Regular Controller Reboot?

[wappinghigh]

^It's easy to be critical, and take the piss out of me. And other passionate users..

But make no bones about it, the future is full control via IP...

Everything in my place is lock stock and barrel fully paid for and dealer installed..

Sure I push the boundaries a bit: Heck I have at any one time over 60 networked pieces of gear right now on my little ol' home network..

Yeah Sure XBMC running on my $100 Rasp Pi isn't perfect. I'm getting stuttering with HiDef movies right now.. so sure I accept it's not as good as a 15K Matrix.. and yes I spend a lot of time tweekin and mucking around with imperfect solutions in my little cave/lab.. but make no bones about it: I HAVE PAID FOR THIS EXPERIMENTAL PAIN>> so I call things as I see them...

[RyanE]

I never said it wasn't an *important* part, but just that in terms of percentages, there's a *lot* of Control4 installations that don't use 3rd party drivers.

As far as percentage of dealers who have made drivers, I'd bet it's quite a bit higher than you estimate, although most of the drivers dealers create are fairly simple IR drivers, not DriverWorks drivers.

I completely agree that there's a ton of innovation being done by 3rd parties, for which I am grateful. I also completely agree that IP is the future. It has been for 10 years.

Say whatever you want on here, it doesn't give me any heartburn, but when I disagree, I have the same right as you to call out what I believe to be incorrect and inflammatory information.

RyanE

[wappinghigh]

^ Fair enough Ryan.

We agree on a lot of things actually...

The key thing is: IP drivers are the future.

So given that, why does the company restrict IP driver development to it's dealer network?

(given as you accept: very few dealers... for a myriad of reasons...actually have any chance of ever doing this difficult work)

Why doesn't the company either

1/ directly employ an army of brilliant young programmers to do this important work? and/or

2/ put some development program in place that encourages non dealer third party brilliant young minds to do it... ?

[ILoveC4]

Wap...they don't restrict it...you can signup a developer account and get everything you need to create whatever you want.

[wappinghigh]

^Sure I know this..

The issue is you need capital spend to get into the product..

What 15 yr old has 2-3K to get into Control4...?

And what 10 steps do they need to take to get right into the programming...?

That's what I meant by a "development program"..

Give out a thousand HC800's to the worlds greatest programming minds...

Run a free competition..

Run it on facebook....

I don't know.. hand em' out by the truck load on the IT University campuses..

Anything!! Just get the freeflowing innovative minds into the product...Somehow.

[dogdvr]

Anybody friends with Orville Redenbacher?

I am running low on popcorn

[cashmoney]

WAP? What do you expect someone in this development program to create? C4 is an automation company, nothing more. Other people and companies make the tech C4 simply gives you a single source of control.

Also the money these young brilliant programmers could make else where is what is really keeping them from working at C4. No offense to Ryan or the other employees there but let's be real, these folks are gonna work someplace else.

[ILoveC4]

Give out 1,000 of them? How many do you think they will sell in total? I don't know what the number is, but I'm guessing 1,000 is a huge percentage.

e

[wappinghigh]

^ CashM.. Exactly my point.

I Agree. But it needn't be "just a home automation company"..because you and I know things could be so much more....

[wappinghigh]

WAP?

Also the money these young brilliant programmers could make else where is what is really keeping them from working at C4. No offense to Ryan or the other employees there but let's be real, these folks are gonna work someplace else.

Sure. Agree again. And what a huge shame this is.

[cashmoney]

Honestly I don't want them developing lots of tech outside of automation. Heck, I think they should be primarily a software company and drop hardware all together. Let folks with far better engineering resources like the Chinese, cough, handle hardware.

[wappinghigh]

Give out 1,000 of them? How many do you think they will sell in total? I don't know what the number is, but I'm guessing 1,000 is a huge percentage.

e

Dan, you know this is not the point.. the point is innovative development appears to be at a standstill, and I was just exploring options to turn things around..heck I don't know what would fly..

Free crap shots at the local rap joint? I don't know.. All I know is driver development could be a whole lot better/faster/innovative/exciting/dynamic/available/easier/cheaper/more relevant......................................

[cashmoney]

Like what? Give us an example or examples of what you think is missing on the driver front.

[wappinghigh]

Full integration with OSX/itunes

IP drivers that hit the market for *every* IP controllable device as soon as the device hits the market

Backup solutions/drivers for cloud based sharing

Skype/Facetime 2 way integration with touchscreen intercom

Direct integration (as soon as they hit the airwaves) of Rhapsody/Netflix/Hulu/Vudu...whatever....every streaming service that's out their..straight into the watch/listen section of navigator

A fully integrated search feature right across Control4, run by Siri or Voicepods..

And that is just a start..

[cashmoney]

Those things have more to do with the other side of the equation then the C4 side. Tell those companies to be OPEN and support integration.

These companies all have sharing issues because someone might steal some thing from them. Everyone of them are on a proprietary model. Get them to follow a control standard like they follow other standards such as wifi and your dreams might then come true. The problem is no control standard exists, everyone says their system is the best.

Ugh

[RyanE]

Full integration with OSX/itunes

IP drivers that hit the market for *every* IP controllable device as soon as the device hits the market

Backup solutions/drivers for cloud based sharing

Skype/Facetime 2 way integration with touchscreen intercom

Direct integration (as soon as they hit the airwaves) of Rhapsody/Netflix/Hulu/Vudu...whatever....every streaming service that's out their..straight into the watch/listen section of navigator

A fully integrated search feature right across Control4, run by Siri or Voicepods..

If you think even *one* of those features would be developed by throwing hardware at college students, you're seriously smoking some of the same stuff those college students are...

As Cashmoney says, some (not all) of these things are issues on the *other* side, not on Control4's side.

Some people don't like open APIs, and don't provide those APIs. Kind of hard to develop against a rock wall.

RyanE

[msgreenf]

and i think part of it is knowing where to develop. For example, you bring up netflix, hulu, etc. All these services already have a VERY easy integration point. Roku. Why would C4 put time/money into something that already is part of the eco system?

[ILoveC4]

Notice how everything he said has to do with streaming "protected" content (not protected by Control4, but by the provider).

[msgreenf]

Notice how everything he said has to do with streaming "protected" content (not protected by Control4, but by the provider).

We'll wap has said many times the same thing. Control 4 needs to work with providers to make there content drm free. That's backwards. Content providers have to b open.

[alanchow]

Control4 is too big to discuss with DiY community.

Even though we have hacked their system, even with cracked myhome apps for ipad and android, cracked composer, cracked 4sight....

DIY dont make money to them, DIY just helps who has knoledge and want a cheaper C4 at home

for some, control4 is free of cost...except for the controller (in some cases )

Bruno why can i find my code in youu driver. Did you somehow decypted my XBMC driver? I know that you have re-used the majority of my driver code including my queuing functions, tables, global variables within 'your' driver.

Why are you claiming my work as your own? Arn't you talented enough to write it from scratch? What gives you the right to do this? Oh god this makes me angry. You know what the best way is to kill innovation? By stealing peoples code and claiming it as your own.

[wappinghigh]

...mmmm... if this is true, this is not good... :|

[bsalvador]

Open for discussion

http://www.c4forums.com/viewtopic.php?pid=121881#p121881

[zaphod]

This thread is going in about three directions at once...

I have to say that I agree with Wap. For many years I have used SageTV as my whole house DVR+ media solution. One of the great things about SageTV (which is now semi-dead since Google bought the company out two years ago) was the end user community that developed all sorts of great plugins. These could easily be loaded and used by the end user - mind you the end users were generally pretty tech savvy individuals to be using a PC to record TV. But they developed stuff like a monitor to extend the recordings of live sports, a web UI, a way to access Netflix, Hulu, etc on Sage, metadata scrapers, whole new UIs, automatic commercial skipping facilitation, etc, etc. These hugely improved my enjoyment of SageTV.

I think it would be fantastic if C4 was as open as SageTV was/is. But needing to call a dealer to install any of these is a huge downside. I asked my dealer to install the IP driver for my Sharp TV. He said that he couldn't find a driver for my specific TV model. I wouldn't mind personally playing around with different Sharp IP drivers in the C4 database but I can't do so as an end user. I did have a version of Composer Pro in the past but since I upgraded to versions 2.x I no longer have that and I really miss having the full functionality available.

[t0ffluss]

zap: couldn`t agree more. Personally coming from the Meedio / MeediOS community which also flourished because of the thriving user community, I know exactly what you're talking about. Everyone helped each other out, even though the base system Meedio (not MeediOS) was payware the users developed new and exiting plugins. I was the one who started the fanart page hosting the images all of you guys now take for granted With help from that community we got a solution together to provide everyone with metadata and graphics for their systems. thetvdb.com was and is the final result.. and it`s still running, providing the same data for all xbmc installs around the world. The guys at C4 definitely has something to learn from this business model. The bigger and more open community you have, the more innovation and "new thinkers" will join the team to give everyone a better user experience. Control4 have great software and great hardware, why not make it something everyone can enjoy? Of course, some would still need help in setting these systems up and running (here`s where the Dealer network come in). But leaving out the tinkerers and DIYers is just crazy.. after all, we're living in 2013.

My first and most likely last post..

-t0ffluss

[wappinghigh]

^ Well exactly. Well said you two..