Controller Load Balancing

[atldunns]

Can someone help me understand how load balancing works within Control4?

I have an HC800 located in my main equipment area.  My system is growing and I am starting to notice slower performance, especially on the older touch panels (I have a mix of V2 and V3 touch panels), but also in responsiveness to remote commands like scrolling through directv guide.  My system is fairly large but I don't know the number of devices.  I have 16 zones of audio through c4 matrix, 4 sonos connects, security system, security cameras, 10x10 HDMI Leaf Matrix, about 50 switches, and about 10 touch panels, 6 remotes, 5 AVR's etc.  I continue to add light switches as time permits.

I have asked my dealer about adding additional controllers (either local room or an additional HC800 or now one of the EA controllers).  I am curious if that will improve performance of the overall system.  I am not getting clear answers.  If I add a controller, am I better off with multiple local smaller controllers or adding another larger controller (either centrally or in one of the rooms).  Does the control 4 software load balance across controllers?  For example, if I have dual HC800's located centrally, and most of my equipment is IP controlled, how is the second HC800 utilized to improve the system performance?

Any insight you can provide would be appreciated.

Also, has anyone experience degraded performance of v2 touch panels?  I started to notice it when software upgrade to 2.7 was done and then most recently 2.8 seems to cause even more slow down.  I'm not sure if this is a touch panel issue or if added controller horsepower would improve this performance

Thanks!

[Matt Lowe]

 

You cant really load balance everything but you can divy out some processes

Navigator - having a dedicated controller will relieve the main unit

Zigbee Server - to control zigbee traffic

ZAP - Access point for zigbee devices

i believe that is it so in a major system you would need 4 controllers 1 director 1 navigator 1 zigbee server and 1 ZAP

 

there are many factors that could be causing issues here

networking

drivers

devices

external devices not even in control4

interference wifi and or zigbee

hardware 

 

Send me a pm i would be willing to take a peek and see what i see remotely for you 

[Cyknight]

It's often best to keep Zserver and ZapCo on the same device, indeed on the Director because you're just dumping the strain on the network and can create additional delay in control instead of solving it, but it can be offloaded if needed, yes.

Removing OSD is the biggest one (and a major recommendation), followed by not using the director's audio in and outputs.

Additionally, serial and IR could be offloaded, but they have little effect in the scheme of things.

Of what Matt mentioned, network in particular tends to be a common point of 'system slowness/slowdown'

Indeed what you describe - slow screens in particular are often due to networking being slow or overloaded. Even remote control - especially if zserver and ZAPcoordinator are offloaded from director () - can be affected by a slow network. Also could be you have additional ZAP units that are communicating over the network, or even the fact that Director needs to talk to additional controllers to actually trigger IR or serial commands.

 

Honestly - the size of your system is nothing an HC800 shouldn't be able to handle without a single other controller, even running OSD and audio (though those two would be the 'big guns' to offload) - my first instinct would be to look at your network - router, network, cascaded networks, DHCP vs Static, WiFi use and more.

[RAV]

Summary - if Director is running Navigator and Audio In/Out, moving those to another processor will improve performance. And, with proper network, move Zigbee.

Newer versions of Director will turn off unused services. But this was not always the case, older versions you were required to manual turn off Navigator when not used. So system version can play a part as well.