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mindedc1

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Everything posted by mindedc1

  1. Just make sure your channels are not overlapping and also not overlapping with gear from your neighbors. There are also non-wifi 2.4ghz sources like baby monitors, wireless audio products like sonos and the sony HTIB wireless etc... I spent a bunch of time chasing performance issues with my setup until I discovered that both my neighbors had strong transmitters sitting on the same channel which overlapped one of my APs... signal strength was great, signal to noise was terrible.....
  2. Keep in mind that if you're adding another zap or zb server etc.. you're burning another frequency band out of the 2.4 ghz space.... You can strategically move your access points around to avoid using one of the channels and park your zigbee there. This link has a chart that doesn't really do the situation justice but it's a good representation of the issue in the 2.4ghz band. The wifi side lobes extend well over the zigbee channels that are considered "non-interfering" and cheaper APs will stomp all over those channels. Some enterprise APs (Aruba) have RF filters that suppress these side band transmissions (primarily for cell repeater compatibility) but most products don't. https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Spectra-of-multiple-wireless-technologies-in-the-24-GHz-ISM-band-The-colors-indicate_fig4_326598630 Thanks to my neighbors blasting 2.4 I've had to play a game of what channels I use on what AP and bascially avoid one 2.4 ghz channel that I have my two zigbee channels on by disabling 2.4 on two of my four APs... I have enough lighting loads that I am over the limit for one zigbee network. Before I did that I had laggy connectivity to more remote parts of the house. I would ditch 2.4 wifi entirely but I have some thermostats and some ESP32 based items that are 2.4 exclusively....
  3. The only thing you need the dealer for is to add the driver and make the connections to the display and input(s). All the other programming can be done via HE. A lot of customization can be done in properties and everything else can be done in programming. There are probably two dozen signal attributes to use in conjunction with your display to adjust the video and do whatever you want. The included documentation has a number of examples of integration with other devices like doorbells and your alarm system for notification during viewing as well as more standard things like adjusing lighting based on movie start, associating aspect ratios with buttons and setting up for anamorphic lenses or masking systems.
  4. The reality is you don't have to get to wifi 7, 6e will solve all of these issues. 6E has 60 channels of 20mhz and seven at 160!!! Thats gobs of throughput. The other thing is that you won't have any legacy protocols dragging on. 6e really doesn't have any inherent technology that 5 doesn't (1024 QAM, wave division multiplexing - OFDMA, mu-mimo, ap brokers all transmit opportunities). Where you get the massive performance/reliability increase is you don't have legacy systems using the older protocols (AC,N,G,B etc). An AX modulation AP can deliver small slices of bandwidth to things like phones checking mail and large slices to video consumers simultaneously (in the same transmission) on a predictable interval. The AP arbitrates which client sends and when that client sends so you don't have the spectrum waste of speakers clobbering each other and requiring a random retransmission window. MIMO and MU-MIMO are useless technologies in any home environment as well as most indoor environments. You have to have multiple paths/reflections from the client to the AP. With a 5ghz signal in a residential environment you're going to have so much attenuation in the walls you're not going to get enough high quality "bank shots" against the AP to recycle the spectrum. In that case channel bonding is going to give more performance. The limiting factor on channel bonding is that 99% of the traffic goes into the first channel in a AC (wifi 5) or lower system and the rest only get used when there is available transmit opportunities in the first channel. In AX or wifi 6,6e it uses wave division multplexing so all the channels are used simultaneously and slices of the bandwidth get allocated out to the clients. Good news is that 6E is shipping. We've installed tens of thousands of 6e aps and there are clients shipping. Bad news is that to take advantage of all the wave division multiplexing (OFDMA) and get 32 simultaneous users per transmit you need expensive silicon that's going for nearly $2K per access point in high quantities right now. The lower end chips can't break the spectrum up as finely and youre limited on the number of simultaneous receivers. Interestingly we are deploying all of these on copper and with multi-rate (NBase-T). Fiber is a poor choice for APs because you still have to power the dammed things. You can push 5 gig over 300 feet and supply 90 watts of power on cat 6 and 10G to over 100 feet. We're putting in ports of Nbase-T as fast as the hardware hits the shores. We do use APs with fiber but it's generally for outdoor or LPV (Large public venues) and you're having to run additional power at the far end. Hell, you can get 10G inside most residences with cat 5e cabling. Fiber is important for higher speed uplinks and I do prefer it for HDMI, but not needed for something like an AP. The fun thing is that a 48 port switch now requires 3KW of power if it's full of APs...a closet of 10 switches in theory could pull 30KW.... It will all get there where the technology is cost effective, but for now it's expensive. You also have the issue that 6ghz is only being allowed to operate in a functionally line of sight mode (FCC TX power restrictions), you're going to need a lot more APs for that spectrum than you would even a 5ghz deployment.... high density commercial deployments we're finding to be ok, but what we see on the residential side would require additional APs.
  5. Works perfectly for me at least after os 3.1, currently on latest version of 3.2. I have quite a few lights and automations off of door sensors... it's been 100% reliable
  6. You don't in any way need to use multiple matrixes if you have a "large" setup. If you have a lot of zones you can either go with a MOIP solution and have audio zones limited only by network scale and the buyers credit. You can also go with Zektor and do as many as 80 audio inputs and 96 audio outputs in a single matrix.....none of this is cheap, but if you can afford a property with the space for 96 zones.... Usually its problems with joining media sessions that don't bridge the amps because of in-obvious audio pathing or non C4 audio sources. Cyknight is absolutely right that locking the inputs will keep you out of danger. If you're only using streaming audio out of controllers it's mostly fine and a distributed setup is fine. Hell, I have an 8 zone matrix off an EA-5 with coax to RCA adapters to get 4 distinct sources, an EA-1 in my living room with analog bypass to zone 2 on my dennon and the same in my bedroom. I also have my theater off the HDMI on the EA-5. Technically I can have a single streaming source hitting 13 zones across three EAs. I only ever do that for parties and even then I dont turn on all the zones. Lets say you have two matrixes and you use the EA3 analog out to one matrix and coax out to the other. User 1 starts a Tidal session on amp 1 zone 1, then adds amp 2 zone 1 to that session. Now user 2 attempts to start a new Pandora media session to Amp 2 zone 3, now you have an issue in that you can't send two different streams over one output, someone doesn't get their tunes. I can have exactly this issue in that I can't play different sources to the two zones off my living room dennon because they are "split" off the HDMI out on the EA-1. In my situation the second zone is the patio and we would never play different streaming audio on the two. We may watch different video sources on the two zones and that works fine because it's switched locally in the AVR. If your setup works good for you then awesome, generally a C4 dealer is going to be reticent about getting crazy with multiple matrixes in one project if there are multiple users or non C4 sources. If its just C4 sources or shairbridge and you can lock inputs per cyknight it can work pretty well.
  7. It's generally considered bad practice to use two matrix amps as it can cause subtle and weird problems. You can probably get away with it, especially if you have an upstream audio matrix. There is no guarantee you will or won't hit the issues, it's about behaviours and user patterns and what's pathable between the two units....
  8. Just some clarification for anyone reading this: A mesh system is where the APs backhaul their traffic to a central point over one of the wireless channels. These systems generally have mediocre performance. If all you're doing is surfing the web you may not notice the performance is terrible. They also do not expose any setting to resolve issue or optimize the RF environment. If you run into a problem you may not be able to solve it easily. You can assemble a wifi setup with either seperate dumb APs or with centrally managed APs. Either way you can have a single network that spans all the APs. If you see someone with a unique SSID per AP they are ignorant and didn't set it up properly. You only have to make the SSID (network name) and authentication match between the APs. A centrally managed configuration will have several advantages over dumb APs with the same settings. One obviously is a single point to manage all of the APs. Another is that they can automatically tune channel, power, and pre-cache credentials to speed roaming. They also can have more sophisticated security mechanisms. A large part of what you are paying for with a wireless system is the ability of the system to manage the wireless spectrum and adjust for problems and interference sources. The example of having multiple APs and wanting the client to connect to the best one is how it should and does work. The client collects a list of APs and their signal strength. If 802.11k is enabled they get some additional performance information, they then select the "best" AP based on some criterial, signal strength is the primary factor. When signal strength degrades, the AP will start looking for the next best AP, it then will re-initiate authentication to the AP. If 802.11r is enabled some of the cached intermediary cryptography is passed between APs to speed roaming and keep the client from dropping traffic while roaming. You don't need a "mesh" system for any of this. With networking products, market share counts. There are trillions of combinations of client, operating system, interference sources, firmware etc... the more APs and switches a company has in the market the more bugs they will find and fix. I agree with the comment about these "luxury" wifi products being like an off brand car. I wouldn't build my environment off of them. Ubiquiti is a great product and probably the best price point. I would also take a strong look at Ruckus and Aruba InstantON. My team installs something like 20,000 APs per year ( in a three city geography), mostly Aruba, Mist, and Ruckus. We are only one of thousands of networking companies in north america. I suspect that the luxury brands barely sell that number in totality in a quarter. They just don't have the client exposure that an enterprise product does. Don't get hung up on the most fancy APs out there. 8x8 APs are useless when you have an indoor environment with a bunch of 2x2 clients. I would shoot for 4x4 at most. Long range APs have no business in a home, regardless of manufacturer. Those are for a "coverage only" model. You cause problems with sticky clients and poor signal. There are enough clients (chromebooks) that get stuck on 2.4ghz and won't voluntarily roam to 5ghz. A long range AP will cause the issue you describe with the client on the "wrong" AP. Your ideal system should have a physical or virtual controller Use a POE connection for backhaul (I would run cat6a for new locations, shielded is a waste of money for APs) 4x4 5Ghz radio, 2x2 2.4 ghz radio it should do 802.11K and 802.11R It should both do auto power and auto channel Ability to manupulate all wireless parameters manually to solve issues The manufacturer should have a plan of record for Wifi 6E (6ghz) High install base so other people are getting bugs squashed so you don't have to From a POE perspective, 802.3AF (class 4) will get you 30 watts of power per port. 802.3bt will get you up to 90. Most of the new Wifi 6E radios will require >30 watts to boot. You can decide if you want to pre-purchase the POE ports or wait for 6E to hit fully at the end of the year and replace your switches. The full 90 watts is not nessecarry for the 6E APs, they will typically be using less than 60 watts. The pre-release stuff we've seen is that they will use less than 40, however it still pushes you into .bt power. You need to look at the total power budget of the switch as well. For example, a 48 port switch will pull 1440 watts for all ports consuming full 802.3 AF power (30 watts). A switch may support 30 watts per port but only be capable of supply 800 watts of power or may require additional power supplies to max out power delivery on all ports. This isn't the huge issue it seems. Often a device will say it needs class 4 (30 watts) but it only pulls 20 watts. A good switch operating system will report actual power consumption and even allow you to tier ports if consumption exceeds supply such that the most vial devices remain powered. Your blinds won't be a constant load so that will aid your power budget. The rest of it will so I would do a power calculation based on the supply requirements and make sure your switches have enough power to deliver it. I would also recommend going with 48 port switches, the ports are spaced the same as a 24 port and you will use less rack space. Regardless of the port density I would install horizontal cable management. If you're linking switches together you can use optics but it's really a waste of money. A 10G DAC cable is generally what one optic costs and you only have to purchase one of them. Most of my installs use 40G and 100G DACs. Performance is the same as the optics, you're buying one part instead of 3. I would also not buy a switch that only has 1G SFP ports, the cost difference is near 0 from a manufacturing perspective. Keep in mind that your WiFi 6 radios with 4x4 can push more than a gig and should use a multirate port (2.4G/5G) to begin with and 1G SFP ports are dumb. A quality switch will "stack" such that all of your switches look like one unit, similar beneifts to centrally managed wifi. The Ubiquiti, Ruckus, and Aruba gear will provide single plane of glass management of the setup.
  9. WHHHHHAAAATTTTT??????? People are paid for reviews on the internet? My world now crumbles around me. I would presume that most people on this forum would know that LTT is one of the more honest channels and they typically have no problem throwing products under the bus when they suck. They flipped on intel in a heartbeat when AMD started slaughtering them from a price/performance perspective. They also are good about making it obvious which videos are shill pieces (he's reading a script from a telprompter...poorly) and if you pay attention they make it obvious enough where the mfr has required them to "cook" the test/comparison (we have this slightly odd test scenario that highlights a specific performance point of the product). I guarantee they were required on the Samsung review to highlight that a scope format movie no longer exhibits backlight bleed etc... Linus then does go on to point out that they are not just managing where the dim zones break but doing a less agressive job of driving backlight when a portion of the zone is black. A lot of the magic appears to be that they've been working on the algorithm to drive the miniLED setup vs the previous gen FALD display. That all being said, I assume everyone on this forum knows there is a game played and to take such a review with an appropriate grain of salt. If OP was asking about DeltaE after calibration and color drift I wouldn't point them to a youtube review. Since everyone is trying to beat every dollar out of every purchase, killing retail, and the days of going to a local store and seeing these things side by side set up in and calibrated in a professional way are gone, I was giving a reasonable substitute for a less than die-hard consumer.
  10. This is another thing. I routinely see complaints about samsung IP control with C4. I can attest that if you wire them Sonys and LG are great. LG's apps kind of suck. The only TV I don't use a Roku or Shield on is my Sony 940E.... If it slows down any more or shows any signs of weirdness It'll get a Roku though.... Good luck!
  11. FYI, Linus Tech Tips did a review of the MicroLED Samsung against a smaller LG OLED, from their reaction and what the camera captured on the review I would say that the OLED is still slightly superior but unless you put them side by side you can't tell the difference. The Samsung seems to cure most of the issues with backlight blooming and the processing is much more intelligent about not triggering it unnecessarily. I do suspect the next gen Sony OLED (with LG Panel is probably the best flat panel TV on the market now and you will pay for it. I have a LGCX series OLED and no burn in issues so far.. also not my main TV but it does get used daily.... Personally, I would be loathe to buy a high end TCL. If I was buying a bedroom TV I would have no problem, but I would be afraid of issues with video processing, HDR etc.... Your money, spend how you like but I would consider that with a LG/Sony/Samsung you're getting top shelf features on the TV and things are mostly thought out and working properly....
  12. I've heard the Phantages and one of their other seperates, I own a Maestro X7. The Audio Controls gear I've heard sounds fantastic.
  13. You don't want each device to create a root cert, that's a nightmare. You would want a signing certificate generated from a trusted root that signs the very on the opt device and is then Trusted by the C4 driver. The CN thing is also kind of useless because it implies DNS which is generally not there in a home or is multicast based and therefor not trustable. The best bet would be to do pinning with the trusted root and validate the signing chain back to the root. This better be 1000% solid because no C4 installer is going to understand how to work with certs... generally IOT security is only done with certs with reference to a cloud provider and solid DNS and PKI infrastructure or is pinned with super secret encrypted certs. if you're creating some product that would pair with C4 it would need to initiate some pairing process that sorted out cryptography and trust in the driver for the product.
  14. Keep in mind that your packedge "router' is actually a nat/firewall device. It may have the ability to be an actual "router" but even if it doesn't I'm guessing your "sky" device is also a nat/firewall device and not a real router either. What's the big deal? Well if you want multicast to work between the buildings if you use a nat/firewall device you're probably putting a nat boundary between the two broadcast domains and you would have to configure some fancy multicast routing between the two networks. You would probably break any C4 discovery (phone app, touch pads, SDDP etc). You would also break all sorts of home level media discovery stuff (airplay, chromecast, sharibridge, etc). If you don't know enough about how to do this and are thinking two "routers" on a home network is a good setup, I advise you to get some help from someone that understands networking before having to re-do the install because a lot of it is broken. I would also use MOV based surge suppression on the catX cable between the buildings on BOTH ends and I would earth it to the ground for each building just before or after building penetration. Ubiquiti makes a very nice one, there are many models to choose from L-Comm and other places. You don't want a close strike induced into the gear on each end.
  15. This, you can get away with direct burying multi mode fiber zip cord. I would avvoid copper to minimize lightning issues. You can also do a wifi bridge if you don't want to run cable at all. Ubiquiti makes great bridging products.
  16. The driver is up and available for purchase on drivercentral.io now. If you have lumagen driver specific issues I am available via PM here. If you have drivercentral issues please hit them up directly. I may take a day or two to respond as I don't check this forum every day. https://drivercentral.io/platforms/control4-drivers/audio-video/lumagen/
  17. You are right, I was going more for scale of where the protection kicks in vs accuracy. Primary I don't want anyone getting a false sense of security or wasting any money..
  18. There is an issue with their rs-232 driver. We've been complaining for months and have given up... actually I don't think it's an issue with the C4 side as it's acting properly, the AVR is where the problem is occurring........Use the ip driver...
  19. The two issues are lightning and surges. Lightning is thousands of volts and thousands of amps. Surges are hundreds of volts and hundreds of amps. The best defense against lightning is proper grounding just like video storm mentioned above. A single ground or properly bonding your grounds with 6awg copper is the way to go. I would engage an electrical engineer to validate your grounding and I would the. Engage an electrician to audit your panel(s)and pop off a few wall plates to verify the house was wired properly. If you have antennas for any reason (tv, wifi, satellite, ham radio etc) those should have a gas passivated lightning arrester with replaceable cartridges. The cartridges are like a neon bulb and will conduct a lightning level strike to ground and destroy the capsule in the process. Please keep in mind that a direct strike will blow apart concrete, blow the Sheetrock off your walls etc... I've seen it blow a vcr out of a rack and embed it in the opposite wall... proper grounding will bleed down charge on your devices and minimize this risk. The other concern are surges in the form of 200-500+ volts on your AC line. There are several causes but grounding won't help with this. Mov or PTC based arrestors are the best defense here. A good example of this is a quality "surge strip" like a tripplite isobar. Cheap surge strips might have a circuit breaker or just an on/off switch which are both useless for protection purposes. There are whole house versions an electrician would be delighted to install on your panel. These work by having a sacrificial element (I.e. MOV) that starts conducting at a voltage higher than line level and it shorts the over voltage to ground. If the device triggers and protects it will literally be fried and you have to throw it away and replace it. They are very effective and I personally have one but I also made sure I had a properly grounded electrical system in the house first. if you have high dollar gear it's worth the investment as typical homeowner policies will only cover $2500 in damages from lightning...you can also inexpensively add a rider fir your high dollar gear...
  20. Just an update to everyone, the driver should be up on drivercentral in a few days. There are quite a few hoops to jump through on the signup process. If you have an urgent need you can dm me on here and we can work something out.
  21. If you're a dealer there should be a local Channel SE that will help you get it up and running. I would call and ask who your TAM is and they will have an associated SE. A good attitude goes a long way with them. They like helping reseller that are going to learn from them and shield them from customer issues. If it's an actual issue you will need support and yes you have to pay. It does sound like the 610s are configured as zone flex and need to be flashed to unleashed. Did you get in to the cli? There is pretty solid documentation on the products... there are no crazy bugs to the point where it won't work. Something logical is busted and you can fix it.
  22. They're still supporting hc-800, ea5 is going to be supported for a while...
  23. Agree, I would just stipulate that there is a difference between "test" and test.. I've seen a lot of installers test continuity and call that good...I even saw a guy once that measured the resistance of cables to determine footage of the run... works but inaccurate. You really want a TDR type tester that will actually qualify to 500mhz....it will show you where and what the problems are. If dodo bird pinched the wire with a hammer in staple or pulled it tight over a corner it will show a spike in xtalk with a TDR and you can re-run that pull...not going to get that with a continuity tester..
  24. This is apparently one of the very few applications for shielded 6a: https://www.cablinginstall.com/ip-security-av/article/16472882/av-cable-recommendations-for-hdbaset Shielding or no you would want to make sure it's installed according to all the other requirements, exposed jacket for field termination etc... bend radius should be more than 1.25" or 4xOD of the cable, always supported on j hooks, no more than 24 wires allowed per bundle, cable should be grounded to panel, panel should be grounded to rack, rack to copper bus bar, bar bonded to house ground. You could skip the bar and just ground the rack directly. All metal components of the rack need to be bonded with ground jumpers and the paint abraded away to make a solid connection. It's a pain to do properly. The cabling installer should have a tester that will qualify the cable to at least 350mhz if not to the full 500Mhz. An AV dealer probably won't have such a thing and may have to rent it.
  25. HC-800 can run 2.10 and still run current 3.2.x code. It's still quite a fast controller. You will lose gui to any connected TV if you go to 3.x. I would go up to current if you don't have anything weird that will break as the phone/tablet apps are better and performance and stability in the most current releases seems quite good. You need a dealer to do this for you. @msgreenf is a great dealer that may or may not be interested in doing this. He's very active on the forum here. There are other great remote dealers running around too. Generally upgrades aren't too bad but it would be best to have someone take a peek and look at the system before agreeing to a price because there may be some gotchas about what you're doing.
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