

Show HN: Python 3 home automation with Polymer/Material design front end - balloob
https://github.com/balloob/home-assistant

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cageface
The feature set is impressive and I'd certainly look into this if I had the
kind of home that could benefit from this much automation.

I do think it highlights a problem with using Polymer out of the box though.
Like Bootstrap in its early days, Polymer makes it _very_ easy to quickly
throw together a fairly polished and professional looking interface. But as
more of these come online this style is going to become increasingly stale and
generic. And since the design language of Material is so pervasive and rich I
think it's going to take a fair amount of work to customize it enough to
differentiate an implementation without destroying the integrity of the
design. Just tweaking the theme and accent color isn't going to be enough to
cure you of looking like a rebranded Google app.

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rglullis
Why is that a bad thing?

For me at least, the goal is to have a free, usable, recognizable UX. Not to
have a "brand". It's open source, it's not supposed to be invested in zero-
value branding.

In the past 10-15 years open source software had to catch up with Windows
applications, and when they did people would think the problem was in UX. Now
that good UX is coming to OSS and we can finally catch up with Apple, you want
to reject it?

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ulisesrmzroche
There's no such thing as zero value branding, unless you messed up royally
somehow.

I agree that in this project it's not important, but marketing (i.e. docs,
logo, community, etc) is an integral part of every major open source project
out there.

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rglullis
Excuse me while I put my marketer conspiracy hat and reply with "That's what
_they_ want you to think..."

Of course software creators want to have some sort of differentiation between
their products and the competitors, but - as a consumer - branding has zero
value if the products are interchangeable.

Just looking at Open Source web browsers: look at Chrome/Firefox. If the
organizations (Google/Mozilla) behind the development were to start charging
in exchange of the use of the brand, wouldn't people drop the branded product
and switch to the brandless versions (Chromium/Icefox)?

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zongitsrinzler
What do you think of Ninjasphere/Ninjablocks, since you are pretty much
scratching the same itch.

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jMyles
No X10 integration?

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jbrooksuk
It's open source and modular, add it yourself?

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jMyles
Yeah, if I use it I may just do that.

