Dean Roddey
Senior Member
No, not this time out. We will have our own CD ripping and media repository though.
Looking for some feedback on upcoming CQC stuff
- Thread starter Dean Roddey
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Dean Roddey
Senior Member
Just a heads up.... As per this post:
http://www.charmedquark.com/vb_forum/showthread.php?t=2190
We are announcing a fairly steep price increase to coincide with our upcoming release, now formally to be 2.0. Since we found (after people beat us about the head a bit
) that there were a number of people who were basically just waiting for the next release and who weren't happy that the price had just gone up and they could have gotten the current price if they'd known, we've extended the current full package offer until friday midnight.
After that, the price is 50% pre-order price (relative to what it will be after 2.0 goes formal), and then the full price increase goes into effect once 2.0 is released.
So, I just wanted to provide a head's up for folks who want to take advantage of this extension.
http://www.charmedquark.com/vb_forum/showthread.php?t=2190
We are announcing a fairly steep price increase to coincide with our upcoming release, now formally to be 2.0. Since we found (after people beat us about the head a bit
) that there were a number of people who were basically just waiting for the next release and who weren't happy that the price had just gone up and they could have gotten the current price if they'd known, we've extended the current full package offer until friday midnight.After that, the price is 50% pre-order price (relative to what it will be after 2.0 goes formal), and then the full price increase goes into effect once 2.0 is released.
So, I just wanted to provide a head's up for folks who want to take advantage of this extension.
BraveSirRobbin
Moderator
Dean;
I don't have permission to access that link you posted. So what will be the new price for a full (i.e. not upgrade) version of your software once the price increase is in effect?
I don't have permission to access that link you posted. So what will be the new price for a full (i.e. not upgrade) version of your software once the price increase is in effect?
Dean Roddey
Senior Member
Doh! No one ever complained so I never noticed that unregistered users cannot see the announcements section. I wondered why the announcements never seemed to get the level of views that they used to before we moved to this new forum software. Oh well, live and learn... You should be able to see it now.
$895 + $95 year? And people thought they were in for sticker shock when they saw the HS 2.0 upgrade fee. I think you just priced yourself out of the DIY market. I hope this means you just want to serve the Pro market, since if you still want DIY users, you are going to want to drop that price asap. This is all IMO of course, and is not the officially cocoontech.com opnion Good luck
Good luck
upstatemike
Senior Member
What if you elect not to pay $95 per year but want to upgrade to 3.0 when it comes out in '08? Will there be a flat upgrade fee for folks who are not on the yearly maintenance plan or do you buy the product over if you go more than a few months without paying maintenance?
BraveSirRobbin
Moderator
Dean;electron said:$895 + $95 year? And people thought they were in for sticker shock when they saw the HS 2.0 upgrade fee. I think you just priced yourself out of the DIY market. I hope this means you just want to serve the Pro market, since if you still want DIY users, you are going to want to drop that price asap. This is all IMO of course, and is not the officially cocoontech.com opnion
With all due respect, I was considering exploring CQC as an alternative to MainLobby and HomeSeer which is why I asked that question. But, I agree with electron.
Hopefully you have a plethora of "pro" business as you just shot yourself in the foot with the DIY market.
Just when your software was becoming popular too... <_<
roussell
Active Member
I guess I'm one of those people that can just never make up their mind on this type of stuff, I seem to always be in "eval" mode trying to figure out which package best fits my needs. I've always been impressed with CQC but never liked that they don't support Insteon directly... I was starting to get over it and thinking that maybe "having" to purchase an ELK for that purpose wouldn't be so bad... Now that CQC is a rich-man's toy, you're looking at about $3000 to turn on an Insteon operated light switch (PC, OS, CQC, ELK, Insteon). Ouch, maybe if I didn't have a wife and daughter, or bills... It's hard to believe that Homeseer 2.x looks afordable now... Sure makes ML3 more attractive, or better yet; my Ubuntu/Misterhouse/Xlobby combo is running just fine on my Pentium III 833 "servers"
Good luck Dean, Just from reading your posts on the CT and CQC forums you appear to be an honarable fellow. You have a great product and from what I can tell really seem to care about your existing customers. I hope you don't lose too many potiential new ones with the increase.
Terry
Good luck Dean, Just from reading your posts on the CT and CQC forums you appear to be an honarable fellow. You have a great product and from what I can tell really seem to care about your existing customers. I hope you don't lose too many potiential new ones with the increase.
Terry
I have to admit Electron has a point there, the price just tripled. In addition it is far above any other package's price that is out there now. Granted of course your response could be that CQC is so much better, but that is a huge price increase.
I also think that giving a few days to get the 'special pre-order price' of 70% higher of what it was last week is a little tight.
I'll also admit, I was expecting to buy CQC in the next few weeks once I got some of the interim pieces in place, but given the changes I will have to give it some serious thought.
Some other considerations:
1. For many on the DIY side, the trial is great, but it may take some time to really bite down into something as complex as CQC. 30 days while it seems reasonable, may not be enough to get down into it. That being said, I had seen enough of IVB's installation and others to feel that I could be happy with CQC and it would meet my expectations. The risk of dissappointment was acceptable. Well the price just went up dramatically...
2. I would have been inclined to understand the maintenance addition with the old structure, but with the drastic amounts of these changes, will the maintenance then go to $200 a year next year?
3. Take a look at the Mega Poll. Do you suspect there is any correlation between the current price ranges of HS, CQC, and Main Lobby (which has a full package price similar to your 'pre-order price' if you buy all the options, at least I think it does). 34 Home Seer users, 23 CQC users, and 1 MainLobby user. Now double that price (full CQC price with maintenance) and what do you think will happen?
You may wish to give this some consideration.
Then add act within the next 48 hours to get this special pricing that is only 70% higher than what it was last week, and frankly I just started looking at other packages again. I suspect people at HS are very happy to hear this news as they will be watching to see if business picks up.
With all that being said, it seems you have created a nice piece of software, and a framework that is very powerful, and I hope you capture the market that you are going after (although I think you just left the DIY market).
I also think that giving a few days to get the 'special pre-order price' of 70% higher of what it was last week is a little tight.
I'll also admit, I was expecting to buy CQC in the next few weeks once I got some of the interim pieces in place, but given the changes I will have to give it some serious thought.
Some other considerations:
1. For many on the DIY side, the trial is great, but it may take some time to really bite down into something as complex as CQC. 30 days while it seems reasonable, may not be enough to get down into it. That being said, I had seen enough of IVB's installation and others to feel that I could be happy with CQC and it would meet my expectations. The risk of dissappointment was acceptable. Well the price just went up dramatically...
2. I would have been inclined to understand the maintenance addition with the old structure, but with the drastic amounts of these changes, will the maintenance then go to $200 a year next year?
3. Take a look at the Mega Poll. Do you suspect there is any correlation between the current price ranges of HS, CQC, and Main Lobby (which has a full package price similar to your 'pre-order price' if you buy all the options, at least I think it does). 34 Home Seer users, 23 CQC users, and 1 MainLobby user. Now double that price (full CQC price with maintenance) and what do you think will happen?
You may wish to give this some consideration.
Then add act within the next 48 hours to get this special pricing that is only 70% higher than what it was last week, and frankly I just started looking at other packages again. I suspect people at HS are very happy to hear this news as they will be watching to see if business picks up.
With all that being said, it seems you have created a nice piece of software, and a framework that is very powerful, and I hope you capture the market that you are going after (although I think you just left the DIY market).
Rousell,
Didn't know if you knew, Cinemar just released it's Insteon driver.
http://www.cinemaronline.com/mlserver.mllighting.html
And, if you do decide to go with an ELK and want to support the Insteon that way, we also have an ELK M1 robust plugin.
I use it in my house both ways (and UPB / X10 and soon Z-Wave too ) all at the same time.
In Dean's defense, there is just as much work in developing software as there is in hardware. And, from what I see, you will get more value, fun, headaches, Dealer differentiation, DIY dreams and ooohs and ahhs from family and friends from the software than any single expensive black box you will purchase.
Didn't know if you knew, Cinemar just released it's Insteon driver.
http://www.cinemaronline.com/mlserver.mllighting.html
And, if you do decide to go with an ELK and want to support the Insteon that way, we also have an ELK M1 robust plugin.
I use it in my house both ways (and UPB / X10 and soon Z-Wave too
) all at the same time.In Dean's defense, there is just as much work in developing software as there is in hardware. And, from what I see, you will get more value, fun, headaches, Dealer differentiation, DIY dreams and ooohs and ahhs from family and friends from the software than any single expensive black box you will purchase.
BraveSirRobbin
Moderator
Dean Roddey
Senior Member
Now that I've recovered from the pricing thing (we had 45 new customers getting in under the wire over the course of a couple days), I'm back to working on the release again. So here's another little example action, which is what this thread was kind of started for.
In this case, I've just copied it to the clipboard and pasted it here, to avoid having to paste a screen snap of the editor dialog every time:
So this one will speak something like "Today is the fifth of June. Today's high will be 87. Current conditions are sunny". It takes into account that the current day high is invalid after 2pm from the weather channel feed and only speaks it if it's valid (the value is not 999.)
The lines are numbered, so I can comment on them by number
2. Settings a local variable called ToSay to the starting part of the text "Today is the ". Actions have local and global variables which are used to hold values as required. Locals just exist for the run of the action. Globals are shared. In some cases, globals aren't of much use, in other cases it's important to be able to leave some data around for subsequent use.
CQC actions are made up of targets, which implement commands that can be invoked, and those commands can take one or more parameters that are used while processing the command. The target is in the form XXX::, followed by the command name.
So "LocalVars::Set Variable", means invoke the Set Variable command on the LocalVars (local variables) target. There are a set of standard targets (system, macro engine, devices, local and global variables) that are always present. In some cases there are others, such as the graphical widgets in a user interface, or the incoming event in a triggered event. So the action system is flexible and 'pluggable' and can adapt to different situations easily.
3. Appends the weekday name. It uses a 'runtime value'. There are various runtime values, which are provided by the source. Above, targets were mentioned, which are the things that commands can be invoked on. The source is the thing invoking the commands. So it's something like a button on a user interface, or a key mapping that maps a keyboard key to an action, or an IR command mapping that maps an IR command to an action.
All sources provide a standard set of runtime values, like day of the week, host name, various current time formats, etc... But each type of source can provide special values that are just meaningful to it, for instance a slider on the graphical interface provides the current slider value, or the media category browser indicates the text of the category that was clicked on.
So when you do something like click the category browser, any action that is configured for it is invoked. That action is a set of commands to carry out against targets. So the source object you clicked is causing changes in the target objects you've configured it to change.
RTVs are indicated by a %(xxx) type replacement token. That token is replaced with the actual value of the runtime value as that action command step is executed.
Variables are treated like special runtime values also. So having set a local variable LVar:Bubba, you can then refer to the value of that variable as %(LVar:Bubba)
7. The "System::Fmt Num As Spoken" command is just a little helper that will take a value like 26 and format it out as "twenty sixth", which is useful for this type of TTS operation. So it doesn't say "the five of August" it says "the fifth of August".
14. Here it's checking whether the current day high value is valid. It's invoking a Not Equals command. The current day high value is a value from a device driver field, the weather channel device driver in this case. You refer to device values via a replacement token in the form $(device.field), and that token is replaced with the actual value of the field.
19. Here again the field access is used to get the value of the current condition field of the weather channel driver.
In this case, I've just copied it to the clipboard and pasted it here, to avoid having to paste a screen snap of the editor dialog every time:
Code:
1. // Speak the date and weather conditions
2. LocalVars::Set Variable(LVar:ToSay, Today is )
3. LocalVars::Append(LVar:ToSay, %(StdRTV:WeekDay))
4. LocalVars::Append(LVar:ToSay, , the )
5.
6. // Format the day number for correct speaking
7. System::Fmt Num As Spoken(%(StdRTV:DayNumber), LVar:DayNum)
8. LocalVars::Append(LVar:ToSay, %(LVar:DayNum))
9.
10. // Add the month
11. LocalVars::Append(LVar:ToSay, of %(StdRTV:Month).)
12.
13. // Add the conditions. The high can be invalid after 2pm
14. If Not System::Equals($(Weather.Day1High), 999)
15. LocalVars::Append(LVar:ToSay, Today's high will be )
16. LocalVars::Append(LVar:ToSay, $(Weather.Day1High))
17. End
18. LocalVars::Append(LVar:ToSay, . Current conditions are )
19. LocalVars::Append(LVar:ToSay, $(Weather.CurCondText))
20.
21. // And finally speak the text
22. System::Say Text(%(LVar:ToSay))So this one will speak something like "Today is the fifth of June. Today's high will be 87. Current conditions are sunny". It takes into account that the current day high is invalid after 2pm from the weather channel feed and only speaks it if it's valid (the value is not 999.)
The lines are numbered, so I can comment on them by number
2. Settings a local variable called ToSay to the starting part of the text "Today is the ". Actions have local and global variables which are used to hold values as required. Locals just exist for the run of the action. Globals are shared. In some cases, globals aren't of much use, in other cases it's important to be able to leave some data around for subsequent use.
CQC actions are made up of targets, which implement commands that can be invoked, and those commands can take one or more parameters that are used while processing the command. The target is in the form XXX::, followed by the command name.
So "LocalVars::Set Variable", means invoke the Set Variable command on the LocalVars (local variables) target. There are a set of standard targets (system, macro engine, devices, local and global variables) that are always present. In some cases there are others, such as the graphical widgets in a user interface, or the incoming event in a triggered event. So the action system is flexible and 'pluggable' and can adapt to different situations easily.
3. Appends the weekday name. It uses a 'runtime value'. There are various runtime values, which are provided by the source. Above, targets were mentioned, which are the things that commands can be invoked on. The source is the thing invoking the commands. So it's something like a button on a user interface, or a key mapping that maps a keyboard key to an action, or an IR command mapping that maps an IR command to an action.
All sources provide a standard set of runtime values, like day of the week, host name, various current time formats, etc... But each type of source can provide special values that are just meaningful to it, for instance a slider on the graphical interface provides the current slider value, or the media category browser indicates the text of the category that was clicked on.
So when you do something like click the category browser, any action that is configured for it is invoked. That action is a set of commands to carry out against targets. So the source object you clicked is causing changes in the target objects you've configured it to change.
RTVs are indicated by a %(xxx) type replacement token. That token is replaced with the actual value of the runtime value as that action command step is executed.
Variables are treated like special runtime values also. So having set a local variable LVar:Bubba, you can then refer to the value of that variable as %(LVar:Bubba)
7. The "System::Fmt Num As Spoken" command is just a little helper that will take a value like 26 and format it out as "twenty sixth", which is useful for this type of TTS operation. So it doesn't say "the five of August" it says "the fifth of August".
14. Here it's checking whether the current day high value is valid. It's invoking a Not Equals command. The current day high value is a value from a device driver field, the weather channel device driver in this case. You refer to device values via a replacement token in the form $(device.field), and that token is replaced with the actual value of the field.
19. Here again the field access is used to get the value of the current condition field of the weather channel driver.
Dean Roddey
Senior Member
BTW, just for the record for anyone reading this thread only, Vivek's example of his CQC configuration as translated to Cinemar's pricing came out $1300, so we definitely aren't really even close to being the most expensive when $895 get's you the whole shootin match.
