Has the demopad forum died?

[android]

I must admit I had stopped using demopad for the last year or so and only refered back on legacy projects, but a new project lent itself to demopad and I was surprised to see how little the forum has moved on.
Is this because of a move from demopad towards a more business mode of operation and professional user with it subscription practice, rather than the DIYer end user.

Just asking as I am actually the 'Professional' subscriber that loves the input and ideas from the individual DIYer and their input and ideas are sorely missed.


Foot note

Possibly shouldn't have written this after several beers whilst researching the forum

[starwarsmike]

Hi guys

I did notice it was very quite here........maybe need more technology to keep us going in the world of automation. Only thing I've done in the last year is setup Amazon Alexa via IFTTT on my Centro M!!!

If you feeling like commenting please comment on my iTunes post on help forum

Cheers

Michael

[cv27]

I review the forum daily, most often disappointed to see no new posts.

It does seem DemoPad has put more emphasis on the professional installer business: just look how the DemoPad Partners section has expanded. This approach is quite understandable: let's face it, DemoPad software is not for the masses who expect to download an app, load it and expect a reasonable level of automation after a few clicks.

DemoPad is still a major component of my home automation. A big slap for me was when DemoPad started restricting new functionality in the Designer to "pro software only". Some of that new functionality I had suggested as productivity enhancements in the past.

I'm also concerned that the introduction of new functionality in the Designer has slowed down while I see many opportunities to improve several aspects of it.

Even if DemoPad's primary focus is the pro scene, I'm surprised it doesn't see the benefit of keeping the end user in the loop: after all, those pro installers' clients are end users. The Pro's could counter that they will bring forward functionality requests from their end user clients, but I'm not so sure that's the most efficient and reliable way.

Partnerships, professionals and hardware seems to be where DemoPad's focus is.

All this being said, I am grateful to having been part of DemoPad's early evolution and having exchanged with such a talented team.

[AKWillows]

I share people's concerns about how quiet the forum has been recently.

I am a home user and have learnt so much about how various components of my system work via these forums. With the great support from Demopad and other users on the forum, I now have an app built which covers all of the following in my house (with the help of a Centro 8m box)

-LightwaveRF lights
-Phillips Hue lights
-Owl Intuition Heating control & electricity monitor
-Netatmo weather gauge
-Sonos (simple controls)
-Yamaha Amp
-Virgin Tivo Box
-Apple TV
-Samsung TV
-Samsung Bluray Disc

I have different pages within the app which make it work for a wall mounted iPad in the hall, and then another iPad to use in the sitting room to control all the AV equipment.

The community spirit here really helped throughout the development and stopped me pestering support with too many queries! I would love to see it re-invigorated with home users and I do worry that, given how quiet things have become, Demopad may shift their model further away from home users. I'd be devastated if all my time and effort (and enjoyment doing it) became unusable in the future.