An important announcement from Smart EGroups----BAD news $$$

[daudet]

An important announcement from Smart Energy Groups
Smart Energy Groups, SEG has been around for some time now. Our community has been built and grown with the needs of our members in mind. We want to provide a service for you - not for third parties of advertisers. This allows us to focus on making the things you need, not other people.

In the modern times of this internet, it is likely you may understand this. We want this community to be for us, not them.

Smart Energy Groups has been free for the majority of our members now for a long time now, and we need your support in order to continue.

This means that Smart Energy Groups is transitioning to a paid service in order for it to continue.

When you log in next, you will be prompted to select from our Community or Premium plans. This will set you up with an account and all the other necessary things, like your credit card details etc.

The Community plan has three free streams included, so does the Premium plan.

The Premium plan is based on your total number of streams and their data rates. The price per stream varies on how often your streams send data to SEG. This is something you need to review.

The Premium plan comes with a 30 day free trial that every member is eligible for too!

So please join us and show your support for all we have been doing and hope to continue!

So please join us and show your support for all we have been doing for our community and we hope with your participation to continue!

Sam, @samotage

[daudet]

I have ask the following question to Sam

On 7 October 2015 at Wed 7 3:29:55 pm, Daniel Audet wrote:

Hi Sam
question about stream?
in my profile i have 32 breakers reporting along with 8 temp.
For the pricing will it be 40 streams or my complete setup count as one.
I need to know what it will cost me .
is it 40 * 1.99/months plus account fee 4.99 plus extra 0.99 for 30 sec data.
is data for all stream OK we need to pay 40* .99?

can you tell me from my profiles what it will cost me per month to keep what I had before.

Thanks

Daniel.


Answer below
Hey Daniel, 

It depends on your data rates, if they are slowed down, then it it becomes quite cheap.  I recommend 40-60 seconds, the sweet spot being about 45 or so seconds.

Then it is

40 x $0.59 = $23.60
Plus 4.99

Everything is still rolling behind the scenes, and all your stuff is there.

The 30 day trial is for this.  You will have an invoice calculated at the end of that time, which will be zero cost to help you understand you costs!

Thanks!
Sam.

Sam Sabey, @samotage
smartenergygroups.com
+61403 245 139



So it end up if I stay as is with 30sec update it will cost me
40x 0.99=39.60$ plus the monthly recurring charge 4.99 that's a total of 44.59$ plus exchange rate. Getting expensive.
Downgrading to 45 sec as suggested by Sam is
28.59$

Please throw in your 2 cents comments

[mwareman]

*way* too expensive. I'm disconnecting. Have the Dashbox anyway.... Neat while it lasted, but not worth the $$ to me.

[mattm55]

Same here thinking it is too expensive. I understand getting away from "free" but over $20/mo doesn't sound like many will opt to stay. Also, alittle lead time would have been nice.

Now on to getting another option going. Maybe time to pull the data from the GEM out of MySQL and write some Java code and charting.

Maybe the one time cost of a Dashbox now? )

-Matt

[manddarran]

Yeah, I was wandering the same thing. Be able to purchase the dashbox for those costs.

Can the dashbox interface with homeseer?

[dlmorgan999]

I also completely understand moving away from free, but the per-stream pricing definitely makes it not worth it to me. In my case, I already have a DashBox, so SEG was just an additional fun thing. It will be interesting to see how many people stay and pay.

[mwareman]

I wonder if the Dashbox has an API for data access (or other more direct database access) that we can then chart from?

[daudet]

Well guys i have signup for 30days trial so i can have access to my streams and data
Hope i can backit up.
I dont have any Dashbox to save it local.
I was relying only on SEG.
Now i have to move fast.
Dashbox is 269.95 usd plus shipping so that will be about 375$ canadian.
Bit expensive when you have not planned short term to get one. but still cheaper than SEG at 175$ CAN per month.

In the interim anyone has a solution for a small local server on Window or Linux that would do pretty much the same as DaSHBOX.

Does Dashboard can be used locally on window or linux.
If so were can i get it and get some tutorial on how to install and send data to it from my GEM.

[mwareman]

You can try the standalone dashboard (free) which you can install on any php server (or use a raspberry pi) to do basic logging (available from https://www.brultech.com/home/software/ ... etsoft/1/1). Not quite as feature rich as the Dashbox, but may work depending on your needs.

[daudet]

thanks mwareman,
I. was able to find it earlier and I did upload the files to my hosted server
put everything in a directory called db then created api.va2dg.ca to go to db directory.
Dashboard wise I am setup but could not get my Gem to upload.
The instructions found did not match the version installed
So I gave up for tonight
at least SEG is still getting my data.