Shion Online

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.

Shion Touch 1.0β3 is now available.

This is the first public release of Shion Touch.

If you are a Shion Touch beta tester and have submitted your iOS device ID (here’s how to find it) to touch-beta@shiononline.com, feel free to download and install this beta app.

Installation instructions:

1. Download Shion_Touch_1.0b3.ipa. Drag this file to your iTunes library.

2. Download Shion_Touch.mobileProvision. Drag this file to your iTunes library. (This is apparently not needed with recent iOS developments.)

3. If you have not already done so, create a free beta testing account.

4. In Shion.app, enter your account information in the “Online” section of the preferences.

5. Install Shion Touch to your iOS device. On first run, the app will prompt you to enter your account information.

6. Have fun!

If you have not submitted your iOS UDID and are interested in beta testing this app, please send your device ID to mailto:touch-beta@shiononline.com and we’ll update the appropriate files. Note that due to Apple’s limitation on public iOS beta testing, we may not be able to accomodate all requests.

Since this workflow is still under development and probably still contains issues, please report any problems in the comments below.

After a busy week of client work, I spent most of today hacking on Shion. For the past couple of months, I wanted to implement location-based home automation (e.g. “activate Snapshot FOO when I go more than 5 miles from home”), so I spent the day doing just that:

Rather than treat mobile clients as invisible participants in the Shion ecosystem, I went ahead and made them full peers of the other devices in the network. Doing so made it convenient for me to gather information from the devices (phones as sensors) and send instructions to the mobile client (phones as controllable devices). If you click through to the higher-resolution version of the screenshot, you’ll see that Shion gathers location information from the mobile clients and provides a “beacon” command that plays a unique sound on the mobile client (for those times when you unwittingly lose it between the couch cushion). For those concerned with sharing too much location information, a preference on the iPhone app allows it to go into private mode: beacon commands can be sent, but location data stays on the device. Since Shion does not store any of this information on a server (information passes through, but doesn’t stick around in the online components), it provides a secure alternative to other server-centric location-based services. The online service is only the conduit for passing the information from your phone to your Mac.

For those willing to share location information with their copies of Shion, a variety of interesting possibilities open up:

1. Shion can be used to define geographically-aware “zones” that associate a particular geography with an action (activate a snapshot, execute an AppleScript, etc.)
2. Shion can be used to track the location of several mobile devices simultaneously. This is much like Apple’s “Find My iPhone”, but will work on any client or device equipped with some form of geolocation functionality. On my own roadmap are Android and WebOS devices. (Both of those platforms will actually implement a richer feature set than the iOS devices on account of their unfettered multitasking abilities.)
3. By hooking into the Events system in Shion, this feature an be used to draw a map of your travels over a given period of time. Don’t remember where you saw that interesting shop? Look it up on your copy of Shion.

I’m very excited about this feature and feel that I’m only scratching the surface of the possibilities. Location-awareness will be available in the next releases of Shion & Shion Touch.

One of the main changes in Shion between versions 2 & 3 is the new support for mobile devices in version 3. Shion 3 now supports mobile interfaces on devices like the iPhone. The post below includes screenshots of the new mobile application. Before I get into the gritty details, I’d first like to invite users to join a closed beta test for Shion Touch.

Due to Apple’s restriction on pre-AppStore ad-hoc distribution, I will only be allowing fifty (50) users in this first set of tests. If you are interested in being part of this test, please e-mail me the following details:

1. Your name & general location (US, UK, etc.)
2. The controller you’re using with Shion 3. Please include the model number.
3. A list of devices you are controlling with Shion 3. Please include model numbers of the modules you’re using.
4. What device you’d like to use with Shion Touch (iPhone, iPod Touch, iPad). Please include the generation of the device (Original, 3G, 3GS, etc.).
5. Whether you’re using Shion 3 on a single computer or multiple computers to manage multiple sites.
6. A username and initial password that you’d like to me to set up for use with the Shion online components. Please do not submit a password that you use elsewhere.
7. The computer model (make & processor) of the computer running Shion as well as the operating system version (10.4, 10.6, etc.).

I don’t mean to be intrusive, but these details are necessary for me build a maximally diverse beta testing pool. After you e-mail me, I’ll be in touch about whether you have been selected to be in the test, and if so, the next steps.

Now, on to the app preview…

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.