I’m still homesick having too much time to think about random stuff. So I started thinking about this.
Would it be possible for you to offer real-time support over team viewer or a similar tool for the users who have a problem they have a very hard time fixing themselves or are just not technically gifted or would rather pay you then spent their time fiddling around with stuff they don’t really know how to do?
I mean for a techy guy connecting to someone’s pc and fixing or setting stuff up could just take a few minutes while the vero owner might need hours or days to fix it himself.
And if could charge 20$ ( that I’m sure some people would gladly pay) for something that takes you 5 minutes to do that would be a win-win situation
I understand that once you teach someone how to fix a problem themselves they will know forever but sometimes trying to teach someone is way harder than just doing it yourself.
Edit:
I just randomly came up with the 20 bucks I understand that some services might be more time consuming and more expensive and some might be cheaper.
I think the dev team are probably short enough on time as it is. Their work could be put to better use working on things that would benefit the community as a whole rather than working on something that would benefit a single user.
We have already had community users offering to help out other community users so that would be something nice to encourage.
I can’t speak for anyone else, but I’m certainly willing to help anyone in any way necessary for nothing more than a thank you and (if they wish) a donation. Whether that’s simply answering a few questions, explaining how to set something up, or providing hands-on support.
Unfortunately support is not a scalable business model. There are also some things we cannot always fix; so charging you for the privilege to look at something isn’t a good idea.
What are you having problems with?
I’ve helped some users on TeamViewer before, but this was at no cost. You are already a paying customer.
With that said, I have some ideas to improve remote diagnostics (beyond just logging), as expecting a user to port forward SSH can be involving, and if done incorrectly, insecure.
In no way can I speak for Sam or anyone else here.
For me, teamviewer would be a non-starter, but ssh using a reverse ssh connection … ssh -r … would be something I’d consider, for a close friend or family member.
But $20 isn’t worth the hassle of dealing with special boxes, taxes, international issues, employment tax, health care, etc. Perhaps $120/hr? People always under estimate how much overhead a business has. If you live in a place with zero/no taxes, $20 might be possible. If you live in the USA, the govt takes about 25-40% before you do anything. If you live in Northern Europe, make that 50+%.
At my Linux group, we have people coming in wanting to pay for help all the time. We say, if you want to pay for use to do it, that’s $120/hr, but we’ll meet with you 3 hrs a week and answer any questions you have about Linux for 3+ yrs to the best of our abilities for free. You will do the typing. You will have to learn.
One is a club primarily for education.
The other is a job.
Reverse SSH is effectively my plan, i.e. give me a 6 digit code and enter the code I’ve given you.
But this would be to diagnose some complex / unique issues or fix issues with some users on a case by case basis.
I have no plans to charge for this or widely adopt it.
There are some rare cases however where it’s beneficial to intervene on a system and this process can be improved.
Reverse SSH has better uses for My OSMC; which is why developing this is so beneficial.
Well you don’t need a developers help to help people that aren’t tech savvy enough to properly set up their multimedia device. Any tech savvy kid that got into Linux for fun in his early teens can probably do this things in his sleep once he gets the hang of it and you don’t have to pay him 120/h Wich would be completely ridiculous considering that’s almost the price of the vero
What I meant when I made the post was if my grandparents buy the vero 4k it would be nice to have an option ( set-up fee) that allows them to pay a bit extra and get someone to set it up for them ( make sure it’s properly connected to the main pc, and that streaming works etc )
And yes I know they can join the forum and get the help for free but a lot of elderly or people that have very busy life’s just won’t go through that hassle. If the device won’t perform perfectly out of the box ( even if it’s their own error ) they will just have it standing around collecting dust and think they bought a piece of junk and probably buy a Apple 4k next time they think about getting a multimedia box.
Now I understand if Sam is primarily focusing on the tech savvy enthusiast market that will gladly do things themselves without needing much help but that doesn’t mean there isn’t a huge market of casuls out there that deserve better than chromecast without paying for Apple TV 4k
Edit: I hope I don’t hurt anyone’s feelings on here when I said you don’t need a developers help to properly set up the vero. I greatly appreciate sam’s and the help from all other very knowledgeable mods and devs that help people on this board but it does sometimes feel as if you are watching acrobats teaching people how to crawl