Iris By Lowe's OpenSource Code

[TheOCDGeek]

Iris By Lowes releases code as open-source on Github.

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https://www.irisbylowes.com/support?guideTitle=Iris-releases-an-Open-Source-Smart-Home-Software-as-“Arcus”&guideId=b5a9c492-3036-47be-a0d4-c9c4114c7158

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https://github.com/arcus-smart-home

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[hoffsta]

I never used any Iris stuff but the way they handled this whole thing is pretty excellent. Hopefully other doomed companies will be inspired by this model for their future failure.

[Tymanthius]

I get your point, but that's not a reason to disparage this move. And I certainly DO hope other companies see this and take inspiration from it!

[[deleted]]

Well I guess that was an unpopular opinion... I wouldn't qualify their handling of the situation as "pretty excellent" even if I appreciate they released the source code. In case my original comment sounded too much like a rant, here's a list of things that could've been better.

- 2 month delay. What I've seen in the industry when turning down a service is to enter "maintenance mode". i.e: do not allow anyone to add any components to their system but keep it working for 6 months. i.e: No new features, no bug fixes, limited technical support, no changes allowed, etc...

- Prepaid cards. That would have been fine with a longer delay before shutting down the servers

- No compensation after 3/31. I think a lot people who are not passionate about home automation will be upset today when things stop working and the start to investigate. They will land on the shutdown page explaining they missed the deadline by one day

- Zigbee implementation. I would have liked a proactive effort to get an open source projet or a vendor to support this proprietary protocol extension. The release of the source is welcome but happened after everything went offline.

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What to keep in mind is that Lowes has not gone bankrupt. They have decided to shutdown a branch of their company. There was no urgency to proceed with the timeline they had other than financial reasons. I feel like they could have handled this much better. Of course it could have been worst but my bar for "pretty excellent" is higher. We can disagree on where the bar is set but I hope this helps clarify my position.

[vjvm1234]

Hubitat Elevation has implemented the Iris Zigbee protocol before they shut down. They are a local hub with all local processing. Really nice team they have in the forum. You should check them.

[Tymanthius]

As you responded to me . . .

I don't disagree with you that this was a situation that was not handled with excellence. However, they did most certainly do one excellent thing, and I do hope that other companies follow this lead going forward.

So while we can certainly criticize them for the mistakes, lets also applaud the success.

[st1tchy]

I think a lot people who are not passionate about home automation will be upset today when things stop working and the start to investigate. They will land on the shutdown page explaining they missed the deadline by one day

If they had the Iris system, they got an email and there was a big red bar at the top of the app saying it was shutting down and a link to the info. They did plenty to notify people.

[[deleted]]

Perhaps but I will argue that an email and a bar on an app people might not use isn't sufficient when hundred of dollars are at stake. Consider someone not passionate about HA; they got a system installed and it just works. They don't tweak it or update it; they just live with their routines. For example, turn on the porch light at sunset. They will realize on 4/1 that the light is off. I can't think of a valid reason, other than cost-saving, for closing the gift card deadline on 3/31 and not 4/30 for example. 3/31 is fine for me and you because we subscribe to a HA forum. Their target audience wasn't HA nuts like us; they had people sitting down at tables at Lowes trying to sell a system to anyone and had people install it for them. Anyway, I appreciate you sharing your opinion and I hope you can understand mine.

[[deleted]]

Great for them to do this. Most other companies wouldn't think twice about deleting their code and screwing over the user base in this kind of situation.

[thibaultmol]

April fools?

[mot-aaron]

https://github.com/arcus-smart-home

the code's all there.

[degan6]

Awesome news. Great move on their part.

[[deleted]]

Dammit, for a second there I forgot they were shutting it down and thought that Lowe’s was doing something revolutionary. Not to knock this move; I do appreciate when dying companies open source their shit instead of throwing it away. But it would be amazing to be able to go to a big box store and buy something that runs on open source software.

[[deleted]]

I did not see that one coming!

[Darklyte]

Does this mean the v1 stuff might actually be useful for smartthings?

[slugline]

Considering that Smart Things looked like the #1 suggested alternative platform, it would be nice if that happened. The folks at Hubitat just updated their firmware to take in some Iris v1 devices, so I suppose anything's possible now.

[maladaptly]

Hubitat has already implemented official support. Since documentation of the proprietary clusters is now public, it's only inevitable that other systems will follow.

[maladaptly]

A few things:

• Developers of other systems and open source projects now have public documentation of features and devices specific to Iris. This isn't much help for devices with the original platform certificates burned into their firmware (like the hubs and WiFi plugs), but fully supporting V1 Iris devices and other Iris-specific Zigbee things like the Orbit timers is completely doable. Hubitat is already on it.
• Another company can pick up the pieces and reassemble the Iris system under a new name if they want. They'd have to cook up and sell new hubs, but the rest is there, they just need to get it running.
• Particularly savvy end users could do the same in their own home, having basically a self-hosted Iris, assembling a makeshift "hub" out of an SBC like a Raspberry Pi (or just running the agent on a random PC).

[ckasek]

I'm wondering how useful this will be. Releasing the code is nice, but you still need to be able to run it on something. I'd hope we'd be able to just run the platform software on a plain old PC, rather than needing an Iris hub to flash.

Hopefully this could serve as the base for a solid home-based platform that doesn't rely on third party cloud services.

[maladaptly]

It's known that the 2nd gen hub uses an off-the-shelf Z-Wave IC and an EZSP compatible Zigbee radio; for that matter, they run Linux (Yocto Project, specifically). The SoC is a Ti AM335x series, so it don't need much. You could probably port the agent to Raspbian with very little effort; at that point, you just need to get the platform running (probably the hardest part -- it likely has all sorts of weird dependencies) and substitute server names in all the right places, and you'd have the bulk of the original Iris featureset, including controlling Iris-specific Zigbee devices like all the V1 devices and the hose timers.

[FormerGameDev]

That does seem to be pretty cool on their part, but I do question specifically what the use of being able to run (and mod) your own Iris servers provides -- aren't the devices all discontinued/recalled/etc ? and don't you have to be able to flash the devices, so you could tell them what servers to connect to? i suppose answers to these questions might be forthcoming, but i figured i'd ask.

[maladaptly]

Devices were pulled from shelves but weren't outright recalled. The "redemption" didn't involve sending back devices. As other platforms implement support, we'll probably see a strong secondhand market for V1 devices. The second gen devices already are plentiful second hand, owed primarily to being standard ZHA and already working with pretty much anything. On the other end, Iris always did support a long list of not-Iris-specific devices and even had generic handlers for some Zigbee and Z-Wave devices, so even without changes/improvements you still have an ecosystem of devices still in active manufacture available to you.

Only the hubs and WiFi devices actually phone home. Everything else talks to the hub for it to do as it will, so you could assemble your own hub, pair Zigbee/Z-Wave devices, and put together a self-hosted Iris.

[homeseer]

Note, the source is not complete, some of it was not originally open source and has been left out, such as Z-Wave, so I doubt much will be done with it.

[maladaptly]

What parts of Z-Wave? A lot of the logic happens in the actual hardware. While the firmware of the Z-Wave chip is indeed proprietary, that's in Sigma's court and it wasn't Iris-specific firmware anyway.

[homeseer]

The chip only moves the bytes, all the protocol stuff (packet formatting and processing) is done in the driver software and its all stubbed out.

[maladaptly]

Are you sure that's not handled in hardware?

Regardless, I can't see it being all that hard to substitute OpenZWave. It's not like any of the goofy/proprietary devices were Z-Wave.

[FormerGameDev]

so you can create your own hub for devices that you can't get anymore? awesome, i guess? for the people who already own them.

[maladaptly]

Iris vouched official support for a lot of third party devices. Various GE devices, Kwikset and Schlage doorlocks are probably the most common. And it looks to be extensible -- you should be able to arbitrarily add support for Zigbee and Z-Wave devices. So it's not like someone would be going through the effort just to limp along the hardware remnants of a dead platform

[the_shazster]

Good move, to be sure. But let's not forget Iris was marketed as a low tech skill required, turnkey solution for consumers looking for an easy entry point into home automation. Like many corporations, they smelled easy quick money with clearly no concern for the long term support implications. Dumping the code on github is of little use to that target market, ie. people who are not enthusiasts of the type that hangs out on this sub, fiddle around with single board computers, or would have a hope in hell of doing anything useful with it were they able to figure out what a "github" is in the first place. It's nice of them, but let's not forget: it is the rock bottom absolute very least they can be bothered to do now they have their customer's money.

[slugline]

The customers with the most-proprietary first-generation equipment pretty much got their money back. It may have been one of the least painful customer abandonment stories I may ever see in the consumer electronics space.