Moving house, wanting to try a different platform...

[BXTR]

This reminds of of Apple vs PC in some way

Reliability & ease of the Apple “ecosystem” vs PC’s tweakabiliy and cheaper price

Non computer geeks just want it to work and be easy

 

and yes… I’m 110% certain that the people who bought your house were absolutely mortified that the AppleTV was not able to be IP controlled

troll 

 

[South Africa C4 user]

54 minutes ago, BXTR said:

There are those who love to tinker, constantly need to maintain their ever evolving ecosystem and save money

And there are those who want consistency, reliability and a system that just works. They like automation, have money but have no time or desire to constantly tinker, this is Control4’s customer

 

I must say… I do both… want reliability and tinker constantly.  Fortunately I have a phenomenal dealer…

[wnpublic]

5 minutes ago, BXTR said:

This reminds of of Apple vs PC in some way

Reliability & ease of the Apple “ecosystem” vs PC’s tweakabiliy and cheaper price

Non computer geeks just want it to work and be easy

 

and yes… I’m 110% certain that the people who bought your house were absolutely mortified that the AppleTV was not able to be IP controlled

troll 

 

I’m guessing you have not had the experience of selling a home at a 5m plus price point. You hear a lot of things from the buyer. That was indeed one of them. There was more, but I was trying to make a point. 

[eggzlot]

12 minutes ago, wnpublic said:

I’m guessing you have not had the experience of selling a home at a 5m plus price point. You hear a lot of things from the buyer. That was indeed one of them. There was more, but I was trying to make a point. 

99.98% of the population has no clue what IP control means.   So the odds of selling a 5m home and the buyer asking that singular questions - you should go buy a lotto ticket tonight that’s all

[wnpublic]

2 minutes ago, eggzlot said:

99.98% of the population has no clue what IP control means.   So the odds of selling a 5m home and the buyer asking that singular questions - you should go buy a lotto ticket tonight that’s all

I’m guessing you don’t live in the Bay Area of California?  The people with that money for a house are all tech people, or tech adjacent, and if you say your house is on a home automation platform, they are gonna come look at it. 7 of 8 bidders either inspected the server closet themselves, or sent an IT person to do so. 

[ChzBurger]

As an advanced end-user with C4, Home Assistant, Hubitat, Apple HomeKit, and Alexa here are some of my general observations:

1. Different people have different use cases, and dealers should be able to be responsive to each.
2. These systems need to be broken down between control and automation capabilities. They all will do some of each, but not to the same levels.
3. Further, there is a large difference between AV and non-AV use cases. Maybe security too.
4. Finally, device markets continue to make significant changes. Consumer level stuff is becoming more capable, making some of the higher-end stuff like distributed video and audio even more niche. The Thread/Matter devices coming out will keep that trend going for a while. C4 dealers should understand the capabilities of the consumer/DIY stuff even if they never want to deal with it.

Here are some more specific observations/opinions

1. My use case: I use C4 to control AV, lights, HVAC. I use Hubitat for most automation of non-AV components especially lights. I use Home Assistant to bring a couple cloud integrations into my system. I use Apple Home for device control. I push devices to Apple Home via Homebridge. Alexa is linked to both C4 and Hubitat.
2. C4 is great for controlling AV stuff. That's how I came to use it. C4 is OK for controlling other things. I'm an Apple user and while the C4 phone/pad app has certainly become more responsive, it's still not what I would call great. As said in another reply in this thread, one nice thing is the consistent interface.
3. Dashboards are one of those things that people have strong feelings about. Within dashboards there are 2 use cases too, 1) display of information, and 2) device control. They are of minimal use to me, so I would never buy a T4 or any other touch screen just for HA purposes. Home Assistant is extremely flexible and powerful. C4 is OK, and Hubitat is not very good without an extreme amount of effort. As stated before, Apple Home is good and easy to implement for non-AV control.
4. From an automation perspective C4, Hubitat, and Home Assistant are all capable and reliable. All have UI issues that mostly become no more than annoyances with use. C4's are a mid '90s Novell Netware like interface with some inconsistencies in how automations are categorized/accessed. And the requirement to use a Windows app. Hubitat's UI is a bit clickety. Home Assistant has a big curve due to its fairly quickly changing design and a mix of YAML, integrations, devices, entities, blueprints, etc. All 3 have apps that will streamline automations. My biggest use case is for sensor-based lighting and I find Hubitat to be the best as it has a couple built-in apps that cover use cases from simple to complex. All done via a web UI. 
5. One of C4's big selling points is support. Can't be undersold for many customers. The others rely on user forums. Hubitat has a very good user forum where questions get answered, even by company owners. Home Assistant has a big forum with very uneven quality. For example, RadioRA 2 issues get few to no answers and the integration is still old-style. One of Hubitat's owners uses RadioRA 2 and any issues are quickly addressed. 
6. All have fairly good device integration capabilities. As said, C4 is superior for AV devices. C4 gets limited by its Zigbee Pro implementation. I came to C4 via an existing implementation in my newer house. I have a collection of about 50 Zigbee sensors that I am not willing to change out. On the AV side the Apple Music, Spotify, and Sonos C4 integrations are non-existent or lacking (I realize that may not be solely due to C4). The nice thing about the DIY controllers, especially Home Assistant, is that there is almost always someone who comes up with automation capabilities for new devices. One downside is that sometimes those integrations are a reverse engineered implementation like MyQ, Lutron Caséta, or August that are subject to undocumented API changes.
7. I dislike the dealer model. Dealers add value for many customers. I'd like the market to be more like plumbers. One can hire a plumber to change a toilet flap or one can do all the work to re-plumb their renovation. The plumbers don't care if you solder your joints and the plumbing supply companies are happy to sell you whatever you need. I'm happy to pay for 4Sight and would pay more for complete system access.
8. To address a couple specific points in this thread, a) I use the C4 native Apple TV IP driver on one of my Apple TVs. I don't use it a lot, but I have not noticed any recent issues. And b) presence can be a tricky issue no matter what system one uses. One way to make presence more reliable is to aggregate sensors. Apple Home, Alexa, Ubiquiti routers all have triggers and messages that can be used for presence. Another phone app that may help is Geofency. Aggregate them to get better reliability. Presence is hard to automate because there are so many potential exceptions, like having workers in your house when you leave.

Overall I'm happy with my setup even though I need more than one controller to make it all work. I do think there will be lots of evolution in the next few years that will open up new competitive opportunities for C4 and other companies.

[Amr]

Gentlemen I had the best of both worlds! Everything is controlled via C4, all programing logic is there, am not convinced with anything else, I also have a decent dealer.

The DIY side resides in two parts, continuously upgrading non C4 components; network/cams/speakers/Streamers, etc, things that are easily done via ComposerHE, the other side is tapping into MQTT world and integrating a lot of these devices to C4, this part after getting the driver is maintained by me, once you are settled there is little to be done, but overall no one tinkers forever!

[wnpublic]

4 hours ago, Amr said:

 

The DIY side resides in two parts, continuously upgrading non C4 components; network/cams/speakers/Streamers, etc, things that are easily done via ComposerHE, the other side is tapping into MQTT world and integrating a lot of these devices to C4, this part after getting the driver is maintained by me, once you are settled there is little to be done, but overall no one tinkers forever!

MQTT is fun!  All my garages are reporting via MQTT.

[Midnight1982]

On 8/3/2022 at 7:34 AM, Andrew luecke said:

Others should keep in mind, internationally, TCL does NOT use Roku (it only seems to be in US and a few other places). In other countries, they use their own Linux thing, or Android TV instead

Tv's a bit of a pain of the TV, hit and miss with different models.

[eggzlot]

9 hours ago, wnpublic said:

I’m guessing you don’t live in the Bay Area of California?  The people with that money for a house are all tech people, or tech adjacent, and if you say your house is on a home automation platform, they are gonna come look at it. 7 of 8 bidders either inspected the server closet themselves, or sent an IT person to do so. 

Sent an IT person makes sense.  I’ll stick to my comments.  99.98% of the population doesn’t know what IP control means for an Apple TV.  
 

sorry for your first world problems.  If they are buying a 5m house they can rip it out for crestron with the money they wipe their a$$ with on a Tuesday afternoon. 

Would love to see those tech guys look at your web server UI in a 5m house.  That must excite them

Edited August 8, 2022 by eggzlot

[wnpublic]

2 hours ago, eggzlot said:

Would love to see those tech guys look at your web server UI in a 5m house.  That must excite them

Many have. 

And tell me you don't understand mobile app development without saying you don't understand mobile app development.  Oh, you just did!

[ILoveC4]

14 hours ago, Amr said:

I went the full extreme, deployed an EA1/CA1 @ my summer house, just to get rid of all these remotes in Family/Master Rooms, I have 3 TV's only, added a Soundbar with a built in FTV, a couple of Sonos speakers for distributed Audio, a projector for backyard nights and A/C automation with Sensibo, through some R260 Remotes and some GlobalCache for ZIR, no T3/T4 just Android desktops and life is so good

I was going to, but where we’ve got guests and a property manager I didn’t want anything that required any explanation. 

[wnpublic]

18 minutes ago, ILoveC4 said:

I was going to, but where we’ve got guests and a property manager I didn’t want anything that required any explanation. 

I hear you.  one of mine is an STR and i don't expose the interfaces to them. they just see that the patio lights come on at sunset, off at midnight, etc.  I do give them a QR code they can use to access a home assistant page from the browser that is just a list of fun things to do in town.

[Andrew luecke]

3 hours ago, wnpublic said:

 

Deleted

[eggzlot]

7 hours ago, wnpublic said:

Many have. 

And tell me you don't understand mobile app development without saying you don't understand mobile app development.  Oh, you just did!

It’s called being polite 

maybe take a cue

off to find the ignore feature

[wnpublic]

7 hours ago, Andrew luecke said:

Deleted

That's fine.  It's no different than the prior state of affairs.

[BXTR]

For someone who dislikes C4 so strongly, you sure do spend a ton of energy trying to tell everyone how right you are in not loving it  

Sending hugs

 

[wnpublic]

2 hours ago, BXTR said:

For someone who dislikes C4 so strongly, you sure do spend a ton of energy trying to tell everyone how right you are in not loving it  

Sending hugs

 

That’s not accurate, but it’s not actually inconsistent or ironic to strongly dislike something and  spend energy on stating that you strongly dislike it. I’m guessing you thought a traffic jam when you’re already late is ironic, too. How about 10000 spoons?

[BXTR]

It’s not a healthy habit my man, kind of the definition of insanity to occasionally come to a forum to bash a product that the forum revolves around and wonder why people don’t see it your way, but anyway, please carry on… it’s entertaining 

[Andrew luecke]

20 hours ago, wnpublic said:

That's fine.  It's no different than the prior state of affairs.

Yeah.. I'm also going to ignore. Goodbye. 

• It was awkward when you told others how rich you are, and boasted about your superior IQ on numerous occasions since you joined the forum.
• I believe you exaggerated when you claimed people looking at your house made a big deal about IR's on Apple TV's in a rack. They might have mentioned it, but IT guys really don't care about that in a multi-million dollar house (they care more about the overall equipment and the infrastructure available). They would have made dozens of comments ranging from swapping the switches, to checking that it was CAT5E or newer (that is common, and happens in every multi-million dollar house, because IT people prefer their own brands). Unless you didn't add wallpapers to each room, then I doubt they called it outdated though.
• I also believe people complemented you on your HA interface. It does look good. I doubt you gave them a chance to actually use it and provide honest feedback though. Keep in mind, there are plenty of techies out there who can barely operate a computer (I came across an installer at an ISP who often bragged he had barely any idea what he was doing. True to his word, it seemed possible).  
• But, it was extremely cringy when you boasted about your mobile app design skills when you couldn't even take your HA premade template, and drag and drop widgets properly. You're the only person I know, who has ever managed to place a calendar widget (designed to provide reminders), in the only position, it wouldn't actually provide reminders.. Or try to accessorise their system with totally unnecessary and bloaty graphs.

 

Have fun playing cosplaying as a highly skilled IT engineer or whatever (your cosplay preference seems to change on a daily basis). 

[wnpublic]

2 hours ago, Andrew luecke said:

Yeah.. I'm also going to ignore. Goodbye. 

• It was awkward when you told others how rich you are, and boasted about your superior IQ on numerous occasions since you joined the forum.
• I believe you exaggerated when you claimed people looking at your house made a big deal about IR's on Apple TV's in a rack. They might have mentioned it, but IT guys really don't care about that in a multi-million dollar house (they care more about the overall equipment and the infrastructure available). They would have made dozens of comments ranging from swapping the switches, to checking that it was CAT5E or newer (that is common, and happens in every multi-million dollar house, because IT people prefer their own brands). Unless you didn't add wallpapers to each room, then I doubt they called it outdated though.
• I also believe people complemented you on your HA interface. It does look good. I doubt you gave them a chance to actually use it and provide honest feedback though. Keep in mind, there are plenty of techies out there who can barely operate a computer (I came across an installer at an ISP who often bragged he had barely any idea what he was doing. True to his word, it seemed possible).  
• But, it was extremely cringy when you boasted about your mobile app design skills when you couldn't even take your HA premade template, and drag and drop widgets properly. You're the only person I know, who has ever managed to place a calendar widget (designed to provide reminders), in the only position, it wouldn't actually provide reminders.. Or try to accessorise their system with totally unnecessary and bloaty graphs.

 

Have fun playing cosplaying as a highly skilled IT engineer or whatever (your cosplay preference seems to change on a daily basis). 

As a farewell to me regarding how little I matter to you, this is…. *chef’s kiss*.  
 

anyways, good luck to the OP on their new house whatever they decide.  Lots of choices out there, and definitely worth exploring the alternatives. 

[Cyknight]

On 8/4/2022 at 6:21 AM, mstafford388 said:

Part of the pitch with distributing cable boxes is (was) you don't need as many.  Instead of paying $10/month for each of your 10 cable boxes, get 2 and distribute them your 10 TVs.  That's not as big a deal with streaming, as you pay $100ish for a Roku for each TV but only once.  That's likely the point that was being made....as more things have moved to streaming the justification to spend thousands on video distribution has faded hard.

You're missing his point - watching the same thing on two AppleTVs (or for that matter, most cable boxes) at the same time will NOT be perfectly in sync a lot of times, IF that is important to you, a distributed system (of some sort) is still an option.

As mentioned, full on 24x24 video switches are starting to become rare, and that's logical. But in many cases some form of a hybrid setup is still popular.

[Andrew luecke]

9 minutes ago, Cyknight said:

You're missing his point - watching the same thing on two AppleTVs (or for that matter, most cable boxes) at the same time will NOT be perfectly in sync a lot of times, IF that is important to you, a distributed system (of some sort) is still an option.

As mentioned, full on 24x24 video switches are starting to become rare, and that's logical. But in many cases some form of a hybrid setup is still popular.

That's actually a good point. We had a customer who did it for sports, to have it synced to multiple TVs in their outdoor area when mates were over. With a matrix switch, it's also easier to manage

[eggzlot]

1 hour ago, Andrew luecke said:

That's actually a good point. We had a customer who did it for sports, to have it synced to multiple TVs in their outdoor area when mates were over. With a matrix switch, it's also easier to manage

this is one of the few reasons I have a video matrix and continue to use one.  I can also pipe in audio (That is in sync) into "audio only" rooms like a bathroom, the kitchen, etc.

[Topspin14m]

The matrix question has less to do with C4, but one way I get a similar effect is to use Sonos and have one TV grouped with the other (so I am only piping audio from one source).  The video isn’t perfectly synced but it works well enough for me when I have sports on two close Tvs.  If you are running a sports bar equivalent (which would be cool) or need it to be perfect, you will need/want a matrix.  Also this method works way worse for movies or a typical tv show as you will have a bad lip sync issue.  But for football or baseball or whatever, it’s pretty good.