LinuxMCE community, lets talk.

[golgoj4]

Hey, whats up everyone. Its your fave slightly off kilter dev langstonius. Im posting this topic not to complain or yell. Don't worry, i'm not gonna, _do_ what everyone thinks im gonna _do_ , i'm not gonna flip out...

But seriously, the point of this thread it to get some honest opinions about how you use LinuxMCE, what you wish it did, where you see it going.  Me, well, as you can see i've doubled down on LinuxMCE. As I like to say, its a star-ship os, waiting for the star-ship. But what about you? Because, in a weird way, I do work for you. No I dont want money, but as a dev, we kinda take on the responsibility of making stuff work (albeit sometimes very badly). But the reason I ask these questions is because I want to make LinuxMCE better. Period. The best it can possibly be. But we are in a unique situation. Every persons home is their castle. And LinuxMCE is the life in that castle. And we all have very different castles. So, shaky metaphor aside, I need perspective from the people I 'work' for. So lets talk. And please, if there is something you dont like, just be respectful about discussing it.

that being said,
whats the good word?

-Langston

[bongowongo]

Hi golgoj4,

Haven't been active lately in the community and didn't get all the latest updates of your and others work. But what I always missed from Linuxmce is overview for the user.
You really have to dig in for simple stuff. I think the linuxmce admin site needs a big overhaul.
e.g. how can we easily update the Core? And will the MD's be automated accordingly? And how do I check if I have the latest version through the admin?
 
This is just what comes to mind now. I do not feel in control of my linuxmce box, due lack of knowledge of linux, due to being an impatient user, due to being a stupid user.

[murcel]

golgoj4,

similiar to bongowongo, i would sugest to make things easy.
When i was starting with lmce some years ago, i was astonished, on how easy things are.
As a user, who had never had any expierence with lmce - expect isntalling an distitribution for testing and troughing away again.
Installation went quite easy and the AV Wizard guided me, same did - what was her name? Liza?
anyhow, but then .... the problems begun....with some ugly hardware....

I had to edit here a file and change a config file there and reboot and put in a fix.

I understand, that there is a massive amount of hardwarepieces, if e.g. we just take mainboards, so many vendors, chipsets and combination of hardware, and having a compatibility list, does not make sense - becuase the product life cycle is very short in the retail.

what i am trying to say is, that there must be a way, to give a kind of gurantee that s.th. is working oob - than supporting more and more hardware pieces.
Break things down...what is working and what is working with problems.

Can mean, that some advanced functions should be deactivated, as long as , it is not needed by user.
I find the way of dianemo quite smart...."everything" is integrated, but not activated by default.

Giving an example, is that my Allnet PoE Switch is always recognised as an D-Link IP Camera. For me, as i know the background, its not a problem, but the Enduser - he who uses the system daily, its so confusing.

in theory, everything is so easy with lmce - and was developed with this in the "back head" - like lmce says "be patient" - but i believe we're drifting more and more away from this point. For example - Zwave should be easy to install - but in fact it is not. User has to crawl through forum, wikis, take a look at log files and so on. Who wants to do this?

What i am trying to say is, we should spent more time in making the system more friendly from a top-down perspective. Having a system with music, video and tv up and running in 1 hour - stable.

Lmce is THE home automation system, but to be successful, we need to make it more friendly. I do not mean, that it has to be "super" easy to isntall, but i believe that even sometimes an installer - who has IT background - can be frustrated if things are working the one day and the other day not.

like bongowongo says, i do not see exactly, whats going on. So, to find a reason i have to dig really deep, and i believe that most system integrators do that one time, but not a second time.

[Marie.O]

I want LinuxMCE to run my house by controlling electrical equipment in the house. I want LinuxMCE to store all my media and provide me a pleasing media playback environment. I want LinuxMCE to show me pics of people coming to my front door no matter where I am. And I want LinuxMCE to be controllable to whatever device I happen to have. I am still not sure about telecom.

[davegravy]

Whoa, space sci-fi metaphor and medieval castle metaphor in one paragraph!

1) A UI that's sexy and snappy. Snappy in and of itself and also network communications that are efficient so as to not cause the UI to lag.
2) NFC-based control events for orbiter, and/or integration between Tasker (android app) and LMCE
3) Don't have a vid camera yet, but I'm slightly discouraged from getting one due to LMCE only supporting single-frame (jpg) communication. If we had encoding and streaming capability, and once our mobile data networks are up to par (speed and reasonable data caps), this would be a deal-maker.
4) An improved advanced scenarios editor, allowing more versatile automation programming. See here: http://forum.linuxmce.org/index.php/topic,12456.0.html
5) Support for NVidia GT4xx cards
6) Support for encrypted Zwave comm.

That's a lot to ask, but keep in mind it's mostly icing on the cake type stuff.

[Marie.O]

Oh, one note: *My* LinuxMCE system is already working with most of the stuff that I want. But, one thing is for sure: You can not create a home automation system that will be up and running in an hour and be complete. You can have a system up and running that allows you to START setting things up. Thanks for L3mce's work with DVD installer that already is here. What's missing, is better (ab)use of Sarah, i.e. more menu driven setup routines.

[maverick0815]

Of course we all want a stable, working system and we are getting there, but I do miss a few things too:

• Security- basically there is one user, who can make changes to configuration and such, but what keeps a person/visitor/naughty child to put that said user on the orbiter start changing settings and perhaps fucking up the system
• Telecom- we have usermailbox and a general mailbox- while accessing the usermailbox is nice and easily accessible, generalmailbox is not- currently you can only use it through the webadmin. Since our callers usually don't care who of us they get on the line, as long as they do get someone, they will also just leave a message on the generealmailbox, except they would have to say something "confidential"
• TV- so we have right now VDR and Mythtv available- one being barely integrated, the other one being integrated rather well. I don't know about you guys, but right now mythtv is a crashprone mess. Of course I could just change to vdr and lose some of the amenities of the integration and perhaps gain some stability, but I'm loth to do that. I'd rather see Linuxmce have one very well integrated tv-solution that is stable. I don't care, if its vdr, mythtv or something else
• DLNA-Devices- with more and more smart-TVs and network-utilising devices (e.g. AV-equipment) coming on the market, I think it would be a good thing to be able to exploit those. I can imagine people being very confused while having a smart-tv, why an MD would still be needed. Perhaps Qorbiter could be the answer to that question- but I'm shooting in the dark here, since I'm no programmer.

[l3mce]

LinuxMCE is a part of my life.

I learn from it every day. It shapes the way I think. I am addicted to it more than anything else really... I don't really care if it runs my house. I don't care one bit about the benefits of the system itself. I just want it to work, work reliably, on as much hardware as it can reasonably be made to work on. That is really it. It is always there, it always needs work, it is the nastiest hydra I have ever seen... and I still don't know if I have done more harm or good to it... but I know it will be closer to the goal I just stated when I am done or I will die trying.


I don't really have any personal aspirations born of LinuxMCE.

I just want it to exist, with the stability we attribute to household appliances.

I wan't George W. Bush to be able to install and operate it... and I want Steven Hawking to say "that's brilliant" in his robot voice when looking at the architecture.

[maverick0815]

George W. Bush...are you serious? I thought you were crazy, but not mad! :-D

[polly]

Hey...

there is still a lot of things to learn and explore for me ... and i'm still a LinuxMCE trainee i guess ;-)
I like the way it works and the features it offers. To me, the install process has never been as easy as today .... great job!

What it does for me:
- LiveTV
- play audio & video
- watch pictures
- door camera (EasyN IP Camera)
- Airprint
- Airplay
- recording TV shows
- Radio

What i want to have or improve:
- a stable running system.
- a rock solid GUI for qOrbiter. My Mom should be able to understand and play with it in minutes.... Don't care about George W.
- I want MythTV to work rock solid! For me the most annoying thing. Radomly throwing errors like "irrecoverable recorder error", "Frame buffering something failed" or quit unexpected while switch between channels.
- Improve the lmce-admin. Currently i had no time to dig in deeper how lmce-admin is done, but i guess it needs to be completely rewritten to get a better user experience.   
- my flatmate to be a more helpful in reporting issues. 
- VPN

I saw so many improvements for me over the past year. I'm really looking forward to the next year(s) ...

cheers,
ochorocho - almost addicted

[Marie.O]

A quick note on web admin (and I do not want to start a discussion about it. If you want, open another thread): The notion to re-write web admin comes up every now and then. What people fail to realize is, how GREAT web admins architecture is. The problem are missing wizard pages, better organized wizard pages.

[PlatypusPedersen]

The biggest enhancements I am waiting for before I roll LMCE out at my pad, is to have the stability and a UI so smooth and easy to use that even my technophobic grandmother and technologically challenged father can use the system without needing guidance.

Needless to say, qOrbiter is a huge step in the right direction for that, so a big thanks for that amazing work.
On my end, I am still struggling with adding device templates for our IR remotes, but I got some advice on IRC not long ago that I will try the next time around.

[dextaslab]

For Christmas this year (or next) I want Linuxmce to give me:
1. One Android app on my phone that allows me to use everything that Linuxmce has to offer securely and remotely (latency permitting). Eg; view security footage, Make a SIP call, view files, etc.. Possibly like a background service?
2. I would also like to have a complete live backup option; 1 that backups up root, data/media, and the database to a baremetal recovery without having to turn it off and have down time while it pushes data over the network/external drive.
3. qOrbiters on MD's please.

Cheers

[maverick0815]

oh, I forgot to mention one more thing:

integration of google contacts would be very neat.

[_if_]

OK what do I use LMCE for:
I'm right now building my house and therefor I will use the lmce system I'm building up now. Also I'm using one MD right now in my flat for live tv and movies kind of productively.
I'll use Live TV, audio, video, internetradio, X10 for lights,blinds and IR sensors for security triggering, IP cameras at door and garden, 1wire for temperature sensors (does not work anymore for me right now...), 2-3 audio zones using squeezeslaves(having trouble with my usb soundcards), tablets for orbiter and some other homeautomation things. Also I'm serving internet and telecom to my parents, sisters and brothers houses (may be extended to more lmce functionalizies later).
All that packed into a 19" Intel server with TBS quad TV cards, loads of RAID diskspace,  interfaces and a touchscreen which is wired down to the core - so all kind of a bigger installation.

Now, what can be made more userfriendly:
like posde said, it would be a big benefit if we could make the Installer wizard more useful.
Right now, I personally use it for adding users and rooms, and for selecting VDR or mythtv - nearly all other steps are useless atm (to me).
So, if you add hardware and the installer wizard would guide you through the installation -> this would be userfriendly.

Also the design of that wizard is kind of outdated, a more modern design would be cool (i hate the blue background).
Some months ago I started building up a 3D model of a humans head being animated which could some day MAYBE replace Sarah in a more modern way. But right now I'm missing the time to work on that but I will keep on...

Other than that, wouldn't it be helpful if a wiki (or whatever) can be put together containing hardware which is really (I mean REALLY) plug and play?

ok, this was my point of view. I just love the flexibility and the whole concept of lmce and want to thank all devs for their great work and am looking forward to lmce's future!

greetz
IF