2021 Releases December 31, 2020

As has been the case with many, 2020 has been a challenge for us here at Indigo Domotics for a variety of reasons. We aren't making excuses but do want to acknowledge that we've had at least one fewer feature release than we had planned, and we've had to push out some functionality originally planned for 2020 which we've spent significant time developing. We also understand that people who pay for subscriptions would like to see more frequent releases with new functionality. We've had several discussions here and would like to share with you some of our plans moving forward.

In an unprecedented move for us, we are going to lay out some release targets for 2021 (and hopefully moving beyond that). We believe that it will help set some expectations at least for the next year and is something we hope to refine over time. While these are targets, and we're committing to doing everything we can to meet them, please do understand we have to stay flexible in where we focus our resources in this very dynamic industry. Hopefully, 2021 won't be as full of issues as 2020 has been!

April 2021 - Indigo v2021.1: major functionality we are hoping to ship: OAuth authentication support (needed for Alexa and other cloud services like it), native Alexa support (and hopefully 3rd party Google Home support), support for multiple simultaneous authentication methods in the Indigo Web Server, native Apple Silicon support, API keys for the REST API, new REST API capabilities for plugins, and of course more Z-Wave functionality and device support. Note the version number scheme change – we've decided that a better way to label releases is to use the year as the major number, followed by a number incremented for each feature release, and lastly a number to designate any bug fix releases (2021.1.1, 2021.1.2). We may decide to use a build indicator as the third number, but the first two will always be YYYY.R. It's possible that this release will leave behind some older macOS versions given the native Apple Silicon work, but that's still TBD as we know lots of our users are using older Macs.

July 2021 - Indigo Touch v2.5: targeting support for all shipping screen sizes, light/dark switching based on OS setting, iOS 14 compatibility improvements and bug fixes, and hopefully more.

November 2021 - Indigo v2021.2: this release is a bit far out to talk about specific items, but we will clearly add support for additional Z-Wave devices and features. A few other big areas that we'll be looking at will be Python 3, Z-Wave S2 security and additional built-in device types (garage doors, window coverings, etc.). Also the timing of this release will allow us to get in any changes necessary for future macOS compatibility. We aren't committing to any of these things, because we want to remain flexible to meet any new and interesting things that may come up, but these are definitely things that are high on our list which we've already started investigating. It's very likely that this release will leave behind some older macOS versions, particularly as we think about moving to Python 3.

So, why do we think we can hit these targets? A couple of reasons really: first, we were already on track to do two releases a year, and in fact had been hitting that until 2020 happened. Again, not an excuse, but rather a reality that this year was very challenging in ways that are unusual and which we fervently hope don't replicate in 2021.

Second, we're hoping to get some help. We believe there are opportunities to get some assistance from the community as well as from other sources. Not much more to say about that at the moment, but if you believe you have some skills that would be helpful to volunteer (not just coding – documentation, etc) we'd be more than happy to hear from you.

Lastly, note this is not an extensive list of all our development efforts, but above is what we are comfortable sharing at this time.

Many thanks for supporting us through the years, and a special thanks to all the plugin developers that have shared their awesome contributions with the community. Have a happy, healthy, and safe 2021!

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