At a crossroads, stay with CQC?

[IVB]

I wish, I only bought starting 2.5 months ago at $200/week or so. I have a whopping 2.3btc. I made money, but only maybe $10K or so. Buddies started buying years ago, I meant to start in 2016 but seriously just forgot. They are very close to millionaires based on thousands put in. One guy cashed out enough to buy new cars and some stuff, and has stopped working at age 46.

IRS just declared this taxable as property. 15% taxes IIRC.

[monetteboy]

You should be able to add this:

&nopixelscale=yes

to the URL. That should cause it to suppress the normal scaling that phones tend to do, and show at their normal resolution. If you want to get some other resolutions, there is a template scaling feature. Though, to make that work, you have to be sure to use relative template paths when you load new templates (base template, into overlays, or popups.) That way, when it scales the templates and writes them out to a new place, they are referencing the scaled ones, not the original ones. The latest version makes it pretty easy to do relative paths.

If that doesn't work, start a thread and we can dig deeper. Other folks are using it on iOS very successfully, so it can be done.

Dean,

I played with the nopixelscale but it's been a while and I can't remember the exact config/issues.  When I get a few free moments I'll put all my notes together and make a post!
Thanks!

[kfly]

So are you a bitcoin billionaire now? If I had any I'd be selling it as fast as possible and happily pocketing the profits. Maybe the internet bubble scarred me, but I figure beware fortune bearing gifts, find a chair before the music ends, etc...

So, when an off the official books currency like that goes way up, do you owe taxes on your virtual earnings? Or is it just all in the shadows?

Yes you have to pay taxes when you sell.(unfortunately) 
Your wallet holder(if you are using a service to buy/sell bitcoins) will send you a 1099. 
https://www.irs.gov/newsroom/irs-virtual...y-guidance

Bitcoin is strait out gambling now. Best investment return of my life, but not sure I can call it an "Investment"

[lleo]

This is an interesting thread, no..., not the side discussion on the bitcoin bubble, but the topic by OP.
While I am not at a crossroad of some sort, for me the windows is a dead end, so as long as Windows 7 is supported I will have CQC supported, maintained and updated.

[RichardU]

I use CQC as the glue to pull other things together, which I think is its strong point.

Where CQC falls down for me is the interfaces. I don't think they need improvement. I think they need alternatives.

It is an impossible task for CQC to compete with, for example, Plex, which is highly capable, available everywhere, works really well, and is constantly being updated with input and support from a huge user group. Or my Spotify app. Or my Xfinity app. Or weather.com.

The idea of cobbling together CQC code to compete with any of those seems at best quaint, but more likely masochistic. Sure, some people will want to do that, just like some people build cars from scratch.

I love the fact that CQC can talk to my oddball stuff, it's reliable, and can handle triggers, events, and conditional logic. Other than that, I would love to see CQC focus more on interfacing with other systems.

Instead of rebuilding the wheel with your own web server, help us interface with some that are out there. I use Tiddlywiki for local stuff (there must be better alternatives by now - maybe even a local version of WordPress).

Take a look at https://joaoapps.com. This guy does an amazing job of pulling things together. Unfortunately, it is mostly Tasker based which is not nearly as robust as the CQC core. (his Chrome app Join is independent and quite useful).

You could ask some of my fellow users what they think, but the problem is we're not the market you need. You need the people who aren't here.

[Deane Johnson]

We had this discussion about two years ago and it was put out as a question on CocoonTech by Dean.  The overwhelming response was for a change to a more user friendly GUI.  The new 5.x configuration is the result and definitely is an improvement in many respects.  We're all aware of the massive amount of time and energy Dean put into it, literally 7 days and nights a week, and holidays, for something like two years.

However, even with the upgrade, CQC is still mostly attractive to tech heads.  It will not attract a new range of clientele, IMO.

I'm wondering if it's even possible to do a user friendly GUI for a broader market with software as deep and capable as CQC is.  Maybe it's at saturation for that sort of pathway already.

[RichardU]

After 35 years of promises, the Home Automation market is finally taking off. It just doesn't look like CQC. It looks like Echo, Google Assistant, and IFTTT for control. Netflix and Spotify (and others) for media. They are the Front End and they have massive user bases. Fighting that is like fighting the tide.

The problem/opportunity is that there is no great backend. IFTTT is way too simplistic and limited. I'd love to see Dean succeed by repackaging CQC as a sophisticated, self-hosted, reliable, and professional IFTTT. (I'd also recommend a name change.)

[EST]

CQC is great for what I need it to do.  I wish I had the time to spend maximizing it's capabilities, but I don't.  For now, it does what I have intended it to do...run in the background with minimal input from me.  My house still functions as a normal house BUT it does behind the scenes automation that nobody knows about and it works.  I just introduced my kids to turning on/off the lights w/ the Echo...they loved it.  I have UPB and unless I spend the $500 for the box to allow the Echo skill to work I would not be able to utilize UPB.  With CQC, I can.  I have a very convoluted HVAC algorithm that would not be able to be done with the off the shelf systems out there.  There is so much it can do that I either don't know yet or I know about it but just don't have the imagination to do it or just don't know how to get it done.  

I have ipad templates made...just very rarely use it.  I use the Echo and old fashion remotes that IR to CQC.  My plan is to get the ipads back into it but it's a pain to find the ipad, launch the app, go to the screen just to change the channel.  

I will keep spending the yearly fee to help Dean continue making CQC great.  
My goal is to mazimize CQCs ability of behind the scene automation, perform analytics on the house (just don't know how or what yet), squeeze more out of the Echo (can't wait to push notifications, ie Garage Door opens and Alexa notifies the house automatically) and to get my kids involved in the use of it.  They love seeing what I have done with it.

[Dean Roddey]

After 35 years of promises, the Home Automation market is finally taking off. It just doesn't look like CQC. It looks like Echo, Google Assistant, and IFTTT for control. Netflix and Spotify (and others) for media. They are the Front End and they have massive user bases. Fighting that is like fighting the tide.

The problem/opportunity is that there is no great backend. IFTTT is way too simplistic and limited. I'd love to see Dean succeed by repackaging CQC as a sophisticated, self-hosted, reliable, and professional IFTTT. (I'd also recommend a name change.)

Voice control is fine for some stuff. It's completely inadequate for others. A full bore solution really does need both, and some folks like one thing and other like the other. Anyhoo, with our existing Echo support you can essentially use CQC as a back end to the Echo, right? All the tools are there to do it, and plenty of folks seem to be doing that, though also in many cases in conjunction with touch screens.

BTW, in terms of actual automation, I'd imagine that Smart Things has a lot more of that that Amazon. Most folks are using the Echo as a very simple voice driven remote control, zero actual automation involved at all. Anyone out there using the Echo for anything like "Alexa, turn on the home theater" is using it with some sort of automation system, with all the extra complexity that brings into it.

[Dean Roddey]

I use CQC as the glue to pull other things together, which I think is its strong point.

Where CQC falls down for me is the interfaces. I don't think they need improvement. I think they need alternatives.

It is an impossible task for CQC to compete with, for example, Plex, which is highly capable, available everywhere, works really well, and is constantly being updated with input and support from a huge user group. Or my Spotify app. Or my Xfinity app. Or weather.com.

The idea of cobbling together CQC code to compete with any of those seems at best quaint, but more likely masochistic. Sure, some people will want to do that, just like some people build cars from scratch.

Keep in mind that we aren't primarily targeting the DIYer. That market was already very bad, and it's going to get a lot worse as everyone and his third cousin jump into it. It's going to become a complete commodity market. I doubt any of the players in that market right now (the ones selling the core controller/hub type stuff) are actually making any profit at all. I think that they are all playing the 'spend now, charge later' game to try to be the one that comes out on top so that they can then own the market and all of the revenue streams will have to flow through them. But I don't think that's going to happen. I don't think anyone will ultimately really win. Some will definitely lose and fall out of the game. But I don't think that there will be a dominant player, it will remain quite fragmented.

Our primary focus for the product has to be professional systems. That is also tough, but it remains the one where actual money is at least potentially available. In that world, highly customized touch screen interfaces are essential, and we have a very good story there. No pro installer is going to sell systems that are basically just a bunch of individual vendor apps, even if they could actually (with sufficient manual jumping back and forth) do what needs to be done. 

The customized interface is at the core of real integration ultimately.