Hi All -
I've hinted/warned at this for years, but it's time to shut this forum down. There is no good way to integrate it into our customer support systems. We're getting more spam; and for technical support we have much better options via tickets and live chat now.
For community-style support, we have decided to move to Discord.
You can join the Sighthound Discord at:
https://sighthound.com/discord
I wanted to take one last pass through the forum this morning to answer any outstanding questions I could see.
My first post on these forums was as a Vitamin-D user, before we acquired Vitamin-D when we started Sighthound. That was in October of 2011!
In the next month you will notice some changes we've been working on since last year. These changes make the future of Sighthound Video quite exciting. I think you'll all be pleased.
Best,
-Jonathan Taylor (Chairman, Co-Founder, and Chief Sighthound Video User @ Sighthound)
This forum shutting down / switching to Discord
Moderator: Staff
7 posts
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arnljot - Posts: 20
- Joined: Sun Jul 22, 2018 5:29 am
Re: Support Forum Shutting Down
I agree! There is no reason (for you)to keep a forum that plainly shows how you ignore customers, rarely release updates and pretend that there is not a new MacOS and a new M1 chip out there.
Please hide all these facts , so that you can make us pour suckers continue to pay the yearly "fee".
Please hide all these facts , so that you can make us pour suckers continue to pay the yearly "fee".
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visionik - Posts: 48
- Joined: Sat Oct 01, 2011 7:33 am
Re: Support Forum Shutting Down
arnljot -
Since you posted your complaint on multiple threads, I am responding to each.
I'm sincerely sorry we've let you down on Sighthound Video update schedules.
Please email me at jtaylor@sighthound.com so we can refund anything you've paid us.
Sighthound Video has been[1] a labor of love. It brings in less than 5% of the revenue of our company today. There has never been a nefarious scheme to get people to renew - it's just not worth the money to be underhanded here. For many years now we've spent more developing it than it generated in revenue. That's now changing as we bring Sighthound Video into the same development process as our other products. I was also very open about this transition in strategy in my previous messages.
We have been very pleasantly surprised by the loyalty of the Sighthound Video community. We know it is missing features and progress has been slower than everyone wants. We know some users are disappointed - we are also disappointed! We've been very open about that.
Sighthound Video is used by individuals and families, by small companies, and even large ones in small settings. It's used at home by executives of multi-billion dollar companies. I use it personally; so do many of our employees. That's why we've kept investing in it every year.
We have also been very clear for years that this forum is not an ideal setting for modern interaction. We have a ticket system and now we have live chat customer support. Customers get support very quickly on both systems. The timeliness of responses here is exactly why we are shutting down the forum. Again, we've been open that this was coming for a long time now.
So far as your comment that we are shutting it down to "hide facts", the Discord is persistent and open just like a forum is. Feel free to come complain there, too, for all to see.
[1]I say has been because - as I've said in other posts - big changes are coming. Changes which are very, very good for Sighthound Video. I don't expect you to do anything about that, or take my word for it - but it's still true.
Since you posted your complaint on multiple threads, I am responding to each.
I'm sincerely sorry we've let you down on Sighthound Video update schedules.
Please email me at jtaylor@sighthound.com so we can refund anything you've paid us.
Sighthound Video has been[1] a labor of love. It brings in less than 5% of the revenue of our company today. There has never been a nefarious scheme to get people to renew - it's just not worth the money to be underhanded here. For many years now we've spent more developing it than it generated in revenue. That's now changing as we bring Sighthound Video into the same development process as our other products. I was also very open about this transition in strategy in my previous messages.
We have been very pleasantly surprised by the loyalty of the Sighthound Video community. We know it is missing features and progress has been slower than everyone wants. We know some users are disappointed - we are also disappointed! We've been very open about that.
Sighthound Video is used by individuals and families, by small companies, and even large ones in small settings. It's used at home by executives of multi-billion dollar companies. I use it personally; so do many of our employees. That's why we've kept investing in it every year.
We have also been very clear for years that this forum is not an ideal setting for modern interaction. We have a ticket system and now we have live chat customer support. Customers get support very quickly on both systems. The timeliness of responses here is exactly why we are shutting down the forum. Again, we've been open that this was coming for a long time now.
So far as your comment that we are shutting it down to "hide facts", the Discord is persistent and open just like a forum is. Feel free to come complain there, too, for all to see.
[1]I say has been because - as I've said in other posts - big changes are coming. Changes which are very, very good for Sighthound Video. I don't expect you to do anything about that, or take my word for it - but it's still true.
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BeanBagKing - Posts: 24
- Joined: Fri May 15, 2020 1:02 pm
Re: This forum shutting down / switching to Discord
Jonathan,
I'm glad to see some updates, but sorry to see the forums go. I understand the desire not to keep them around in their current state, I hope that Discord sees a lot more activity.
However, I do find forums easier to search though and easier for customers to engage and support one another than chat systems. Even persistent chat systems that anyone can join, like Discord, just don't organize things the same. It's easier to post on forums, in a thread dedicated to one topic, and get replies days or even weeks later, whereas a chat will scroll off and quickly be forgotten. I hope, at some point in the future, you might consider something like Reddit if you don't want to host your own forums. These communities aren't just for your customers to interact with support, but for your customers to interact with one another. I'm not saying I prefer one over the other, more that each has it's place.
Will the forums remain in an archived state?
Regarding the revenue of Sighthound, and it's sales/operating in the red, you mentioned this changing. Can you give more details? Are we expected to see more frequent updates, especially incremental improvements to the AI? I really like Sighthound, it seems to have the best detection/least false positives in my admittedly limited experience, while also being pretty CPU friendly. I never would have found it though had someone not made an offhanded comment about it on Reddit. I feel like there's no effort put into bettering search results, and you can see the opinion forum users have regarding the current state. I can't help but feel that the 5% of revenue isn't because it's a bad product or one that isn't in demand, but it's due (at least partially) to neglect. I hope this changes.
I'm glad to see release notes have been updated, and backdated somewhat. It seems the timeline from the 7.0 Beta blog post has slipped somewhat. Can you provide any updates (here, Discord, in a new blog post, wherever.)?
I'm glad to see some updates, but sorry to see the forums go. I understand the desire not to keep them around in their current state, I hope that Discord sees a lot more activity.
However, I do find forums easier to search though and easier for customers to engage and support one another than chat systems. Even persistent chat systems that anyone can join, like Discord, just don't organize things the same. It's easier to post on forums, in a thread dedicated to one topic, and get replies days or even weeks later, whereas a chat will scroll off and quickly be forgotten. I hope, at some point in the future, you might consider something like Reddit if you don't want to host your own forums. These communities aren't just for your customers to interact with support, but for your customers to interact with one another. I'm not saying I prefer one over the other, more that each has it's place.
Will the forums remain in an archived state?
Regarding the revenue of Sighthound, and it's sales/operating in the red, you mentioned this changing. Can you give more details? Are we expected to see more frequent updates, especially incremental improvements to the AI? I really like Sighthound, it seems to have the best detection/least false positives in my admittedly limited experience, while also being pretty CPU friendly. I never would have found it though had someone not made an offhanded comment about it on Reddit. I feel like there's no effort put into bettering search results, and you can see the opinion forum users have regarding the current state. I can't help but feel that the 5% of revenue isn't because it's a bad product or one that isn't in demand, but it's due (at least partially) to neglect. I hope this changes.
I'm glad to see release notes have been updated, and backdated somewhat. It seems the timeline from the 7.0 Beta blog post has slipped somewhat. Can you provide any updates (here, Discord, in a new blog post, wherever.)?
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visionik - Posts: 48
- Joined: Sat Oct 01, 2011 7:33 am
Re: This forum shutting down / switching to Discord
Hi BeanBagKing -
I agree that Discord & forums have pros and cons. I hope to address some of the cons by having a Wiki-Style knowledge-base in the near future that users can contribute to.
Yes, these forums will remain available in an archived state - at least for a few years. At some point maintaining the phpBB forum code (security patches, etc) will likely just become too much for the value of keeping multi-year old forums up. Especially since so much is going to change (and about those details):
This is real, not a mock-up, and it is running today. None of the user interface naming is final. We may go back to "rules" instead of "policies", etc.
The challenge (for many years now) with Sighthound video was its use of source code that was completely separate from the rest of our applications - requiring a separate development team, separate budget, and sometimes even redundant development efforts.
With Sighthound Video 6 we switched all the Computer Vision code to our new underlying platform, Sighthound IO. Starting with Sighthound Video 8 we are switching the rest of the Sighthound Video code to our new high-level platform, Sighthound CORE. It will no longer be extra work by a separate team, it is now a CORE application by the same teams that do all our other development.
I agree that Discord & forums have pros and cons. I hope to address some of the cons by having a Wiki-Style knowledge-base in the near future that users can contribute to.
Yes, these forums will remain available in an archived state - at least for a few years. At some point maintaining the phpBB forum code (security patches, etc) will likely just become too much for the value of keeping multi-year old forums up. Especially since so much is going to change (and about those details):
This is real, not a mock-up, and it is running today. None of the user interface naming is final. We may go back to "rules" instead of "policies", etc.
The challenge (for many years now) with Sighthound video was its use of source code that was completely separate from the rest of our applications - requiring a separate development team, separate budget, and sometimes even redundant development efforts.
With Sighthound Video 6 we switched all the Computer Vision code to our new underlying platform, Sighthound IO. Starting with Sighthound Video 8 we are switching the rest of the Sighthound Video code to our new high-level platform, Sighthound CORE. It will no longer be extra work by a separate team, it is now a CORE application by the same teams that do all our other development.
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arnljot - Posts: 20
- Joined: Sun Jul 22, 2018 5:29 am
Re: This forum shutting down / switching to Discord
exciting indeed! You mention version 8 of SH, when will v7 launch then?
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visionik - Posts: 48
- Joined: Sat Oct 01, 2011 7:33 am
Re: This forum shutting down / switching to Discord
Sighthound Video 7 is launched as an open BETA and is running very well for most users. Anyone can install it today.
There are no problems like loss of data, etc. There are some UI visibility problems when running in dark mode on macOS, and a few minor bugs.
I've been running Sighthound Video 7 BETA on my personal (and critical) install with 25 cameras (including 7 4k cameras) without a single problem for several months now. Specifically, I run it on Windows 10 (with VMware ESXI) with a large RAID array that stores over three years of 24 hour-a-day video from every camera. While I prefer MacOS, I had too many problems with MacOS randomly disconnecting from the large RAID array I had (at that time) attached to my Mac.
As to when the first non-BETA version will be released - I believe the next minor update will be the Release Candidate (RC), and taken out of BETA next month.
Our experience from our previous companies has shown that these longer, completely open BETA periods work well for most users. If it doesn't work well for you, please do join us in the Discord (if you have not already) so we may discuss. https://sighthound.com/discord
This forum will be shutting down at the end of the month.
Best,
-Jonathan
There are no problems like loss of data, etc. There are some UI visibility problems when running in dark mode on macOS, and a few minor bugs.
I've been running Sighthound Video 7 BETA on my personal (and critical) install with 25 cameras (including 7 4k cameras) without a single problem for several months now. Specifically, I run it on Windows 10 (with VMware ESXI) with a large RAID array that stores over three years of 24 hour-a-day video from every camera. While I prefer MacOS, I had too many problems with MacOS randomly disconnecting from the large RAID array I had (at that time) attached to my Mac.
As to when the first non-BETA version will be released - I believe the next minor update will be the Release Candidate (RC), and taken out of BETA next month.
Our experience from our previous companies has shown that these longer, completely open BETA periods work well for most users. If it doesn't work well for you, please do join us in the Discord (if you have not already) so we may discuss. https://sighthound.com/discord
This forum will be shutting down at the end of the month.
Best,
-Jonathan