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Continued support

Posted: Wed 13 May 2015, 15:23
by thebob
Hi,

If i were to implement a solution based on your product, how likely is it that you would continue support for it for an extended time? Is there any fallback plan for when you "get tired" of maintaining the gateway, switch to a different alarm system, or have an unfortunate accident? This kind of project/product has a tendency of suddenly disappearing, and that makes me concerned.

We also have the issue of support for platforms other than the ones you have compiled for now. Implementations in a non-compiled language would probably be more fitting, but i understand you are under NDA for the protocol. Would you be able to compile for more platforms, in case for example rPi becomes unavailable in it's current form, or OS updates makes the binary un-runnable?

I have also read around the 'net about the reluctance to use a binary-only solution that might or might not contain backdoors and call-home functionality.

Do you think there is any chance Siemens would consent to making the protocol public? They would benefit greatly from doing so, since their product would instantly gain a lot of 'home automation' customers and other integrators. Maybe there is even some interest on their side to implement an API themselves. I don't have any contact points at Siemens, so i thought you might be the right person to bring forward such suggestions to them.

Regards,

Re: Continued support

Posted: Fri 15 May 2015, 10:22
by gol
Hi thebob,
Thank you for your interest in SPC Web Gateway and for your comments.

I can just promise you that I will do what I can to support the product. I'm using the product in my own home so I have same interest as you to have a working product. Of course I can't (who can) give any guarantees what will happen in the future. For just 500 SEK you are buying the rights to use SPC Web Gateway until 2037 on current version of Raspbian and Ubuntu 64.

That's correct that I'm not allowed to give you the source code, due to a NDA with Siemens. I can promise you that I have not implemented any backdoors in the code I have written. But of course I can't guarantee anything about libraries the SPC Web Gateway is dependent of.

I have proposed Siemens to open there API but so far they have not be interested in that. I can only state that the new FlexC is a even more closed protocol.

Best regards
Göran