HC800 replacement decision criteria

[Andrew luecke]

1 hour ago, istreich said:

Never used more than one in past few years… 

Is there a way to see how « taxed » performance wise my HC800 is to evaluate how much horsepower I need with new controller?

The official recommendations are:

Core 1: less than 30 devices, 3 rooms

Core 3: less than 60 devices, 6 rooms

Core 5: 200 devices, 6+ rooms

Ca10: 200+ devices, EE (everybody else). Also has more redundancies so great for systems which need more backups

 

Also just because you can load 200 devices into a ca1 (ie the budget one) now also doesn't mean it will work well in 3 years time when more features are added. I'd stick to the recommendations if possible

 

Control4 does a fairly good job masking badly performing controllers (ie, commands just seem more laggy), but you'll sometimes notice fairly quickly when you upgrade a underspecced controller

[therockhr]

Just now, Andrew luecke said:

The official recommendations are:

Core 1: less than 30 devices, 3 rooms

Core 3: less than 60 devices, 6 rooms

Core 5: 200 devices, 6+ rooms

Ca10: 200+ devices, EE (everybody else). Also has more redundancies so great for systems which need more backups

 

Also just because you can load 200 devices into a ca1 (ie the budget one) now also doesn't mean it will work well in 3 years time when more features are added. I'd stick to the recommendations if possible

These recommendations aren’t “technical” though. Devices can mean lots of things. CORE 1 and 3 have the same processing power. A core 1 can handle just the same as a core 3. It’s the audio and IO that are the determining factors on what to choose. 

[zaphod]

And how are devices defined?  If I have a driver loaded for an IP device with one way communication that is rarely used, is that the same as a C4 Zigbee light that is being polled regularly.  What types of devices would be lower loads and what type higher loads?

I don't remember the recommendation, but when my job was first installed in about 2006 I had an HC-300 and I am pretty sure that I had something like 70 devices at that time, almost all C4 dimmers and keypads.

[RyanE]

6 minutes ago, zaphod said:

I don't remember the recommendation, but when my job was first installed in about 2006 I had an HC-300 and I am pretty sure that I had something like 70 devices at that time, almost all C4 dimmers and keypads.

At that point in time, *all* drivers were written only in C++ (the part on the controller, C# for ComposerPro, but wouldn't affect controller performance).

If you have a lot of drivers these days, many of them are using more CPU due to them being interpreted Lua, which, although it is very efficient, it's not C++, and 3rd-party devices may not have as efficient APIs as Zigbee (may require polling or responding to frequent async messages, etc.).

I personally think what affects CPU needs are: 1) Number of 3rd-party DriverWorks device drivers (written by Control4 or 3rd parties), 2) Number of touchpanels or other UI devices (which also require a lot of data and CPU).

Guidelines are of course not hard and fast, but I think *neighborhood-wise*, the recommendations are not unrealistic, but I think size of controller is even more driven by the number of IOs needed than the CPU of the controller.  Bigger projects need more audio outputs, IR / Serial, and Contact/Relays.  *Really* big projects need both.  I've got a CA10 + 3 EA5s (and several I/O extenders).

RyanE

[Anks329]

48 minutes ago, Andrew luecke said:

The official recommendations are:

Core 1: less than 30 devices, 3 rooms

Core 3: less than 60 devices, 6 rooms

Core 5: 200 devices, 6+ rooms

Ca10: 200+ devices, EE (everybody else). Also has more redundancies so great for systems which need more backups

 

Also just because you can load 200 devices into a ca1 (ie the budget one) now also doesn't mean it will work well in 3 years time when more features are added. I'd stick to the recommendations if possible

 

Control4 does a fairly good job masking badly performing controllers (ie, commands just seem more laggy), but you'll sometimes notice fairly quickly when you upgrade a underspecced controller

Is there a room limit built into composer for the Core 1 and Core 3 devices? My set up has over 20 rooms with my HC800 controlling 1 or 2 switches in each room. The HC800 runs perfectly fine, but like others have said it might be worth upgrading, and trying to understand if I'm limited to only the Core 5 with my setup.

 

 

Thanks!

[therockhr]

Just now, Anks329 said:

Is there a room limit built into composer for the Core 1 and Core 3 devices? My set up has over 20 rooms with my HC800 controlling 1 or 2 switches in each room. The HC800 runs perfectly fine, but like others have said it might be worth upgrading, and trying to understand if I'm limited to only the Core 5 with my setup.

 

 

Thanks!

No there is not a room limit

[RyanE]

4 minutes ago, therockhr said:

No there is not a room limit

I'm not sure if you can use a '1' (EA1, Core 1) controller as a main controller over other controllers, it was a restriction at one point, but other than possibly that, there are no 'artificial' limitations as to project size.

RyanE

 

[Anks329]

Sounds good. Thanks!

[msgreenf]

1 hour ago, RyanE said:

I'm not sure if you can use a '1' (EA1, Core 1) controller as a main controller over other controllers, it was a restriction at one point, but other than possibly that, there are no 'artificial' limitations as to project size.

RyanE

 

That restriction was removed 

[zaphod]

2 hours ago, RyanE said:

At that point in time, *all* drivers were written only in C++ (the part on the controller, C# for ComposerPro, but wouldn't affect controller performance).

If you have a lot of drivers these days, many of them are using more CPU due to them being interpreted Lua, which, although it is very efficient, it's not C++, and 3rd-party devices may not have as efficient APIs as Zigbee (may require polling or responding to frequent async messages, etc.).

I personally think what affects CPU needs are: 1) Number of 3rd-party DriverWorks device drivers (written by Control4 or 3rd parties), 2) Number of touchpanels or other UI devices (which also require a lot of data and CPU).

Guidelines are of course not hard and fast, but I think *neighborhood-wise*, the recommendations are not unrealistic, but I think size of controller is even more driven by the number of IOs needed than the CPU of the controller.  Bigger projects need more audio outputs, IR / Serial, and Contact/Relays.  *Really* big projects need both.  I've got a CA10 + 3 EA5s (and several I/O extenders).

RyanE

Thanks Ryan, that is very useful.  Does a DriverWorks take resources if it is not active?  Or does that depend on the driver?  For example, I wrote a one way IP control driver that controls SageTV clients.  This driver sends HTTP commands to an API, but it is just one way.  I have several instances of this driver in my C4 system.  Does adding another instance of the driver take resources on my server when that driver is not active?

[RyanE]

3 hours ago, zaphod said:

Thanks Ryan, that is very useful.  Does a DriverWorks take resources if it is not active?  Or does that depend on the driver?  For example, I wrote a one way IP control driver that controls SageTV clients.  This driver sends HTTP commands to an API, but it is just one way.  I have several instances of this driver in my C4 system.  Does adding another instance of the driver take resources on my server when that driver is not active?

Lua runs out of a shared library loaded by Director, so the (Lua or LuaJIT) interpreter code is only loaded once, but every running Lua driver (one per driver *instance*) needs to keep it's own state.

Every DriverWorks driver has a Lua state object, which contains all of it's code, all of it's variables, all of it's current machine state global tables, locals, active coroutines, upvalues created inside of functions, etc...

If your driver is not actively running, it is not taking much CPU, but it is still taking memory for it's current Lua state.  Drivers also use other Director resources when they're not running, like timers, sockets, non-socket network connections, etc., but mostly, unless something is actively happening in the driver, it is not using too many resources.

Bad drivers (those that poll too often, those that have slow memory leaks by not freeing up Lua variables properly, those that eat up timers or sockets instead of reusing them (where possible), those that use language-based looping inside the driver for timing, etc.) are most of the problem, but even DriverWorks drivers that do not do any 'bad things' likely take more resources than a good-sized C++ driver, just due to the nature of running an interpreted language.

One other thing to consider is that every piece of data that a driver receives from Director or is sent to Director has to go through Lua's C++ stack, so the more data a driver is plowing through, the more CPU is required just to pass data back and forth from C++ to Lua.

Bottom line, if you have a lot of DriverWorks drivers, you probably need a more capable controller, but no, a driver that periodically sends an HTTP request (or does it on keypresses from the remote) is not going to use a lot of CPU...   

RyanE

[istreich]

Thank you Ryan and everyone. Really useful thread. It looks like unless one can find a really cheap EA-5, keeping the HC-800 as long as possible then switching to a Core is the way to go.

On the Core, I took a more detailed look at the specs of each unit. Unless I missed something, they share the same processor (i.MX8Mi) but the Core 1 and Core 3 have 2 GB of RAM while the Core 5 has 4 GB.  Beyond that, it looks like both the Core 3 and Core 5 support Zwave while the Core 1 does not.

Finally, the last main difference (some variations on contacts and relays but irrelevant if you have an extender) comes from the audio section as mentioned previously.  The Core 1 only has digital audio out (1 HDMI and 1 coax,) and no DSP and importantly no audio in (to connect a Sonos source for example). The Core 3 has an (digital only) audio in and both digital and analogue audio out. The Core 5 has similar options to Core 3 but more in and out (both analogue and digital), plus a "sophisticated" DSP. 

In a nutshell, to summarize (please correct me if I am wrong):

- all 3 units share the same processor and architecture. But the Core 5 has more RAM which could support more simultaneous processes (as indicated above. Less clear why Core 1 and Core 3 would perform differently though...)

- Only Core 3 and Core 5 support audio in (one distinction is Core 3 is only digital coax in while Core 5 includes both digital and analogue) if you need to get an external source of music (streamer,...). And similarly only these 2 units support Zwave 

- Core 5 adds more flexibility (additional contacts, relays, audio in/out) and includes a DSP plus an additional 2Gb of RAM. Otherwise, the Core 3 includes pretty much the same  features as the Core 5

 

Basically, decision seems to be driven by 2 factors:

- future proofing: size of install and Zwave support

- audio needs, especially need to connect analogue streamer/processor vs. digital only option. 

 

Obviously the Core 5 is the best option with the most flexibility but this needs to be put in perspective with the price of each and existing configurations (leverage matrix, extenders, streamer... or workarounds).

Let me know if I missed anything and if someone knows why different performances should be expected from a Core 1 and a Core 3.

Thanks again everyone for some great information here.

[zaphod]

What's the current MSRP for the Core 1?  When I Google I see US$910.  Is that still correct?

[dcovach]

49 minutes ago, zaphod said:

What's the current MSRP for the Core 1?  When I Google I see US$910.  Is that still correct?

Sounds about right, or 1190 CAD

[South Africa C4 user]

I took the plunge and purchased a Core5 and a cheap secondhand EA5 to replace my 2 HC800s today… not cheap!

As both of my systems already have CA10s as directors, I am not going to see much improvement but I will get an extra stream of audio and a 4K OSD…

As I only have a 4K projector at one house (and that was not the house with the HC800s), I now have a fairly complicated job of swapping controllers between houses etc… thankfully I use the same dealer for both residences!

[RyanE]

17 minutes ago, South Africa C4 user said:

As I only have a 4K projector at one house (and that was not the house with the HC800s), I now have a fairly complicated job of swapping controllers between houses etc… thankfully I use the same dealer for both residences!

First world problems... 

RyanE

[istreich]

What is US MSRP for Core 3 and Core 5? Or at least ball park. Thanks 

[chopedogg88]

CORE 5 - $3477.95

CORE 3 - $1661.95

[istreich]

Thank you. Now we have a pretty complete picture of HC-800 -> EA series -> Core series and decision making process for upgrade (or not). Thank you everyone for these great contributions. 

Curious to hear from anyone who has replaced a HC-800 by a Core 3 or Core 5, or replaced a EA-5 by a Core 3 or Core 5. Or even better, those of you who have gone HC-800 -> EA-5 -> Core 3 (or 5). I am really curious about performance improvements (such as response speeds, latency,...). Obviously when they are used as Director... (not with a CA-10 for ex)

Info on paper are great - real life experiences even better!

[South Africa C4 user]

1 hour ago, RyanE said:

First world problems... 

RyanE

So true… it was a choice between this and trying to see if I could get Josh to work in SA.  Ultimately the appeal of being able to upgrade to the latest and greatest that C4 will offer in the future won that debate!

[Amr]

2 hours ago, South Africa C4 user said:

So true… it was a choice between this and trying to see if I could get Josh to work in SA.  Ultimately the appeal of being able to upgrade to the latest and greatest that C4 will offer in the future won that debate!

NA, save the OPEX for a rainy day

[neil12011]

On 10/11/2022 at 2:36 PM, istreich said:

Thank you. Now we have a pretty complete picture of HC-800 -> EA series -> Core series and decision making process for upgrade (or not). Thank you everyone for these great contributions. 

Curious to hear from anyone who has replaced a HC-800 by a Core 3 or Core 5, or replaced a EA-5 by a Core 3 or Core 5. Or even better, those of you who have gone HC-800 -> EA-5 -> Core 3 (or 5). I am really curious about performance improvements (such as response speeds, latency,...). Obviously when they are used as Director... (not with a CA-10 for ex)

Info on paper are great - real life experiences even better!

How ironic that I'll be replacing my own HC-800 with the Core 5.  Small world!

Hope all is well Iwan!

[istreich]

8 hours ago, neil12011 said:

How ironic that I'll be replacing my own HC-800 with the Core 5.  Small world!

Hope all is well Iwan!

So great to read you Neil and see you are still active. Thanks again for all your help. Missing you! 
And counting on you to share your experience going from HC800 to Core 5 of course!

[Cyknight]

On 10/10/2022 at 6:43 AM, Gary Leeds UK said:

Just a guess, will the EA Controllers be EOL next year

Doubtful but not impossible of course. MAYBE in the sense that it can't be main controller, but I would expect them to last for at least 2-4 more years.

End of sale, I expect soon (they aren't yet!)

[AHA]

2 hours ago, Cyknight said:

Doubtful but not impossible of course. MAYBE in the sense that it can't be main controller, but I would expect them to last for at least 2-4 more years.

End of sale, I expect soon (they aren't yet!)

Uk portal, EA1 and EA3 still available at the moment but EA5 was end of sale back in august  

End of Sale Notice: The C4-EA5-V2 Controller is End of Sale effective August 2022.