But afterwards, most of the plugins wouldn’t work anymore. I can just update my own plugins and create pull request for the other plugins that I use. But as this could be a non-backwards-compatible change, I think that a lot of people will start arguing again, that nothing works.
Please keep in mind that pimatic is not a smart home system for people that don’t know how to handle their terminal. For these people there are enough all-in-one solutions out there.

@michbeck100 said in pimatic, What will happen next?:

@wuschel I definitely don’t agree. If anyone would be testing the new version, then the 43 version would be gone. I can understand the maintainers to release a test version, but if nobody is testing this thing…

The previous version should have been pulled out the moment the issues started. Until yesterday I wasn’t aware of some unannounced test version. Looking at the topic it’s not starting at all ?

And updating to a newer node version isn’t so easy as everybody might think. I could easily update the core to run with the latest node version (it already works on my machine). But afterwards, most of the plugins wouldn’t work anymore. I can just update my own plugins and create pull request for the other plugins that I use. But as this could be a non-backwards-compatible change, I think that a lot of people will start arguing again, that nothing works.

Nobody is demanding instant upgrade to latest node version, but simply stating the core is no longer maintained anymore.

Please keep in mind that pimatic is not a smart home system for people that don’t know how to handle their terminal. For these people there are enough all-in-one solutions out there.

I know, I’ve been here since the start

@michbeck100 Not really fair, people are testing(including myself) but the topic it has been quiet for a month.
This way we keep running in circles.

https://forum.pimatic.org/topic/4462/trouble-with-fresh-installation/6

@incmve Sorry, didn’t know of the topic. No offense, but I think this must be tested by a developer (I don’t know if you are one). As there are a lot of simple “bugs” in the testing version, starting with the version itself, as 0.9.44-a is not a valid version string. @mwittig you should upload a 0.9.44@test version to npmjs.com. This will already solve some of the problems.

Also I must apologize, that I wasn’t that active the last months. I simply didn’t have the time. But this hopefully changes now. I think I can spend a few hours per week to solve at least some of the issues with the test version.

@michbeck100 said in pimatic, What will happen next?:

@incmve Sorry, didn’t know of the topic. No offense, but I think this must be tested by a developer (I don’t know if you are one). As there are a lot of simple “bugs” in the testing version, starting with the version itself, as 0.9.44-a is not a valid version string. @mwittig you should upload a 0.9.44@test version to npmjs.com. This will already solve some of the problems.

I am no programmer but I have been here from the start when pimatic started working without pilight.
The reason I pointed out that topic is that the remaining community is willing to test but is missing the skills that you devs have.
I have always (tried to) help finding bugs and fixing them every now and then but problems like this is to much for me (one of the reasons I removed myself from the develop group).

This always was the power of pimatic, a willing community and a core team of devs.
But with losing some devs we also lost the community, only a few “old” users remain.

Hi,
I am as well no dev. I am able to script the stuff I need especially for my environment. I would like to step deeper into the development, but currently I am not able to do.
I have running playgrounds of HomeAssistent and OpenHub2. But same as @koffienl I am really familiar with pimatic, I am long time on board and I like the concept with rules and simply adding of new devices more then on the other systems for now.

What I really do not understand why no core dev is reacting on the problems. You @michbeck100 found a simple naming problem (why GitHub allows such naming when it makes problems?) really fast and gives a solution (which I will start to test btw soon).

@michbeck100 said in pimatic, What will happen next?:

Please keep in mind that pimatic is not a smart home system for people that don’t know how to handle their terminal.

I don’t agree with this statement. It is helpful for sure, but not a must. If so I would be not able to the beginning to get my house automation on the level it is now. I learned all the stuff step by step with pimatic.
Here are many users which are no devs for sure, but they are able to handle there systems very well, sometime with some support.

Fact is that the documented way how to install can’t be used for potential new users. When the installation will not work, no new users will come!

@ortin
You got it right to the point. As long as the installation does not run smoothly there will be no new users. Even users with programming experience will only test it briefly and turn away.

Although pimatic (with me 0.9.42) now runs very stable. For months without a restart.
Some time ago I talked a colleague into pimatic. He, too, found pimatic quite easy to use, although he had never had anything to do with Linux and console before. He is an average Windows user. After destroying his pimatic with the update, he tried it with iobroker.
Also relatively simple, but unfortunately a little too bloated, I think. It requires much more hardware resources. And it is no small effort to create a user interface. You can create very nice things with it, but the functionality is more important to me. The system should run, do its work, in the background. And implementing rules is very difficult for users who don’t know much about scripts. At least when it comes to rules that are more complex. This is relatively easy with pimatic.
I don’t know who is working on pimatic or who is still working on it. @sweetpi, @mwittig, @michbeck100 …
Anyway, thanks a lot for this SmartHome system. It would be a real pity if it didn’t go any further.
Surely pimatic is not suitable for the masses. The users have to do something with it. As I can see from the answers to my question, there are some people like me. Some people reading in, asking questions, sharing experiences, etc. And learn to handle it. You don’t have to be a programmer, you don’t have to be able to write scripts. I can’t do all that, and yet pimatic has been running on my system for almost 4 years.

Translated with www.DeepL.com/Translator

@thrusty this post seems to me the most logical one to post my message to. I am wondering why there is a absence of the 3 main pimatic persons, @mwittig @leader21 and @sweetpi… Something going one

Hello,
i since i killed my setup separate times by clicking the update button and didn’t remember it was not an update, it was the dead of the system.

i tried home assistant, open hab, ioBroker.
And finally i moved almost 96% of my setup to ioBroker.
It’s the same simple i can say.
For rules you have the Blockly Scripts.
And i found a Visualization the is almost responsive…
(that was the main-reason why i decided to not use ioBroker before…)

Mit freundlichen Grüßen
Chris