Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Show HN: Crowsnest – API for the Real World

crowsnest.io

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

21–30 of 39 posts

Re: Show HN: Crowsnest – API for the Real World

#21

Post by ianawilson »

jamesbritt wrote: post #18

These seems very much like Skynet.IM, except Skynet is opensource and you can host it yourself. https://github.com/skynetim

Skynet provides cloud infrastructure for IoT applications, but Crowsnest is aiming to have a few additional things on top of that:

    - a rich ecosystem of device integrations,
    - a framework for quickly creating new integrations, and
    - an API that abstracts these devices into organized classes with 
    their capabilities
We are actually strongly considering Skynet as a core tool of our backend to manage all of our machine-to-machine messaging.

Re: Show HN: Crowsnest – API for the Real World

#22

Post by bduerst »

chch wrote: post #15
drdaeman wrote: post #5

I don't get it. API (i.e. standardization; XKCD #927 issues aside) part is understandable - except it's not really a standard at this point. But… why would one need an intermediate party who would merely act as a proxy? Or I'm not understanding what kind of service Crownest provides? Intro pages are quite scarce on real technical details on how the whole thing works under the hood. Sorry for skepticism, but I'd say i…

Perhaps this is just rephrasing ianawilson's reply, but it seems that if Crowsnest eventually supports fifty different cameras (or switches or thermostats or what have you), then (via the tumblr demo): crowsnest_data = request.json image = base64.b64decode(crowsnest_data['files']['image']['data']) would be an abstraction layer over the internal functions of all of the cameras. That way, if I wanted to, say, build an…

How would that work? Would there be a set of standard drivers that Crows Next interacts with, that you need to have for your devices?

It would be nice if this turned out to be the "VLC Player" of home hardware, where you could fire it up and expect it to work with most devices.

That would take a ton of work on Crows Nest's part though.

Re: Show HN: Crowsnest – API for the Real World

#24

Post by grue_ »

viggity wrote: post #23

are they charging $5 per device connected to the RPi, or per RPi? Is it monthly? Website is not clear at all.

We're currently charging $5 device per month that you've registered through the RPi. The first two devices are free.

Granted, we're still getting a feel for what our pricing structure should be, do you have any feedback about our pricing structure currently?

Re: Show HN: Crowsnest – API for the Real World

#25

Post by ianawilson »

dreamfactory2 wrote: post #19
ianawilson wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Our API / cloud service is not. The device integration framework (which runs locally on the RPi) is going to be open source, so that anyone can create plugins / integrations for any IP device. Although we don't have it specced out yet, we have been talking a lot internally about using some kind of discovery protocol so that devices can report their capabilities and get up and running without an explicit integration p…

Not meant as anything but constructive observation - but not open sourcing the core means it could be seen as another closed platform play, with open source plugins being used as a way of getting free features. My guess is that if this idea is compelling enough to get traction, a FOSS version would emerge in any case - for reasons of privacy, price, technical roadmap ownership etc. and the real money would be in offe…

Yeah, releasing parts of Crowsnest as FOSS is a hotly debated topic internally. We would certainly be interested to talk to anyone who has experience running a business with a core product that is open source, especially if they were able to raise capital.

Re: Show HN: Crowsnest – API for the Real World

#26

Post by ianawilson »

bduerst wrote: post #22
chch wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Perhaps this is just rephrasing ianawilson's reply, but it seems that if Crowsnest eventually supports fifty different cameras (or switches or thermostats or what have you), then (via the tumblr demo): crowsnest_data = request.json image = base64.b64decode(crowsnest_data['files']['image']['data']) would be an abstraction layer over the internal functions of all of the cameras. That way, if I wanted to, say, build an…

How would that work? Would there be a set of standard drivers that Crows Next interacts with, that you need to have for your devices? It would be nice if this turned out to be the "VLC Player" of home hardware, where you could fire it up and expect it to work with most devices. That would take a ton of work on Crows Nest's part though.

The idea is that Crowsnest organizes what devices can do into capabilities, and anyone can build a plugin for anything using our device integration framework. A plugin maps between what Crowsnest knows as capabilities and the actual calls that need to be made to the device. Of course, we can't build something for every device, so this framework will be open source with the idea that anyone can use plugins already created for existing devices, and hopefully we can engage the community to contribute and maintain these for devices as new ones are created. As soon as we release this, we're going to seed the community with a handful of integrations that we'll maintain. And if there is anything of particular interest to our users, we'd love to support that.

We've also been toying with the idea of using some device discovery so that devices can tell Crowsnest what they are capable of without needing to build a formal plugin for it.

Re: Show HN: Crowsnest – API for the Real World

#27

Post by smurthasmith »

ianawilson wrote: post #25
dreamfactory2 wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not meant as anything but constructive observation - but not open sourcing the core means it could be seen as another closed platform play, with open source plugins being used as a way of getting free features. My guess is that if this idea is compelling enough to get traction, a FOSS version would emerge in any case - for reasons of privacy, price, technical roadmap ownership etc. and the real money would be in offe…

Yeah, releasing parts of Crowsnest as FOSS is a hotly debated topic internally. We would certainly be interested to talk to anyone who has experience running a business with a core product that is open source, especially if they were able to raise capital.

At Singly, we raised about $9mm of VC with 100% of our code open source. We saw that as absolutely essential in creating an ecosystem and it was a huge benefit in reducing customer concerns around lock in.

I like what you guys are doing and would be happy to chat if it's helpful!

Re: Show HN: Crowsnest – API for the Real World

#28

Post by ianawilson »

smurthasmith wrote: post #27
ianawilson wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, releasing parts of Crowsnest as FOSS is a hotly debated topic internally. We would certainly be interested to talk to anyone who has experience running a business with a core product that is open source, especially if they were able to raise capital.

At Singly, we raised about $9mm of VC with 100% of our code open source. We saw that as absolutely essential in creating an ecosystem and it was a huge benefit in reducing customer concerns around lock in. I like what you guys are doing and would be happy to chat if it's helpful!

If you're available, we would love to set up a call or video chat to hear more about your experience! Send me an email: ian at crowsnest dot io

Re: Show HN: Crowsnest – API for the Real World

#29

Post by hardwaresofton »

Can someone clarify the value-add? Is it a polyfill for APIs?

If the device already has an HTTP interface over the network, I don't know if it makes sense to pay per device for translation of your API calls... Also, this kind of thing, I would hope was free -- working towards adoption of a standard (i.e. if you make a jquery-level standard that unified so much functionality, at some point, people will forget the semantics of the lower levels and hopefully go to one standard)

Re: Show HN: Crowsnest – API for the Real World

#30

Post by dreamfactory2 »

ianawilson wrote: post #25
dreamfactory2 wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not meant as anything but constructive observation - but not open sourcing the core means it could be seen as another closed platform play, with open source plugins being used as a way of getting free features. My guess is that if this idea is compelling enough to get traction, a FOSS version would emerge in any case - for reasons of privacy, price, technical roadmap ownership etc. and the real money would be in offe…

Yeah, releasing parts of Crowsnest as FOSS is a hotly debated topic internally. We would certainly be interested to talk to anyone who has experience running a business with a core product that is open source, especially if they were able to raise capital.

Could be worth talking to Automattic, Acquia, Red Hat - lots of money there
Post reply on HN