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LCD keypad vs. 3 inch touchscreen


BobB

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I am curious as to what some opinions are of the LCD keypads are vs. the touchscreens. I plan on living in this house for a long time, so I am leaning towards the touchscreens in most areas, but not sure for all areas. will a touchscreen be OK in a bathroom with the humidity from the shower?

Has anyone put with outside? if so, how did you enclose it?

Has anone put any of the 2/3 or 6 button keypads outside? - how did you enclose it?

I appreciate any input.

Thak you,

Bob

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<rant>I have a MTS in the bathroom and the wife loves having music and satellite while she gets ready in the morning. The absolute WORST part about the MTS is that it is impossible to quickly find an artist if you have a large music collection. The scroll bar (i'm not even sure if it's fair to call it that) is super tiny so you have to use your fingernail to scroll down. The knob won't jump down fast enough and there is a serious UI issue with the scroll bar (i.e. if you can get your fingernail to jump through all the music and you can't get it to stop exactly where you want,the knob will only bring you to the last place it was last positioned).

I love the look and being able to control everything from it. But honestly, the scrolling of music is nothing less than abysmal if you have a large music collection.

Oh yeah, no problems with humidity as of yet.

</rant>

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I recognize the behavior that dawander is describing. I don't use the scroll at all though, it's just not usable for me. I don't mind the speed at which the knob scrolls, but I do agree it would be nice to have a better way to get down to the Z's...

BTW, I do have a MTS in the bathroom and love it. No humidity issues, but I have cathedral ceilings and good ventilation, so any moisture is pretty minimal.

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I wouldn't even consider outside for any C4 device at this point.

I've got 2 three buttons on my patio. They will only get direct sunlight in the early am. This was done(as much) for a test to see how the desert heat will affect the usage. If they can take the often 120 plus ambient temps here, they should be able to take anything. :cool:

Chris

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I think I'd be more concerned with water than with the heat.

Direct sunlight could fade the plastic, but I would think it should be able to handle the heat.

The only thing I have outside is a dimmer, and it's recently installed, so no help there.

RyanE

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Slightly off topic, but since outside dimmers have been discussed, I figure what the heck.

I have a swtich and two dimmers outside in a detatched, unheated garage. No problem with moisture but when it gets REALLY cold, like single digits or lower, they don't always respond to the ZigBee command. (They work great the rest of the time.) It surprised me because the dimmers create a little heat and I figured there wouldn't be a problem. The system appears to be smart enough that it keeps trying until it gets a response from the dimmer. The light would eventually come on so I don't know what changed.

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never heard of that...

If you wanted to keep 'em warm, you could instead of turning them off, run a little power through the lights (like 3-4%) and that extra current being offloaded in the dimmer could heat it up a bit.

Of course, I don't know if that'd make a difference or not. I haven't had mine outside long enough to see these issues.

RyanE

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I have a swtich and two dimmers outside in a detatched, unheated garage. No problem with moisture but when it gets REALLY cold, like single digits or lower, they don't always respond to the ZigBee command. (They work great the rest of the time.) It surprised me because the dimmers create a little heat and I figured there wouldn't be a problem. The system appears to be smart enough that it keeps trying until it gets a response from the dimmer. The light would eventually come on so I don't know what changed.

That's strange... I put two switches into my shed (100' from house) and it is NOT heated as well... living in Buffalo, NY you guessed right that we get into the single digits in the winter - and I didn't have any problems at all this past winter talking / controlling my shed / yard lights. Granted that's switches, not dimmers - but I wouldn't think there'd be much of a difference there when it comes to communication.

Shawn

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I would rate any touch scrolling on the MTS as poor. I've never heard any other complaints about the knob though. It would be nice if the knob would increase speed the further you turned it and maintain speed until turned back. I also agree, they need the ability to bring up a key board so you can jump around.

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Guest esmith

In version 1.3, if you scroll fast a large block letter pops up allowing you to scroll through the alphabet quickly.

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If anyone has had a chance to use the UI on a Sonos controller you would probably agree that it is about as perfect of a UI for a music server as you can get.

Hopefully C4 has looked at for any upcomong improvments in 1.3

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We're going to see some improvements in 1.3 - but it won't be until 1.4 (or will that be 2.0?) when we'll see more major improvements I'm told. Things like "ARTIST NAME by TRACK" instead of by CD won't be introduced into AFTER 1.3. 1.3 will do a better job, I'm told, in providing compilation CD's together, but it'll still only show one artist. I guess it has to do with a complex re-write of the entire music engine to get it to allow for artists by track.

I love the Sonos interface, but at this point I'd be happy if the system would just be faster... currently we leave compilation CDs as separate tracks instead of combining them together as one CD - this way searches by "Artist" can be performed. It just gets slow changing between artists etc... so speed, I think, is the major concern right now - and that "should" be addressed in 1.3 (or so we've been told in the past).

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