OT: Subscription billing

OT
Did he ever meet Kurt Vonnegut?


I don't get the refererence (wrt Schenectady; I know Schlachthaus Funf and Venus on the Half-Shell).


But no, not that I ever heard about. Actually, I don't think there was any overlap; my dad started with GE in 1952 IIRC, and spent a year in the Test Program at Cincinnati and Erie before moving to NY.
 
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Maybe it is my old-school thinking, but if it has a subscription cost, my first step is to look for a similar product that doesn't.

I'm not interested in leasing anything. I want to own, end of story.
 
Maybe it is my old-school thinking, but if it has a subscription cost, my first step is to look for a similar product that doesn't.

I'm not interested in leasing anything. I want to own, end of story.

Regrettably that is where the industry is changing to....all monthly/yearly costs.

AutoCad, Microsoft 360, Almost all cloud or local storage solutions that do analysis on data, all support licensing...etc
Only nice advantage is you get all the new stuff as it comes out.
 
Maybe it is my old-school thinking, but if it has a subscription cost, my first step is to look for a similar product that doesn't.

I'm not interested in leasing anything. I want to own, end of story.
And that is just fine, all of my home automation is not reliant on systems provided by anyone else: no Alexa, no Hive, no google assistant. Many members of this forum are more than capable of setting up this kind of service for themselves. Many of us are wanting to add value and offer services to our customers that they a) want and b) can’t do themselves.

Nick
 
I guess it's better to bill monthly. As a customer sometimes I firstly want to have a free trial. Then I buy it for a month, if everything is cool and I like it. I suppose that for you, it's also better because you can earn more money. Maybe for big companies it's easier, but for a regular person, don't think so. So the first option is the best.
 
Nick,
We have outsourced the dashboard and cloud storage work for various reasons. So, while I know the basics of how it works, I do not have a lot of experience with it. We have chosen this because we have enough to do already we leave it up to them to maintain/improve the dashboard and make sure it is always up and running.
We are partnered with this company https://www.ramsalert.com/ and they are very nice to work with. They will customize a dashboard just like you want. PM me if you would like their contact info.

On the hardware side, if we aren't using wireless sensors/gateways, we plan on using the Opto22 Groov RIO device. This product is just launching so I haven't had one in my hands yet. We have Node-Red code tested that will shove data from the RIO to a cloud database, where the dashboard will pull from.

This is what we are thinking. You might well have more experience than me. Speak up if you have any advice for me!! Thanks.

@Lesmar96

I must have missed your post the other day.

Hardware wise, we install e W o n devices for remote support anyway and the Flexy205 includes drivers to speak to most common PLC's, an MQTT client and you can add direct I/O too. I've heard good things about Opto22 but not yet had any experience.

Software wise, MQTT data is currently published to an MQTT server in my office where Node-Red is used to read the data and present a dashboard.This all now needs to be migrated to the cloud before I ship this particular machine to Missouri.

Past experience tells me that up front cost can be an obstacle.

Good luck with your project

Nick
 
Hardware wise, we install e W o n devices for remote support anyway and the Flexy205 includes drivers to speak to most common PLC's, an MQTT client and you can add direct I/O too. I've heard good things about Opto22 but not yet had any experience.

Thanks Nick. I have not used this Flexy205 at all. But just a quick looks at the specs makes me interested. So, with the expansion modules, you could have a 4G LTE router with I/O, like an all-in-one unit, correct? If so, that is clever.

The PLC drivers are nice and might be useful to have but most of our applications are going to be I/O. Especially since we are designing a package that is backward-compatible.....it will be able to function with older panels that do not have a PLC.
 
you could have a 4G LTE router with I/O, like an all-in-one unit, correct? If so, that is clever.

Yes. The flexy205 also supports data logging locally and could be scripted to batch update. Check out the IOT starter Kit. I can't post the link here but if you search for "flexy205 IOT starter kit" you are sure to find it.

Nick
 
Thanks. I have found it. I am going to check that out some more.

One question.....I have not used MQTT yet. But can you not write directly to a dashboard from the Flexy via MQTT? Why the need for the server? Or is that where your historical data etc is stored in a database?
 
We didn't call it subscription billing. We called it a maintenance contract. That was easier for the bean counters to swallow. Our installations were mostly municipal systems, spread across the country. We always made good margins (but didn't get greedy) and the owners got peace of mind.

In our case, we charged a flat annual fee. We included two service trips per year with travel and living costs included. We also provided phone support and/or remote monitoring plus a guaranteed maximum response time for unscheduled field service trips. We provided a slight discount on those trips from our standard field rate and promised no charge replacement of PLC components (because let's face it, these are pretty reliable and not that expensive anyway).
 
In our case, we charged a flat annual fee. We included two service trips per year with travel and living costs included. We also provided phone support and/or remote monitoring plus a guaranteed maximum response time for unscheduled field service trips. We provided a slight discount on those trips from our standard field rate and promised no charge replacement of PLC components (because let's face it, these are pretty reliable and not that expensive anyway).

That is a very nice way to doing it! Thanks for the suggestions.
 
One question.....I have not used MQTT yet. But can you not write directly to a dashboard from the Flexy via MQTT? Why the need for the server? Or is that where your historical data etc is stored in a database?

MQTT is a publisher/subscriber model and it seemed like a good way of doing things; I also use it for my home automation systems. MQTT can also be set up to use TLS for a secure connection. The data is only published once but Multiple people (customers/me) can subscribe to the data and make use of it.

How else are you sending data to a dashboard? OPC?

Nick
 
How else are you sending data to a dashboard? OPC?

As stated I have limited knowledge of these different protocols so.......We are using Node Red onboard the Opto22 RIO to write to a cloud database. Our dashboard pulls from this database.

My question was, if I would use a Flexy (it doesn't look like it has built in Node Red) is there any reason we shouldn't be able to write directly from the Flexy to our cloud database via MQTT??
 

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