Shion Online

I just sent the following note out to Shion beta testers.

The gist: I recently joined a Chicago startup working to help consumers find better electricity plans, monitor their power usage, and to become better power consumers. That work has gone extremely well, and the company will be sponsoring Shion for the indefinite future, which allows me to make the full set of Shion tools completely free to interested users, including the online service.

Read more to review the letter.

I want to apologize for the radio silence over the past month. I’ve been hard at work at my new company and I’ve been working hard to add new features & devices to Shion. This post shares some of that work.

This has been a good week for Shion development. In the past few days, I’ve added support for Morning Industry computer-controllable locks using the MorningLinc, I’ve been tracking the power consumption of my washer & dryer combo unit using Shion’s new support for the iMeter Solo, and yesterday evening I added support for the TED 5000 smart meter.

Despite its early stage of development, the TED 5000 may be one of the better devices I’ve had the pleasure of supporting in Shion. There was an initial struggle installing the thing (it doesn’t have WiFi and can be picky about which power outlet it can use to communicate with the hardware in the breaker box), but once I had it working, adding support was simple. It uses a simple & straightforward XML API for communicating its readings, and those readings are probably being updated more frequently than I’ve designed the Shion events infrastructure to handle. Using the code I wrote for the iMeter earlier this week, I was able to get Shion talking to the meter with full graphing in less than an hour.

The major reason that I wanted to support this uint was to begin building a model of my electricity consumption on a per-device basis. Since it isn’t feasible for me to connect an iMeter or SynchroLinc to every device, I’m planning on using Shion’s stored state to generate statistical models that describe how much each device contributes to the overall power draw. Device states go on the left-hand of the equation, the total power draw goes on the right-hand side of the equation, and I run a simple linear regression to get the coefficients. That’s the theory & plan and I’ll be posting some entries later over the next couple of weeks describing how it works in practice.

One bit of new information that I discovered was the huge power draw that the air conditioner used. From my rough readings, my home has about a 400W “base” draw consisting of various appliances & computers that are left on at all times. When the air conditioner starts, it adds 1800-2000W to the power consumption, far dwarfing the other devices. I expected a major power draw, but not one that quadrupled my overall consumption!

Since my Venstar Insteon thermostat only reports mode, set points, and temperature and NOT if the unit is running, I’ll have to get creative in my statistical modeling to associate more closely the observed power draw with the the spikes in electricity consumption. I have several ideas about how I might accomplish this, and will be posting updates in the weeks ahead. Stay tuned.

Shion 3.0β10 is now available.

Please read the following release notes carefully.

This is a beta release for Shion 3. This software is still under construction and has some rough edges. In no particular order, some of the current major issues:

1. The RemoteBuddy interface remains unimplemented.

2. The Bluetooth and GPS devices have not yet been implemented.

3. Sprinkler support is currently missing.

4. Changes in the device configuration from the preferences panel (modem & controllers) require an application restart to take effect.

Changes

This release fixes a handful of issues (reenables PPC support) & adds support for iMeter Solo power meters. Add an iMeter Solo to your Shion setup using the Devices: Insteon: Power Meter Sensor under the Add (“+”) button in the lower-left. The iMeter Solo differs from the other Power Sensor (SynchroLinc) in that it provides the real-time power draw of a connected device instead of a binary On/Off status. In an upcoming release, I’ll be expanding support for real-time power meters by adding support for the TED 5000 series of devices.

Also, please submit any other feedback in the comments below.

I wanted to thank everyone who sent in reports of issues running Shion on PowerPC machines. It was not my intention to drop support for PPC, rather it was the result of a silent Xcode defaults switch that caused the issue.

Apple may be throwing PPC support to the wind, but I wanted to reiterate that I’m planning on supporting that architecture as long as I can. I’ll probably drop 10.4 support before I’ll drop PPC support. (Not that there are any plans to drop 10.4 support at the moment.)

Again, apologies for the inconvenience and for not catching that issue in the most recent build. I should have an update that fixes the problem available later this evening.

Shion 3.0β9 is now available.

Please read the following release notes carefully.

This is a beta release for Shion 3. This software is still under construction and has some rough edges. In no particular order, some of the current major issues:

1. The RemoteBuddy interface remains unimplemented.

2. The Bluetooth, and GPS  have not yet been implemented.

3. Sprinkler support is currently missing.

4. Changes in the device configuration from the preferences panel (modem & controllers) require an application restart to take effect.

Changes

This release fixes a handful of issues & adds support for TiVo DVRs within Shion and Shion Touch.

To add a TiVo to Shion, add it from the “Add” button on the lower-left, select Device: Other: TiVo Digital Video Recorder. An add menu will appear and Shion will attempt to locate the device using Bonjour. If the address does not automatically appear, please manually enter the device’s IP address (this can be found in the TiVo setup screens). You will also need to locate your Media Access Key from your account settings on the TiVo website.

The Tivo interface only displays recordings on the device. I have an API for emulating a TiVo remote control, but have held off in including it in the interface as I work out an appropriate interface. If controlling your TiVo from Shion (or Shion Touch) would be a useful feature, please let me know in the comments below.

Also, please submit any other feedback in the comments below.

It’s been a hectic couple of months and a variety of uncertainties delayed public progress on Shion. Things have changed for me professionally in such a manner that brings Shion back to the forefront and development will resume shortly.  Part of my new professional life has significant benefits for new & current Shion users.

Shion 3.0β8 is now available.

Please read the following release notes carefully.

This is a beta release for Shion 3. This software is still under construction and has some rough edges. In no particular order, some of the current major issues:

1. The RemoteBuddy interface remains unimplemented.

2. The DVR, Bluetooth, and GPS  have not yet been implemented.

3. Sprinkler support is currently missing.

4. Changes in the device configuration from the preferences panel (modem & controllers) require an application restart to take effect.

Changes

This release fixes a handful of memory leaks and other performance issues. Users should notice better performance across the board.

Please submit any feedback in the comments below.

Shion 3.0β7 is now available.

Please read the following release notes carefully.

This is a beta release for Shion 3. This software is still under construction and has some rough edges. In no particular order, some of the current major issues:

1. The RemoteBuddy interface remains unimplemented.

2. The DVR, Bluetooth, and GPS  have not yet been implemented.

3. Sprinkler support is currently missing.

4. Changes in the device configuration from the preferences panel (modem & controllers) require an application restart to take effect.

Changes

This release adds support for the new Insteon SynchroLinc load sensors as “Power Sensors” within Shion. It also includes a number of bug fixes and performance enhancements.

Please submit any feedback in the comments below.

Between consulting work and some big changes in my personal life, I’ve been neglecting Shion & Shion Online lately. I wanted to explain what’s been happening and what’s on the agenda.

The Shion Online launch

When I was planning late last year, I was hoping to launch Shion Online as a paid service sometime in late March or early April. I have the user account and payment infrastructure in place, and making the service “live” is currently a matter of me writing a few features to help users manage their account (change/retrieve password, cancel subscription, etc.) and changing my backend to point to the live Chargify site instead of the current test site.

Apple’s thrown a wrench into these plans by making signals that they will require in-app purchases for subscription services. While Apple hasn’t made it clear whether this policy would apply to Shion (there have been conflicting signals going both ways), I’m currently exercising the luxury of waiting to see what happens. Since Apple really doesn’t bring much to the process of recruiting Shion users (forcing me to distribute via the App Store cancels out any benefits of hosting the app, IMHO), I’m hesitant to acquiesce to their current scheme until I have reviewed the options available to me.

While I was previously content to launch on the Mac and iOS devices, this abrupt change in the App Store rules has prompted me to increase the priority of my Windows and Android ports of the respective Shion components. My plan has always been to expand the system to non-Apple platforms – the only question was whether that would happen before or after the initial launch. While I’m still reviewing my options, my inclination is to delay the official launch of the service until I have my Android mobile app out and the desktop app ported to Windows.

What this means for users is that the beta period will extend until whenever the service officially launches. I’m still interested in signing up iOS beta testers, but my focus will begin to shift towards Android as soon as I make a few more changes in the current offerings.

The new Shion test lab

One of the reasons that recent progress on Shion has been delayed is that my wife and I are wrapping up the purchase of our first home next week. Given that it’s of relatively recent construction, I couldn’t have asked for a better environment to fully outfit an environment for testing and evaluation purposes. While we go through the kabuki of the purchase process, I’ve delayed a few fixes and new features until we’re moved in and I can test them in this new environment.

Realistically speaking, we should be moved in and I’ll be back up to speed with Shion development by the middle of March. As a current resident of a Chicago high-rise, I’m quite excited about the change, as I’ll be able to install and test much more hardware than was possible before.

I’ll have a small garden, so the sprinkler module will get some nice real-world usage. We’ll have a proper entryway, so I’ll be able to evaluate both the door ringers as well as deploy Shion-controlled video cameras. When the inspector reviewed the place, she mentioned that the appliances would need replacement soon, so keep an eye out for Shion supporting smart ovens and refrigerators.

I’m quite excited about this, but apologize for the delay this change has introduced.

Thank you for your patience.