We welcome customization requests, feature suggestions, and user feedback. The client software is completely free, so custom development is the only way we generate revenue from this project. That said, we use the software ourselves in real-world deployments—so even if it doesn’t make us money, it still serves our needs. However, the best way we can improve it is through feedback and ideas from others like you.
If you’ve ever tried getting NovaStar to customize anything, you know how difficult it can be. Even minor features can take months of back-and-forth, and if they agree to it at all, you’ll get a special build that quickly becomes obsolete as new firmware and software updates are released. In some cases, I’ve had to fly all the way to Xi’an, China and attend multiple meetings just to justify a simple feature request—something that could’ve been implemented in under an hour. I’ve often thought, “Just take my money and do it!” But that’s not how they operate. If you’re willing to pay, it shouldn’t be a battle.
People sometimes ask, “Can’t you just use their API to build this yourself?” It’s clear they haven’t looked into it deeply. Each generation of NovaStar hardware has a different API—some use Modbus, others JSON, and some rely on WebSockets. The APIs are fragmented and incomplete, missing key features like how to send .rcfgx, .scr, or firmware upgrade files. Keeping up with it all is a full-time job. You’d need deep expertise, extensive testing, and access to every hardware model just to begin. Fortunately, as the largest NovaStar distributor in the U.S., we’ve worked with every model over the past 12 years and have deployed and tested them in real-world projects.