And So It Begins

local Lutron control with the smart bridge pro will be supported on the CORE.

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As founders, Oh-La LABS is a small group of home automation enthusiasts who came together as they shared a common interest each with a unique set of skills. Our members are in the United States, China, Australia, and Europe. Our group has a wide presence within the home automation communities. But, as a group, we all wear more than one hat!

Markus takes the lead as group president and head software architect. His role includes taking charge of planning and development paths including active development on the back end of our CORE ( where the magic really happens!). His duties also include working with outside consultants and partners.

Eli is our Lead Developer. He uses his incredible skills and pinpoint eye for detail to develop our beautiful user interfaces that you have been hearing about and seeing in our videos. Eli is also a man of many other talents as he plays an active role in marketing activities too! ( all hail king Eli! )

Jason brings a wealth of business, specifically enterprise knowledge. He is an IT professional and has extensive experience in planning, design, and implementation of Enterprise Architecture. Jason’s problem solving and troubleshooting skills have been paramount. He also carries a large role in business planning and implementation ( someone has got to do it right?)

Rob is the owner of a manufacturing business. He handles a lot of the planning for shipping and marketing research. With a background in IT, he handles a lot of the daily IT maintenance and update tasks that are necessary to keep things alive. Rob also completes a lot of research on what is up & coming and how to reach people through planned marketing strategies.

And finally, I am April. An IT professional with experience in technical and business document writing, customer service including IT technical support. I am essential in making sure the wheels keep moving and things stay in order. I am always busy working on product documentation for the CORE to make sure all features are well described. On a daily basis I work closely with Markus and Eli to make sure that what is being written is a reality of what’s really happening with the CORE. I also maintain all of our community relationships including planning and support duties.

In closing, it may seem like our roles are clearly defined, but we all take an active role in Oh-La LABS success by wearing whatever hat we need that day for success. Period. There is no I in Team. There is no “can’t”. With this laser-guided focused way of thinking, we all remain active. Constantly bouncing ideas around and often put our heads together ( a think tank as you will! ) to get the job done. Noting this is in addition to some of us having active full-time jobs including families but we still managed to make the CORE a reality. This will be a success. Oh-La LABS is our family. You are our family. We are CORE.

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Hoppas du får en toppen sommar, hösten kommer snart nog i Sverige som vanligt. Ser fram emot att få höra vad alla tycker om sina CORE när de kommer i höst. Tack!

We have a high-pace of technology adoption, the flexible framework we have created combined with the wealth of open source libraries at our disposal means many things can be integrated into the CORE within just hours of starting an integration. Expect fast adoption.

Technical support is to be partially done in the community, but we will also have a separate support system handling tickets.

Future? We are here to stay and remain agile and innovative :stuck_out_tongue:

Yes.

Both, probably not perfect from day one, but will be tuned over time.

I doubt there are limitations most users will hit. When and if they do, we’ll address them. Do you have an example of an exotic automation you think would be hard to implement?

All these will be Logic Engine templates, we have had a very hard time identifying something which needs to be a separate App.

Just because we don’t call home automatically doesn’t mean we don’t allow the user to INITIATE a call home. So yes, user-initiated communication is required.

Yes, there are even node.js based projects for that particular product, so would be a rather easy integration to write as a third party.

It’s still in concept phase.

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Is the Canadian shipping accurate? Its a third of the price of the core. Or is it worst case and may be lower come ship time?

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I wanted to ask what power plug/adapter this comes with as I may get someone to bring mine from another country. I read that it has a barrel connector but what plug on the other end.

Unfortunately yes, to be honest shipping rates are much higher than we’d like them to be. Parcel shipping prices are very unstable and very high compared to normal. There will be updates to how we will be able to handle this, our intention is that if at all possible this will not be the final shipping cost.
Be on the lookout for updates on this closer to shipping times, we have multiple options and plans for how to handle shipping.

Before shipping we will contact all backers and ask them what type of connector they wish to receive. The default will be for the destination country, but we will take requests.

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I have a question, when are these likely to ship?

Thanks @markus

That sounds great with regards to shipping and the power plug.

The timeline on the Indiegogo page says late September for early birds, October for others.

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Ah I must have missed that

Not soon enough. :wink:
I need a new toy to play with. :smiley:

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The current estimate is October, as stated in the campaign. The only reasons we may see any possible delays are based on external factors, such as continued low-availability of specific chips. We monitor the world-situation and will keep all our backers informed of any changes.

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Don’t forget to leave feedback on the campaign over at Indiegogo. Every little bit helps!

Congrats for the campaign!

Will Core cope with the limitations Hubitat hub has regarding the Xiaomi devices in its zigbee network?

I mean, we know that in Hubitat we have zigbee stability problems when we add Xiaomi devices along with some other brands. It’s indicated even to use more than one hub (one being used only for Xiaomi devices) in order to avoid problems.

Will CORE address this issue?
That would be a huge upside, imho.

Thanks

YES! The Xiaomi/Aqara/Mija line runs very well on CORE.

I’ve added this question to FAQ’s on the campaign

[EDIT]
I wanted to add that we have added special handling inside the controller to handle these devices. It needs to be said that these run quite well, but they are not always perfect. AND other poor repeating devices can add to mesh issues. Dropped packets being a top mention.

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What prevents me from ordering is the unclear description of what devices will actually be supported day 1 and what is to come later …
MyQ Garage, HomeKit integration, tp-link wifi plugs, z-wave yale lock, etc are just a few of the products/features I am using.
If you have a list of devices/services that are supported, that would help a lot :slight_smile:

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Markus and I are working on that.

Have you guys tested with non - Ikea repeaters in the mesh? It’s been my experience that at least 2 other brands of outlets (ST being one of them) can destabilise the mesh for xiaomi sensors.

Also while I’m posting how would we get node red updates. Will you guys put it out as part of the Core f/w or can we do it manually (ie in case we don’t want to be guinea pigs early adopters) Also I’m assuming there will a collection of Core based nodes on day 1?

Also I’m rather curious as to why you guys haven’t sent review samples to the usual suspects since you obviously have pre production units in use now. There hasn’t been a single peep from any of the usual tech sites/YT channels.

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+1 to this, I definitely think getting some buzz on some on the home automation YouTube communities, like Paul Hibbert or others would go a long way to getting the word out. Especially since the Core is just that, a central augmentation and not a replacement of whatever someone already has, the latter of which can be hard to sell given the crowd-funded nature.

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Yes, it’s been tested. And even with Aqara routing devices, which are known to forward packets incorrectly. @markus has been running quite a few of these problem devices in his environment for quite some time with few issues.

Node-RED updates come through the same update channels as CORE. If you choose to apply them and when is up to you. Because Node-RED is available natively, doesn’t mean you must use it if you prefer to run it independently. Both are fine.

This is what we are integrating for MyQ

One of the ways we integrate with HomeKit is in the same way Homebridge does…

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