Lots of good questions here, but I think the critical question is whether it's compatible with any of the other emerging standards like Z-Wave. Can someone from Ninja Blocks weigh in on this? There are a ton of Z-Wave components I'd love to mix in here.
It's not (see second to last paragraph - Q #3, and answer follows from the NinjaBlocks site). Z-Wave and Insteon are the defacto standard, if it doesn't support it - it's not going to fly. I'm guessing they didn't want to deal with licensing.
And, Z-Wave isn't emerging - it's been around for quite a while. It's not perfect (most low power mesh wireless networking standards have their flaws), but what NinjaBlocks has chosen to implement is not something you want in a system you depend on. Insteon has the advantage of wireless plus being able to operate over powerline (i.e. your home power distribution).
You could - but then you would have to be a member of the Z-Wave Alliance (http://www.z-wavealliance.org/z-wave-for-developers-oems). There are other alternatives with it built in - so it's not worth the cost if all you want to do is control.
That page is also linked from the OPs original post under "Where can I get additional sensors?" - so I'm guessing that information is correct. Since it's the only information available, I'll treat it as such until they provide more details otherwise.
It's a bummer - I've gotten my hopes up for a few platforms as of late, all have been let-downs in their own way.
Hey @windexh8er, from the sounds of it you are already well automated! I'm not sure how much NB offers you today, however ...
Ninja is ultimately (read: not yet) a meta-platform for connecting stuff. As you point out, there are plenty of different approaches and technology with advantages/disadvantages. We think the thing what is really missing in the landscape today is interoperability. Say you want to give access to your security system's motion detectors to a third-party app that helps you save energy, that is nigh on impossible with an OTS offering. That kind of thing is exactly what we enable (albeit a little crippled) today.
Its early days and we have a metric-shiton of stuff to do, some of which includes:
* making the webservice fully or partially optional - current cloud driven architecture is for expedience
* supporting lots more sidebands than just 433 - again chosen for expedience and cost. Z-wave is better, no doubt, but its not really justified in the mega premium per device i.e. $70 for z-wave PIR vs ~$15 for 433. BTW we have proof-of-concept support for Zigbee Light Link via a USB dongle on a block.
* publishing a public repository of local modules to make it easy to wrap (and share wrappers) for proprietary/lan based offerings (think wemo, philips hue, etc)
Another thing to note is that we are a hardware company by necessity not choice. You can run our (node.js) client on an RPi, beagle bone, media centre pc, etc.
Anyhoo, I digressed. We hope to have something that you can get excited about one day in the not too distant future ;)
I think the NinjaBlocks folks are missing the point here...
Interop is key in an automation / security / energy platform. Saving energy, as you state, is fully baked into the MiCasaVerde platform (and others I'm sure) today - see ERGY (http://www.ergyenergy.com/). So, please don't make that assumption that it's not there in others.
I still don't get your target market. It seems to me it's the people who don't really mind a half-baked solution, or is it geared towards people that will go the remaining 80% (there are a lot of things missing the more I look at this platform for a serious contender in full HA). Your cost estimates are way off base here - I've never paid $70 for a PIR with Z-Wave - try more along the lines of $35 and the cost of these controllers is coming down. And, again, you can't take 433MHz seriously. You do realize that your entire system is proximal to the RF of your 1 controller, right? Whereas in my Z-Wave system I can fully extend out into a huge building and take full advantage of a self-healing, self-routing mesh network. As I stated before - 433MHz stuff is junk, and if you're even paying $10 for a similar PIR controller, you're getting what you pay for - something that doesn't work well. This is why I'm not a fan of WiFi only devices such as SPARK. Think very large home or business - unless you have great WiFi coverage everywhere (since these little devices generally have crappy radios / antenna) . This is something people who don't actually use home automation won't think about - because they don't actually use it. But in my mind 433MHz in an HA system is akin to Internet banking without encryption - sure, you can do it, but it's going to break quick once you really want to take it seriously.
So with the system I have implemented today:
* Control Insteon
* Control Z-Wave
* Control IP devices
* Local API access
The things that are missing are:
* Control Zigbee (this is the biggest miss and I applaud SmartThings for picking this up)
* Better UAC
This isn't a dig, but instead of making a lot of the assumptions you've put forth in your response, you should potentially team up with people who are seriously using it today and look at how they're extending it in their homes. You'd learn a lot I feel, and actually put out a product that addresses the same pitfalls everyone who's trying to play in this space is making. I know a lot of people who are using this stuff today - and we all have the same sentiment for all the new "players" - but at the end of the day the products are all still not serious contenders and I'm baffled by how SmartThings pulled $1M+ from Kickstarter by reinventing a prettier wheel.
Good luck on your attempt here - and you may want to look at what's out there in the mean time.
@windexh8er we are not as naïve as it probably seems to someone of your experience ;) We are taking a different approach to the established players and definitely the other startups - who we aren't directly trying to compete with anyway.
Would love to chat offline if you were interested in hearing our take and/or brain dumping on us - pete at ninjablocks com
