Re: [mh] MH5.1 + The Future

It took me a while to notice this thread, as my usual "free time" from work (my business) is usually spent working on things around the house, family, Running, Kung-Fu, etc. Once in a while I get to work on enhancing my user code in MH and even less time to lurk in the list, reply... I'd love to upgrade to some newer version of MH, but I fear that I'd have to spend a few days (weeks?) on an off debugging code that very much works well for me. Most things just work without me thinking about it, and we have become accustomed to the automation, announcements, etc.

I have been using MH since early 2002 (I found my introductory post here: https://sourceforge.net/p/misterhouse/mailman/message/13483084/), and later in 2003 contributed PAObj.pm, pa_control.pl and speech_clash.pl... then got out of it in late 2004 when our house was for sale... I resurrected my interest (a couple years later?) after we ended up NOT moving. I haven't been able to contribute much lately. ☹ We're still in the same house and we have automated scheduled lights, reminders about taking medications and cleaning the cat litterbox. I can control almost everything from my phone with voice, I get announcements on my phone about things happening at home, etc, etc.

Anyway, I really hope to upgrade by spring (northern hemisphere) and I VERY MUCH appreciate all the work that everyone here has contributed. I just wish I had enough time to be social here and let everyone know about my appreciation more often.

All the best!

Steve


-----Original Message-----
From: H Plato <[email protected]> 
Sent: Friday, November 2, 2018 11:17 AM
To: Richard F <[email protected]>
Cc: [email protected]
Subject: Re: [mh] MH5.1 + The Future

Thanks Richard, those are excellent points, and indeed I feel the same way. I have usercode that is dated 2007, and they still ‘just work'

A suggestion for those that have older versions, but want to look at the new features for value.  MH has the ability to run multiple instances, I run 3 on my main server. One for the bulk of the logic, one for ‘web services — those code modules that might create pauses’, and another for non-critical MH stuff that I don’t need in the main loop. I run each of these instances on a separate IP address on my linux server. I use the xAP infrastructure to keep the states in sync. ($item->xAP_enable()). 

This would allow someone to start up a new v5+ instance of MH on a separate IP or port, configure a few generic_items with the same name as objects in another MH instance, and then test  out if the new features (web interface, homekit, alexa, google home, etc…) are useful and worth upgrading to.


> On Nov 2, 2018, at 8:03 AM, Richard F via misterhouse-users <[email protected]> wrote:
> 
> I'm also a long-time user of MH (2008), but lurk on the list picking 
> up the odd hint here or there.
> 
> I have sent in some code snippets (Squeezeplayer integration recently, 
> which I continue to tweak), but a fair amount of my code is very 
> custom and so not easy to describe or particularly useful if you don't 
> have my hardware.  Longer term, I would like to move to the MH Git 
> branch, but as John, it's too important to change without a lot of 
> testing (no heating, lighting... and important integrations that make 
> all the difference).  With the experience I can reliably 
> maintain/improve my environment without breakage - so yes maturity is 
> in several ways a reason for the limited traffic on this list.  For 
> ref. I achieve around "three nines" availability, and a lot of the 
> "unavailability" is a result of enforced OS updates, and I value 
> availability highest next to functionality.  Did I mention that MH never crashes or loses it's config ?
> 
> MH has a lot of strengths that are too easily ignored today.  No.1 of 
> course is Open Source and portability - Perl may be old, but it does 
> gradually improve from release to release and probably has the widest 
> range of library support out there due to longevity, and I doubt will 
> die before me.  A lot of new stuff comes and goes with fashion, tied 
> to vendor's aspirations (including Google who are actually one of the 
> most fickle - Wikipedia lists nearly 50 closed projects!  Google Plus anyone?).
> 
> With an infrastructure that is 100% open source, nobody can entirely 
> obsolete it, though takeovers of Github and now Redhat threaten even
> this) - having somewhat of a "prepper" attitude with your core system 
> isn't so bad an idea - I keep spare chips etc that may go obsolete.
> Your home infrastructure needs stability - tie yourself to (a limited 
> number of) vendors whims, worse "cloud" whims, and your investment in 
> time and money getting it "just right" with 3 9's reliability, may 
> disappear!  IA5 may be a bit dated, it does work acceptably on a 2018 
> Android and gets the job done, I'm sure IA7 would be better, but it's 
> testament to good initial design that MH/IA5 keeps on working though 3 
> major Linux migrations including a switch from 32 to 64 bit with 
> barely a tweak.  Actually later Perl versions showed pre-existing bugs 
> in my code, easily fixed.
> 
> So, a massive vote for MH, let's all continue improving it!
> 
> Richard
> 
> On 28/10/2018 00:04, john wrote:
>> On another note, I’d be interested in the community’s perspective on 
>> the future of MH. It seems like there’s been a reduction in messages 
>> on the mailing lists, and not a big list of contributors submitting 
>> pull requests. I don’t know if this is due to the stability and 
>> maturity of MH, or if users are moving away to different directions.
>> MH is definitely one of the oldest DIY HA products out there, but it 
>> seems like on-premise solutions are being more difficult to find.
>> 
>> 
> 
> 
> 
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