I understand that you have tried to make the server component not OS dependent, so have you ever tried to compile it for Linux or BSD, and for the ARM architecture. I have been pondering the possibilities of using a raspberry pi as a dedicated indigo host, this is why I ask this question.

We don't currently have a version of Indigo that runs on embedded systems, but it is still something we want to explore. However, I'm afraid I don't have any additional details about it to share at this time.

I don't actually have one to play with yet, but supposedly the only requirement is that it can compile for Debian 6 (this is the OS they currently say works the best with it), ARM. So if you ever get bored and want to debug the code for a completely different OS and architecture...

Yeah, we've been watching the Raspberry Pi project for some time now. Mostly to see how low embedded linux systems get in terms of price and features.

An Indigo Pi would be cool. I have 5 of the little suckas here. The reduced power is a big plus. But I'd bet the port would be a bit more then trivial

(and ain't Indigo now on BSD? Thought OSX was Apple's molestation of BSD)

Indigo is a Mac OS X app, and the Mac kernel is built on top of a version of BSD, but that doesn't mean that Indigo is built on BSD since if you take away all of the Mac frameworks Indigo won't run (and those frameworks are only part of OS X itself and won't work on the Pi).

So it won't be easy to get running on it, but perhaps some day...

Please, please, please, try to move forward on this idea. The 'pi is becoming quite a force in the world and at $35 is hard to imagine beating for price. Two other systems are claiming 'pi support with Insteon, though as far as I can see it is nowhere as useful as Indigo - *yet*.
If someone into hardware hacking can be persuaded to make a piggyback board with the smart home modem chip it would be plausible to make a single small box server for less than $100 retail. The energy saving would be worthwhile, the simplicity would be useful, the potential for profit ought to be quite encouraging.

Just FYI - the pi isn't really a good platform for an embedded controller for HA IMO - too little memory. 256MB is just not enough for the OS and all the things that Indigo does (for instance): server, web server, and perhaps most importantly N number of plugins (each running a python interpreter). We haven't really attempted to optimize for size of course, but currently the server runs in about 34MB and each plugin process runs around 21MB. The OS is going to take a non-trivial amount of memory and if you have just the server and 4 plugins running that's over 100MB already.

That's not to say that you couldn't find a nice, compact, low-power, low-cost embedded platform that would work - it's just probably not the pi. Remember that the pi was originally designed as an inexpensive tool for educators to use - and it's specs really reflect a dedicated single-user type of machine, not really a server type platform. Not that people won't try - but I don't think it's the right platform. Server type embedded systems don't need video for instance - so dropping that in favor of more memory, built-in WiFi, and more USB ports would be a much better platform.

In any case, Indigo on anything other than a Mac is still just an interesting thought exercise. As Matt says, perhaps some day...

jay (support) wrote:but currently the server runs in about 34MB and each plugin process runs around 21MB. The OS is going to take a non-trivial amount of memory and if you have just the server and 4 plugins running that's over 100MB already.

I'm seeing numbers much lower than that on my very old Mac server running Indigo. I'm showing 14.8MB for IndigoServer and the plugins are between 2.4MB and 7.81MB (most around 2.6MB). That might be because newer Macs with more physical memory have much larger page sizes? (update: page size is 4K on that Mac and newer Macs, so it is something else -- PPC versus Intel, etc.)

Still the point stands, Indigo isn't yet optimized to run on an embedded box and the pi is probably not the ideal hardware. Its price is very nice though.

another vote for the raspberry pi, since they're now up to 512mb RAM standard on the B models.. it'd be *great* to be able to run indigo on an embedded system - i've already got two of them as our XBMC media server!

Even though I'm the one who brought this whole thing up, if you have to choose where to put your time, I'd much rather see you continue to improve and refine Indigo Mac than end up with several forks that are half-baked because something doesn't want to port nicely.