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Point – A smart house sitter

formdevices.com

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Re: Point – A smart house sitter

#71

Post by Siliticxx »

Agustus wrote: post #56

Hi Form engineers and Form finance department, you have my attention and desire to purchase this. Can you provide answers to the following questions: 1. How much will this cost to purchase? 2. Will their be a subscription fee? 3. How is the Point system installed, from the video it appeared to be a magnet? 4. When is the actual release timeline, so I can start figuring out where I can put this in my house or if I sho…

I'm assuming we will have all those informations in the kickstarter. Which i assume is both marketing and might be a way to produce in mass.

Re: Point – A smart house sitter

#72

Post by Siliticxx »

rdl wrote: post #70

Huge points for doing this onsite vs. in the cloud. I'd want to audit the firmware, and would put it behind a firewall blocking outbound connections. I'd like the ability to monitor a few sites, though -- not just my home, but also a storage/warehouse space, potentially an office, vacation home, parking spot, etc. Being able to monitor all of those in a single app would be awesome. I'm willing to trust you with proce…

I dont understand what you're saying. You don't want to have cloud integration yet you want to have monitor remotely?

How would that work without server software?

Re: Point – A smart house sitter

#73

Post by trebor »

headgasket wrote: post #69
ancarda wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are there any plans to have an Ethernet model rather than Wi-Fi?

I'd second the want for ethernet with PoE, with slots for rechargeable AA batteries for power outages. I bet more than 10% of fire alarms currently installed in the USA have a dead battery.

I'll third the desire. We've been turning the WiFi off at night, and virtually every AP we've had has had issues. So I'd much rather use ethernet for something as critical as security, due to past WiFi issues.

Re: Point – A smart house sitter

#74

Post by Agustus »

Siliticxx wrote: post #71
Agustus wrote: post #56

Hi Form engineers and Form finance department, you have my attention and desire to purchase this. Can you provide answers to the following questions: 1. How much will this cost to purchase? 2. Will their be a subscription fee? 3. How is the Point system installed, from the video it appeared to be a magnet? 4. When is the actual release timeline, so I can start figuring out where I can put this in my house or if I sho…

I'm assuming we will have all those informations in the kickstarter. Which i assume is both marketing and might be a way to produce in mass.

Yes, but since the developers are chatting about stuff on here and giving answers, a basic summary would be great. If not, then I will forget about it in a few hours and wait for it to clear Kickstarter, I do not need to go through the fundraising drive of another e-mail push.

This speaks to what kickstarter is becoming, a viral method for corralling sales through an accepted platform and deferring capital risk. Point has prototypes, the company has blog posts from people knowledgeable in the intricacies of handling the Chinese copyright issue, sourcing, and is essentially ready for market except for the ability to purchase it.

Kickstarter is being used in this instance for one of two reasons:

1. Capital risk: Contracts may be in place with their manufacturer to do certain run ups, instead of taking the risk themselves, Kickstarter funds will be used to offset the risk of the product marketing going wrong.

2. Product awareness: Kickstarter provides a great social media platform through which to raise awareness, create a community, and drive sales at different price points.

Re: Point – A smart house sitter

#75

Post by venomsnake »

Siliticxx wrote: post #72
rdl wrote: post #70

Huge points for doing this onsite vs. in the cloud. I'd want to audit the firmware, and would put it behind a firewall blocking outbound connections. I'd like the ability to monitor a few sites, though -- not just my home, but also a storage/warehouse space, potentially an office, vacation home, parking spot, etc. Being able to monitor all of those in a single app would be awesome. I'm willing to trust you with proce…

I dont understand what you're saying. You don't want to have cloud integration yet you want to have monitor remotely? How would that work without server software?

An innovative concept - the server software is installed on raspberry pi I own.

Re: Point – A smart house sitter

#76

Post by forrestthewoods »

Agustus wrote: post #56

Hi Form engineers and Form finance department, you have my attention and desire to purchase this. Can you provide answers to the following questions: 1. How much will this cost to purchase? 2. Will their be a subscription fee? 3. How is the Point system installed, from the video it appeared to be a magnet? 4. When is the actual release timeline, so I can start figuring out where I can put this in my house or if I sho…

I'm not a member of Form, but I'll answer number 5 for them.

Because Kickstarter is an unbelievably powerful form of marketing. You get a huge a number of eyeballs, reduce risk with an almost but not quite pre-order, and you build an extremely passionate fan base.

Assuming they do have the infrastructure required to launch I would almost ask why not launch a Kickstarter? Zero to huge reward for little to no risk. That's a helluva deal!

Re: Point – A smart house sitter

#77

Post by swamp40 »

k0ngo wrote: post #16
13 wrote: post #2

> "Nothing is recorded or sent across the network. Peace of mind, without giving up on privacy." Devices like this still make me uncomfortable, given the track record of even large companies making extremely insecure devices[1]. [1]: http://www.ioactive.com/news-events/IOActive_advisory_belkin...

Form engineer here. We're not planning on shipping our firmware signing keys along with our product like Belkin did. Jokes aside, security, integrity and trust are our very top priorities. The hardware is designed in a way that should be extremely hard to misuse, and even if someone would be able to break the encrypted protocols, the encrypted and signed firmware images and manage to run custom firmwares on the MCU:s…

As a fellow embedded design engineer, I would advise you to read up a bit on the Greek gods Hubris and Nemesis.

Re: Point – A smart house sitter

#78

Post by jhonovich »

kristiandupont wrote: post #47
jhonovich wrote: post #37

Is this supposed to replace a home alarm system? can someone from Form clarify?

If you have a full-blown home security system installed currently, you might not feel that this is enough for you. We are primarily targeting people who don't want those systems either because they are too expensive or bothersome, or because they feel that it's a tad orwellian. As I wrote in another response, many of the features have been designed with home sharers (AirBnB hosts) in mind.

How accurate will it be in detecting whether someone has broken into my home? Are you positioning your product to accurately detect intruders?

Re: Point – A smart house sitter

#79

Post by tlrobinson »

trebor wrote: post #73
headgasket wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd second the want for ethernet with PoE, with slots for rechargeable AA batteries for power outages. I bet more than 10% of fire alarms currently installed in the USA have a dead battery.

I'll third the desire. We've been turning the WiFi off at night, and virtually every AP we've had has had issues. So I'd much rather use ethernet for something as critical as security, due to past WiFi issues.

Out of curiosity, why do you turn off WiFi at night?

Re: Point – A smart house sitter

#80

Post by mbesto »

Agustus wrote: post #56

Hi Form engineers and Form finance department, you have my attention and desire to purchase this. Can you provide answers to the following questions: 1. How much will this cost to purchase? 2. Will their be a subscription fee? 3. How is the Point system installed, from the video it appeared to be a magnet? 4. When is the actual release timeline, so I can start figuring out where I can put this in my house or if I sho…

wrt #5-

Little known secret, most successful Kickstarter campaigns have 25% of their demand already assessed and paid for up front. (yes, this includes the infamous Pebble). Since KS is so ubiquitous, it's now generally regarded as a PR/marketing platform as opposed to a funding platform. It would make total sense for these guys to do Kickstarter.

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