Coming Q2 - OS3.3, New Controllers

[therockhr]

1 minute ago, Dunamivora said:

Very old. The government also still uses windows XP in some cases.

Doesn't make it smart or secure.

Power plants and manufacturing plants have security controls preventing access because those devices cannot survive in a hostile network. Consumer IoT has started shifting towards securing itself to be secure inside hostile environments.

They found a way to have a device last longer than 5 years is what you are saying? So it is possible!

You make ridiculous statements like this all the time to justify your or Control4's decisions.

[BXTR]

Did someone say that C4 equipment has to be replaced every 3-5 years?

if so that’s a complete crock of steaming…

I have dozens of clients running OS3 on HC800’s that are from around 2012

I know exactly zero people with a computer from 2012 that functions so… 

[-defunct-]

5 minutes ago, therockhr said:

They found a way to have a device last longer than 5 years is what you are saying? So it is possible!

You make ridiculous statements like this all the time to justify your or Control4's decisions.

Anything would last a long time if it was self contained, required zero updates, and sat on an isolated network.

The cloud and consumer usability changed that aspect.

[RAV]

30 minutes ago, therockhr said:

How old do you think the devices that control power plants and manufacturing plants are?

There's no app for that.
Sure, sandbox a home automation system; with no outside controls, no 3rd party products, no streaming, no smart phone app, no Intercom, no camera streaming, and it'll last 20 years.

[therockhr]

16 minutes ago, BXTR said:

Did someone say that C4 equipment has to be replaced every 3-5 years?

if so that’s a complete crock of steaming…

I have dozens of clients running OS3 on HC800’s that are from around 2012

I know exactly zero people with a computer from 2012 that functions so… 

yes, the guy with the goatee said every iot device should be replaced at least every 5 years.

Also, you probably connect to dozens of computers a day from 2012. you just dont know it.

[wnpublic]

1 minute ago, therockhr said:

yes, the guy with the goatee said every iot device should be replaced at least every 5 years

It's true.  I'm not really bothered by a 5-7 year replacement cycle, per se.  Computers, tvs, etc. are on that cycle for me. What I find bizarre is that the hot new user feature that's going to drive this refresh cycle is......color wheel?

[therockhr]

4 minutes ago, RAV said:

There's no app for that.
Sure, sandbox a home automation system; with no outside controls, no 3rd party products, no streaming, no smart phone app, no Intercom, no camera streaming, and it'll last 20 years.

a device that sits behind a firewalled home network is probably more sandboxed than devices at most power plants and manufacturing plants.

[eggzlot]

55 minutes ago, Control4Savant said:

Are you having your own argument lol? He indicated that no device over 5 years old is a good idea. 

and for example.. the hc250 was released the same year as the HC800. One example doesn’t make the point. 

Who says I agree with him that you need to change a device every 5 years - I quoted you, not the other poster. 

You were saying C4 does a bad job at EOL their hardware and making customers pay for it and forcing them into upgrades.  The HC800 is ticking 10 years later and can do 90-95% of the latest features in OS3.  Not bad.  As someone with knowledge pointed out the HC250 was different and rendered obsolete.  Still if you don't upgrade to OS3 it still works, its not bricked.  HC250 came out in Spring 2012, OS3 came out June 2019.  So even still, you had 7 years with your HC250 - that's not bad and that is assuming you ripped out the HC250 to immediately update to OS3.

[therockhr]

2 minutes ago, wnpublic said:

It's true.  I'm not really bothered by a 5-7 year replacement cycle, per se.  Computers, tvs, etc. are on that cycle for me. What I find bizarre is that the hot new user feature that's going to drive this refresh cycle is......color wheel?

Honestly im not either. I think the sweet spot for something like control4 is 8-10 years. The reason for the upgrade though should be to add new features that require new hardware. Not because you cant make it secure.

[eggzlot]

3 minutes ago, wnpublic said:

It's true.  I'm not really bothered by a 5-7 year replacement cycle, per se.  Computers, tvs, etc. are on that cycle for me. What I find bizarre is that the hot new user feature that's going to drive this refresh cycle is......color wheel?

I don't believe you need a CORE processor to get the Color Wheel.  They are updating OS3 to 3.3 and that is one big new feature.  In the same press release about an OS update they are also introducing some new hardware.

[RAV]

3 minutes ago, therockhr said:

a device that sits behind a firewalled home network is probably more sandboxed than devices at most power plants and manufacturing plants.

My point wasn't the firewall, or secuity of the network from hackers.
The focus was, once a device NEEDS to talk to other brand components, than it's security becomes more of a concern, and it's software and hardware need to keep up.

[wnpublic]

1 minute ago, eggzlot said:

I don't believe you need a CORE processor to get the Color Wheel.  They are updating OS3 to 3.3 and that is one big new feature.  In the same press release about an OS update they are also introducing some new hardware.

It's definitely a feature.

[RAV]

1 minute ago, eggzlot said:

I don't believe you need a CORE processor to get the Color Wheel.  They are updating OS3 to 3.3 and that is one big new feature.  In the same press release about an OS update they are also introducing some new hardware.

Correct.

I also read on a dealer forum, one of the main reasons for the Core is that the processor used in the EA is going end of life.
So there's a case of keeping up with the Jones's for you. Control4 has to change, due a thrid party.

[-defunct-]

4 minutes ago, RAV said:

My point wasn't the firewall, or secuity of the network from hackers.
The focus was, once a device NEEDS to talk to other brand components, than it's security becomes more of a concern, and it's software and hardware need to keep up.

Exactly. Example: HC200/300/500 can't handle TLS1.2.

HC800 and HC250 can, but it wasn't a capability for the HC250 until 2.9.1 because it was necessary for the Napster update.

[Gary Leeds UK]

1 hour ago, BXTR said:

Did someone say that C4 equipment has to be replaced every 3-5 years?

if so that’s a complete crock of steaming…

I have dozens of clients running OS3 on HC800’s that are from around 2012

I know exactly zero people with a computer from 2012 that functions so… 

We still run a HC800, just hope the colour Wheel works with HC800

Apart from that - C4 is just software to keep all my apps in one Eco System 

Phillips Hue / Sonos / Axis Gear / Q Motion / Alarm / TV and Audio Gear / CCTV

 

[RyanE]

16 minutes ago, Gary Leeds UK said:

We still run a HC800, just hope the colour Wheel works with HC800

As the 800 can run OS3.3 (hasn't been deprecated for that, as far as I know), it should run the colo(u)r wheel just fine.

RyanE

[prabeau]

As an HC800 owner since 2012 that's great news.

Now what's a colour wheel ? 

[Cyknight]

5 hours ago, therockhr said:

IoT is a marketing term.

 

See what was already said below

5 hours ago, Dunamivora said:

Very old. The government also still uses windows XP in some cases.

Doesn't make it smart or secure.

Power plants and manufacturing plants have security controls preventing access because those devices cannot survive in a hostile network. Consumer IoT has started shifting towards securing itself to be secure inside hostile environments.

You cannot compare the two things in the slightest.

 

Now I'm not saying I quite agree with the '5 year' term - at least not on a direct hardware perspective - but if a device can't RUN on software that is newer than 5 years (in the sense of getting updated for security, not functionality), without jumping through all sorts of loopholes, I would be concerned about security as well.

As with things like your powerplant example - the loopholes are worth it, because there is little other choice. Your phone .... not so much.

[Cyknight]

5 hours ago, therockhr said:

They found a way to have a device last longer than 5 years is what you are saying? So it is possible!

You make ridiculous statements like this all the time to justify your or Control4's decisions.

Possible is not feasible, let alone reasonable.

[Andrew luecke]

14 hours ago, therockhr said:

yes, the guy with the goatee said every iot device should be replaced at least every 5 years.

Also, you probably connect to dozens of computers a day from 2012. you just dont know it.

• In 2012, Intel was selling 4XXX CPU's. These are totally vulnerable to meltdown/spectre like attacks, and mitigations deployed against these attacks have a dramatic impact on performance.
• You couldn't use Intel 4XXX for most shared server applications without the high risk of full root. A limited access user could potentially get full root access or read other users data, even in many virtual machines or containers.
• Google datacentres uses EPYC apparently which were introduced in 2017. AWS uses CPU's which were released in 2015 https://aws.amazon.com/intel/#:~:text=AWS features 2nd Gen Intel,90% on Windows compute costs.&text=Supercharge SAP%3A Why Customers are Deploying on SAP on AWS. 
• Microsoft Azure uses 8xxx series CPU's. These are from 2018: https://azure.microsoft.com/en-au/pricing/details/virtual-machines/series/#:~:text=The Azure Mv2-series virtual,and 12 TB memory configurations.
• Synology also don't appear to be providing updates anymore for systems released in 2012. 
• In fact SSL 3.0 was removed in many browsers in 2014 (so, 2 years after the HC250 release). We're up to TLS 1.3, which was released in 2018.. 
• Windows 11 requires 8XXX series intel or above (released in 2018+)
• The latest MacOS requires a computer newer than 2013 (Mac Pro), but in some cases like the iMac, the 2017 model is required..
• The Phillip Hue bridge Gen1 was released in 2012. Phillips ended remote access in  2020
• LTS for the linux kernel is 10 years, and that's most frozen most that time. .  

So.. It's actually kind of doubtful you'll be accessing any remote computers of that age (except in specialist applications I'd be guessing).   

Forget about whether it can be done. The real question is, how extra would you spend for long term support, to be able to allow customers with 15 year old to continue to use the latest OS?

1. Would you pay 50% more?
2. Would you also pay extra for dedicated hardware (you couldn't simply split a controller into 2 devices and keep the same price, as there would be additional testing, more maintenance and more hardware costs).
3. If Control4 dramatically increased their costs to allow this, would you still buy it? 

Don't forget that there is an OS running underneath Control4, with drivers to support the hardware which also needs to be maintained.

• If a backend component / service requires a minimum kernel version to operate (sometimes they do for a new syscall), but driver support is unmaintained for some hardware components or services, Control4 would also need to maintain and upgrade those drivers too to allow the kernel upgrade.
• On the surface, whilst it may appear that Control4 is simply running an App on an OS, the entire stack is serviced by tens of thousands of people potentially, which including all the backend projects.
• Sometimes developers also stop maintaining old backend components forcing them to be depreciated. This is already slowly happening in projects like Xorg vs Wayland. There are parts of Xorg which apparently only 2 or 3 people on the planet actually understand, and the developers now work on Wayland instead, so Xorg will eventually likely be dropped by distros. There are lots of projects like this..   
• Even when you consider the work done by programming legends like Terry Davis who wrote their own OS, they still only scratched the surface. Lots of pieces need to come together (Linux distributions make it look easy, but there is a huge amount of coordination happening in the background to line release dates up, and ensure everything works together). 

Imho, companies like Control4 make it look easier than it is

[ekohn00]

15 hours ago, Dunamivora said:

Very old. The government also still uses windows XP in some cases.

Doesn't make it smart or secure.

Power plants and manufacturing plants have security controls preventing access because those devices cannot survive in a hostile network. Consumer IoT has started shifting towards securing itself to be secure inside hostile environments.

the government also has devices with vacuum tubes instead of chips and floppy drives. Most of the time there's actually a reason for the madness (like security). These days you see little Win XP if any (maybe if there's a specialty app that hasn't been redone) and they've worked with M$ to extend EOL support.

 you'd be surprised at the gaps in security in plants,

 

[msgreenf]

19 minutes ago, ekohn00 said:

the government also has devices with vacuum tubes instead of chips and floppy drives. Most of the time there's actually a reason for the madness (like security). These days you see little Win XP if any (maybe if there's a specialty app that hasn't been redone) and they've worked with M$ to extend EOL support.

 you'd be surprised at the gaps in security in plants,

 

There is no more extended support for XP. XP embedded is a different story. 

[ekohn00]

1 minute ago, msgreenf said:

There is no more extended support for XP. XP embedded is a different story. 

whoops......my bad. You'r right on XP. Its Windows 7 that they paid for extended support.

[msgreenf]

21 minutes ago, ekohn00 said:

whoops......my bad. You'r right on XP. Its Windows 7 that they paid for extended support.

Nope. Windows 7 extended support ended Jan 14 2020

[Andrew luecke]

15 hours ago, therockhr said:

a device that sits behind a firewalled home network is probably more sandboxed than devices at most power plants and manufacturing plants.

That's not true at all.

Commercial firewalls like watchguard run technologies like IPS to help detect and block likely attacks.

They even use fake certificates to intercept all connections and send any files downloaded to an online VM which they monitor automatically to detect activity which suggests it's malware ( the download might run for weeks, to detect malware which delays any actions to feign innocence).

In contrast, your typical home router ships without basic password policies and upnp enabled to enable port forwarding automatically.

They generally have no exploit detection capability, only basic routing capabilities and many don't even support vlans. Home routers also can't do anything with encrypted traffic and everything on the network can access the configuration port (in contrast with higher end products where you have full control).