Luup Priority Projects
Vera is offering $200 cash rebates to the first 200 users who create any type of Luup plugin, $40,000 in total, and 200 free "Lifetime Vera subscriptions" as explained in our Luup launch announcement.
Additionally Vera is pledging cash bonuses and free hardware to developers of priority projects that will be important to other Vera users.
$5,000 cash total for UPnP Control points + 10 free Vera's
We have set aside 10 free Vera systems for developers of existing UPnP Control Points who agree to support the minimum requirements below. Additionally, once the requirements are met and the control point is stable, debugged, and ready for the consumer within 60 days, we will pay one cash bonuses for each type of UPnP control point as follows:
1) $1,000 for iPhone/iPod touch, 2) $1,000 for Java/Blackberry, 3) $1,000 for Windows Mobile, 4) $500 for Windows web or tablet PC, 5) $500 Windows Media Center, 6) $250 for TiVo, 7) $250 for Popcorn hour and similar DMA's, 8) $250 Symbian Mobile phone, 9) $250 for other Java phones or Android.
If you have or are working on a UPnP control point in one of the 9 categories above, email us at luup@micasaverde.com. We will pick what is, in our opinion, the most compelling application from each of the 9 categories above, and will pay the cash when the Control Point is offered that meets the minimum requirements below. We will also market your Control Point application to all Vera's users. Mi Casa Verde will not be expecting a cut in the revenue. If your Control Point is free, that's great, but if it's not free we will help you build a business selling your Control Point to Vera's users.
Note that Vera's custom extensions to UPnP, namely the job handler and remote access, are very trivial to implement. So if you already have a good, solid control point application it could be as little as a few hours of work to meet the minimum requirements.
Minimum requirements:
The Control Point must be free or cost no more than $20.
It must support all the home automation device types and services listed here: Luup_CP_Mandatory_Types.
It must support Vera's Job status extension described in Luup_Control because many UPnP home actions happen asynchronously, like turning on a light switch, and it's important the user be able to see that is action is still running and know when it completed successfully or with a failure.
If it is running on a mobile phone it must be able to send the UPnP actions through the FindVera server so the user has remote control over his mobile phone. This is a trivial modification requiring you to only change the ip address to 'findvera.com' and pass the username/password on the URL, as explained in Luup_Control.
$10,000 for Luup plugins interfaces
Any developer creating a Luup plugin can receive a $200 rebate on Vera to subsidize the hardware cost. Additionally we are offering the following cash bonuses:
$500/each for up to 10 popular alarm panels. The sensors in the alarm panel must be reported as child devices which support the MotionSensor service and indicate when they are tripped whether the alarm is armed or not. Additionally the plugin must notify when the alarm panel is armed/disarmed and when a breach occurs. If the plugin supports the ability to disarm the alarm, this feature must be optional and default to 'off' for liability reasons. For someone who knows Lua already this type plugin could probably be created in a day or two.
$250/each for up to 4 popular sprinkler and pool controllers. The plugin need only support the basic functions.
$500/each for up to 2 popular energy meters. These are devices like the Energy Detective, TED 5000.
$100 each for up to 30 popular A/V devices, like TV's, Receiver's, and DVR's using any bi-directional control (ie not infrared), such as RS232, CEC (if there's a USB-HDMI/CEC module it can work with). The plugin must support the basic functions, like, for a TV: on/off, input select, volume up/down, channel up/down, channel select, etc. Generally we'd expect for someone who knows Lua already this type of plug in could be done in only a couple hours.
The plugin must be free and open source and must be stable and ready for the public within 60 days. If you'd like to add support for a device, email us at luup@micasaverde.com and let us know what device you have in mind and what features you can support. Once we confirm it's a reasonably popular model that's still in production we will send you a written agreement regarding the bonus.
$5,000 for a Flash configuration/control interface
In addition to the basic control of a UPnP Control Point, it would be nice for users to have a complete user interface that allows them to make changes and customize settings, like our built-in Vera UI, but with more eye-candy and slick graphics, probably developed in Flash. We would provide access to all our source graphics files and the html+javascript for our current UI, as well as tech support.
There are several requirements for this type of application. If you're interested and have the skills, email us at luup@micasaverde.com to discuss further.
