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Congrats on the launch! This is perfectly timed since I’m currently evaluating device management solutions for Hiome’s IoT device fleet (https://hiome.com https

Congrats on the launch! This is perfectly timed since I’m currently evaluating device management solutions for Hiome’s IoT device fleet (https://hiome.com https://hiome.com) Currently, we use Mender (mender.io) but are considering switching. Pros for Mender: * great pricing for consumer products at around $0.50/device/mo * lets us keep using Raspbian on our Raspberry Pi fleet The cons however are that we are stuck with Raspberry Pi 3B+. We want to switch a more production-friendly board (either the compute module or something else entirely), but that means switching to yocto, which as you mentioned, is its own world of problems. Mender’s UI is also very buggy. BalenaOS is acceptable and does support the boards we’re currently considering, but we’re limited to the devices they choose to support in the future. I love that Deviceplane claims to work with any linux distribution. However, as far as I can tell, you only support application updates, not OS-level updates. Will it ever be possible to update the OS in your model? A major reason I want to use a device management system is to make sure we can fix potential OS-level security issues. Another concern is pricing. $5/device/mo is probably fine for enterprise, but that can be 100% of revenue for many consumer devices. Since you’re open source, we could always self-host, but I’m curious if you have any plans to for more B2C-friendly pricing.

joshwget 7y ago
Thanks! > However, as far as I can tell, you only support application updates, not OS-level updates. For now this is true. People using Deviceplane today upgrade their underlying OS via the mechanism provided by their distro. On Debian-based systems this means running something like `apt-get dist-upgrade`. Deviceplane provides the tools to rollout this upgrade across your devices, but we're not hands-on past that. We do have plans to support OS-level updates, but for now we're specializing in just updating applications and letting the underlying distro handle updating itself. > Another concern is pricing. $5/device/mo is probably fine for enterprise, but that can be 100% of revenue for many consumer devices. Since you’re open source, we could always self-host, but I’m curious if you have any plans to for more B2C-friendly pricing. Our pricing isn't actually $5/device/mo! This would be quite expensive. Our team plans starts at $250 per month, but pricing doesn't scale linearly past that. We're still exploring different pricing schemes for Deviceplane, but we do know that having the same per-device rate for B2B and B2C will likely not work.
- cyrusroshan 7y ago
  To add on to what Josh said, re: OS updates, we have functionality for bulk scripting (https://deviceplane.com/docs/operating/command-scripting/ https://deviceplane.com/docs/operating/command-scripting/) to help you roll out host-level updates to your devices. We're also interested in hearing your thoughts on pricing, shoot us founders@deviceplane.com, and let's talk about it!
  - guptaneil 7y ago
    Thanks Josh and Cyrus! The bulk scripting looks super handy and definitely addresses half my concern with OS updates. The other half is being able to roll-back if something goes wrong during the update. Sent you an email!
pottertheotter 7y ago
Hiome looks cool, but that's quite the expensive occupancy sensor!
- guptaneil 7y ago
  Thanks, our beta customers love them so far! Regarding price, each occupancy sensor is $79. These are high accuracy thermal sensors with local machine learning that can count occupancy. For comparison, a standard PIR motion sensor that can only tell you if there was motion in the last 30 seconds costs around $50 from Philips Hue or Eve. We think the price is very fair! :)
  - pottertheotter 7y ago
    I guess I would never buy a PIR sensor for $50. You can get them for $6, so that's what I anchor off of. Not that I'd expect your product to be close to $6, but $50 PIR sensors are way overpriced, so I wouldn't ever think to compare to those. Despite heavily automating my own home and being the person who sets everything up for my extended family, it seems I'm probably not your target market. Sounds like you have some cool tech though!
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
mzedel 7y ago
Hello Neil, Thank you for using Mender! Since I’m directly involved with the development of the GUI I’m sorry to hear that you found an issue with it. However I'm all ears and would like to get this fixed asap, so please let me know using hub.mender.io, the support@hosted.mender.io address you already know or find my address in my profile.
- guptaneil 7y ago
  Hi Manuel, thanks for the comment. I reached out a few times to support and never heard back. It does look like most of my issues were quietly resolved later, but we ended up abandoning the dashboard and using the API directly for a lot of tasks. If I'm being honest, I don't have a lot of confidence in Mender's reliability due to those experiences. However, it's mender-convert's limited device list that is really driving the search for an alternative.
  - eystein 7y ago
    Hi, I am also working with the Mender project and we have been in touch earlier. The device support for mender-convert will be drastically widened (actually, there will not be any limit as such) in the Mender 2.3 release, beta ETA in a week or two and final in March. But you can already test it with the development branch today: https://docs.mender.io/development/devices/debian-family https://docs.mender.io/development/devices/debian-family There will also be stock converted images for the most common development boards. Let us know what you think!

joshwget 7y ago

Thanks! > However, as far as I can tell, you only support application updates, not OS-level updates. For now this is true. People using Deviceplane today upgrade their underlying OS via the mechanism provided by their distro. On Debian-based systems this means running something like `apt-get dist-upgrade`. Deviceplane provides the tools to rollout this upgrade across your devices, but we're not hands-on past that. We do have plans to support OS-level updates, but for now we're specializing in just updating applications and letting the underlying distro handle updating itself. > Another concern is pricing. $5/device/mo is probably fine for enterprise, but that can be 100% of revenue for many consumer devices. Since you’re open source, we could always self-host, but I’m curious if you have any plans to for more B2C-friendly pricing. Our pricing isn't actually $5/device/mo! This would be quite expensive. Our team plans starts at $250 per month, but pricing doesn't scale linearly past that. We're still exploring different pricing schemes for Deviceplane, but we do know that having the same per-device rate for B2B and B2C will likely not work.

cyrusroshan 7y ago
To add on to what Josh said, re: OS updates, we have functionality for bulk scripting (https://deviceplane.com/docs/operating/command-scripting/ https://deviceplane.com/docs/operating/command-scripting/) to help you roll out host-level updates to your devices. We're also interested in hearing your thoughts on pricing, shoot us founders@deviceplane.com, and let's talk about it!
- guptaneil 7y ago
  Thanks Josh and Cyrus! The bulk scripting looks super handy and definitely addresses half my concern with OS updates. The other half is being able to roll-back if something goes wrong during the update. Sent you an email!

pottertheotter 7y ago

Hiome looks cool, but that's quite the expensive occupancy sensor!

guptaneil 7y ago
Thanks, our beta customers love them so far! Regarding price, each occupancy sensor is $79. These are high accuracy thermal sensors with local machine learning that can count occupancy. For comparison, a standard PIR motion sensor that can only tell you if there was motion in the last 30 seconds costs around $50 from Philips Hue or Eve. We think the price is very fair! :)
- pottertheotter 7y ago
  I guess I would never buy a PIR sensor for $50. You can get them for $6, so that's what I anchor off of. Not that I'd expect your product to be close to $6, but $50 PIR sensors are way overpriced, so I wouldn't ever think to compare to those. Despite heavily automating my own home and being the person who sets everything up for my extended family, it seems I'm probably not your target market. Sounds like you have some cool tech though!

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

mzedel 7y ago

Hello Neil, Thank you for using Mender! Since I’m directly involved with the development of the GUI I’m sorry to hear that you found an issue with it. However I'm all ears and would like to get this fixed asap, so please let me know using hub.mender.io, the support@hosted.mender.io address you already know or find my address in my profile.

guptaneil 7y ago
Hi Manuel, thanks for the comment. I reached out a few times to support and never heard back. It does look like most of my issues were quietly resolved later, but we ended up abandoning the dashboard and using the API directly for a lot of tasks. If I'm being honest, I don't have a lot of confidence in Mender's reliability due to those experiences. However, it's mender-convert's limited device list that is really driving the search for an alternative.
- eystein 7y ago
  Hi, I am also working with the Mender project and we have been in touch earlier. The device support for mender-convert will be drastically widened (actually, there will not be any limit as such) in the Mender 2.3 release, beta ETA in a week or two and final in March. But you can already test it with the development branch today: https://docs.mender.io/development/devices/debian-family https://docs.mender.io/development/devices/debian-family There will also be stock converted images for the most common development boards. Let us know what you think!