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The feature set is impressive and I'd certainly look into this if I had the kind of home that could benefit from this much automation. I do think it highlights

The feature set is impressive and I'd certainly look into this if I had the kind of home that could benefit from this much automation. I do think it highlights a problem with using Polymer out of the box though. Like Bootstrap in its early days, Polymer makes it very easy to quickly throw together a fairly polished and professional looking interface. But as more of these come online this style is going to become increasingly stale and generic. And since the design language of Material is so pervasive and rich I think it's going to take a fair amount of work to customize it enough to differentiate an implementation without destroying the integrity of the design. Just tweaking the theme and accent color isn't going to be enough to cure you of looking like a rebranded Google app.

rglullis 12y ago
Why is that a bad thing? For me at least, the goal is to have a free, usable, recognizable UX. Not to have a "brand". It's open source, it's not supposed to be invested in zero-value branding. In the past 10-15 years open source software had to catch up with Windows applications, and when they did people would think the problem was in UX. Now that good UX is coming to OSS and we can finally catch up with Apple, you want to reject it?
- ulisesrmzroche 12y ago
  There's no such thing as zero value branding, unless you messed up royally somehow. I agree that in this project it's not important, but marketing (i.e. docs, logo, community, etc) is an integral part of every major open source project out there.
  - rglullis 12y ago
    Excuse me while I put my marketer conspiracy hat and reply with "That's what they want you to think..." Of course software creators want to have some sort of differentiation between their products and the competitors, but - as a consumer - branding has zero value if the products are interchangeable. Just looking at Open Source web browsers: look at Chrome/Firefox. If the organizations (Google/Mozilla) behind the development were to start charging in exchange of the use of the brand, wouldn't people drop the branded product and switch to the brandless versions (Chromium/Icefox)?
tucosan 12y ago
I understand where you are coming from, and the critique may be valid for e.g. commercial projects that need to distinguish themselves from competition. This is an open source project for home automation though. Similar to bootstrap polymer seems to be the perfect fit for a project like this.
mrfusion 12y ago
I'm just hearing of polymer. I looked around their website and I'm totally not getting what it is. What would I use it for? What does it replace? What does it make easier?
- balloob 12y ago
  Polymer builds on top of the draft HTML standard of being able to register your own HTML tags that contain HTML, CSS and JavaScript. This opens the way for writing your website with components like: <google-maps center="London" /> <twitter-tweet id="ABCD" /> <facebook-like id="ABCD" /> <youtube-video id="ABCD" /> Components use internally a shadow DOM for representation so that they are untouched by / do not affect the CSS on the main page.

rglullis 12y ago

Why is that a bad thing? For me at least, the goal is to have a free, usable, recognizable UX. Not to have a "brand". It's open source, it's not supposed to be invested in zero-value branding. In the past 10-15 years open source software had to catch up with Windows applications, and when they did people would think the problem was in UX. Now that good UX is coming to OSS and we can finally catch up with Apple, you want to reject it?

ulisesrmzroche 12y ago
There's no such thing as zero value branding, unless you messed up royally somehow. I agree that in this project it's not important, but marketing (i.e. docs, logo, community, etc) is an integral part of every major open source project out there.
- rglullis 12y ago
  Excuse me while I put my marketer conspiracy hat and reply with "That's what they want you to think..." Of course software creators want to have some sort of differentiation between their products and the competitors, but - as a consumer - branding has zero value if the products are interchangeable. Just looking at Open Source web browsers: look at Chrome/Firefox. If the organizations (Google/Mozilla) behind the development were to start charging in exchange of the use of the brand, wouldn't people drop the branded product and switch to the brandless versions (Chromium/Icefox)?

tucosan 12y ago

I understand where you are coming from, and the critique may be valid for e.g. commercial projects that need to distinguish themselves from competition. This is an open source project for home automation though. Similar to bootstrap polymer seems to be the perfect fit for a project like this.

mrfusion 12y ago

I'm just hearing of polymer. I looked around their website and I'm totally not getting what it is. What would I use it for? What does it replace? What does it make easier?

balloob 12y ago
Polymer builds on top of the draft HTML standard of being able to register your own HTML tags that contain HTML, CSS and JavaScript. This opens the way for writing your website with components like: <google-maps center="London" /> <twitter-tweet id="ABCD" /> <facebook-like id="ABCD" /> <youtube-video id="ABCD" /> Components use internally a shadow DOM for representation so that they are untouched by / do not affect the CSS on the main page.