Motivation to use MySensors for your project?

[d00616]

I'm thinking about implementing things like security for MySensors. For my understanding, your motivation behind using MySensors is necessary.

What is your motivation behind using MySensors?

1. It's Open Source Software
2. It's more flexible
3. I think it's more secure.
4. I don't share my data with cloud services.
5. Want to build my sensors because I
   a. can use MySensors
   b. have fun
   c. need specialized sensors
   d. don't trust/like commercial vendors

[mfalkvidd]

For me the following are the most important reasons

1. Using MySensors is cheap (hardware is cheap and I don't need to buy much else, like software and hardware tools)
2. Using MySensors is incredibly easy. The build pages with clear wiring pictures and uncomplicated example sketches makes it very easy to get started.
3. The community is great. Everyone is helpful and friendly and we have experts in almost all thinkable areas.

[wallyllama]

Most important:
Community is helpful and enthusiatic
Open source/hardware
Doesnt use the cloud (unless you choose to)

Nice to have:
Mature enough to be usable
Wide hardware support, with ability add new
Uses inexpensive commodity hardware

[dbemowsk]

Can't forget the wide support for the many different automation software and hardware packages out there, both free and commercial. I started with MySensors using Domoticz and have since purchased a Vera controller. Both work very well.

[rozpruwacz]

for me the most important is the ability to make the sensor/actuator that suits my needs. I was looking for some z-wave devices like dimmers, switches and pir/multi sensors and none of them was versatile enough to fulfill all my needs.

[sundberg84]

1. Best community ever!
2. The learning... i just love how much I learned in electronics!
3. Building something yourself is a great feeling!
4. Controll (I choose everything and noone takes desicions depending on making money from me).
5. Flexible (sky is the limit - or your imagination!)
6. Open source = faster moving forward!

[tbowmo]

Open source
Relatively cheap
Flexible / DIY (there is no company behind, that first needs to figure out if there is a market potential before creating a specialized sensor).

I can make whatever sensor that I want. For example, I have build mysensors into my garageport opener. And I have plans to sensorize the chicken coop, and the chickens themselves.. Monitoring stuff that you never knew was possible in your wildest fantasy..

I probably need to think about security, but that's not the top priority right now..

[Eurbaix]

1. It's flexible so I can build the sensor I need (or I want to play with), not just use the sensors most people need.
2. It's very cheap, like 10 times less than any commercial IoT, so I can build sensors I don't really need, just for fun.
3. It's open source so there is less chance it will drop support of legacy HW (planned obsolescence has become the norm in closed software).
4. It's flexible, so I can have cheap, less powerful sensors if I don't need more, but also more powerful (edge-computing) sensors if I want to.
5. I try to keep sensitive data behind my firewall, not critical for my sensors but it's a plus.

Security, so far, is really not a strength of MySensors. Signing has been a nice addition but I don't want people to know the inside of my house is at 15C (so I'm probably away for a while, good time to rob the place). IMHO, this is the main limitation of MySensors right now and the reason I used a commercial solution for my thermostats. It's also why I proposed a better security solution for MySensors for 3.0 (who knows, may be sooner).

[Anticimex]

@Eurbaix partially correct. All radios have encryption support in version 2.0 of the library for obfuscation. (I know that you know that now, I just add it here for documentary reasons).
But there are limitations in the security solution. Primarily due to the limitations of the HW "base" supported at the time of implementation.