Shion Online

Several months ago, I began working on the Shion iPhone client for Shion 2. The original plan was to create an iPhone client using the XMPP infrastructure that I had been building and release it early this summer. During this process, I ran into a number of challenges that prompted me to return to the desktop Shion codebase and begin renovating the core application. What began as a simple minor update to the app quickly ballooned into a massive reworking of the core application. In retrospect, this was exactly the right move.

While I will describe the iPhone app in a future post, this post discusses the major changes from Shion 2 to Shion 3. Read more for the full details.

Effective immediately, the Shion Mac desktop client is now free and may be downloaded and used with as many devices as you desire for no cost. It’ll take me some time to release an update with the license checking disabled, so please e-mail shion@audacious-software.com for your free license to use until I get around to releasing a non-license-checking update.

The reason that the desktop client is going free is because I have a few new additions to the larger Shion platform that I’ll be releasing in the coming months and the business model for Shion as a whole doesn’t work well if there’s any friction for users getting started. I’ll be happy to post more details when they’re ready, but in the meantime, please enjoy using Shion on our dime.

For those of you who purchased a Shion license in the past year, I’m prepared to give you a full refund for your purchase, so please send me an e-mail if you’d like me to get that process started.

I’m very excited about the next phase in the evolution of this software, so stay tuned to this weblog for further details.

Due to popular demand, Shion now supports SmartHome’s SmartLinc 2412N network INSTEON controller. I’ve also gone ahead and reworked the preference panel a bit to support three kinds of controllers (USB, serial port, network):

A couple of notes:

1. Unless you have one already, I do not recommend that you purchase this device for operation with Shion. The major reason is that SmartHome really dropped the ball with this device, providing no APIs or other documentation for outside control. The support that you see has been reverse-engineered by myself with consultation with the sources from the OpenLinc project.

2. The major problem with the device is that available HTTP access points are built around an atrocious AJAX interface, leading to the bewildering outcome that the device is effectively one-way only, defeating the major reasons for using the INSTEON platform.

3. This means, while you will be able to send commands out to devices, you will not be able to monitor their state, making this device really only useful for controlling lamp and appliance modules. The thermostat device does work with this, but you will not be able to get the current temperature, nor pick up any remote changes in the thermostat’s state. As for motion and contact sensors – forget about it.

4. In terms of what this device does do, you can treat it like a one-way X10 controller. Commands can be sent to both INSTEON and X10 devices without any issues.

5. If you’re a tinkerer and would like to see how I implemented support for this device, the code is available in the Shion Framework source control (ASSmartLincWebController.m).

I have some UI work that I would like to do before pushing out a new release with this functionality, but keep your eyes open over the next few days for an update.

A few days ago, I posted an update describing what the company is up to. I wanted to follow up with a products post that describes what’s going on with some of the internal Audacious Software work. Since that work is almost all Shion-related at this point, this will be a Shion post. 🙂

Read more for news on Shion, the iPhone client, and upcoming Caller ID features.