RyanE

Presented without comment: https://www.jwz.org/blog/2019/10/apples-war-on-their-users-continues-apace/ RyanE

With the exception of Control4 tech support if you have that option enabled in your customer.control4.com account. RyanE

Not necessarily... On EA-series controllers, you can dynamically change the null modem setting on the 3.5" serial ports. Once the serial port is connected (bound) in ComposerPro, the option to change them to null modem is enabled on the Properties page of the controller driver. RyanE

Correct, no Zigbee hardware on the CA-10. I can't speak to "worth the price", that is highly dependent on the individual homeowner, but I installed a CA-10 after CEDIA, and the project at my mid-sized house (15 audio zones, 12 touchpanels, lots of custom Lua drivers, etc.) runs noticeably faster. The biggest improvement (for me) is that restarting Director happens almost instantaneously. A few seconds, Director is back up. During development, it's advantageous to restart Director often to get a 'full reload' for driver testing purposes, etc. The EA-5 would take 20-30 seconds to be back and responsive. I'm sure your mileage could vary on this test, depending on your project size. The second biggest improvement is that the CA-10 is fast enough that my T3 touchpanels are very rarely now spinning waiting to update after a refresh navigators, etc. On the EA-5, when you would refresh navigators and/or reboot the system, T3 touchpanels would all ask for the project at the same time, and it would slow everything down until they finished. It didn't happen often, since I didn't really need the restart except for development purposes, but when it happened, it was painful. The third biggest improvement is the overall latency of the system has decreased. Things just seem snappier, including Room changes / MSP AV screens, etc. I don't use the On Screen provided by the EA-5 very much, but I'd expect it to be faster as well, since the EA doesn't need to "run the project". Overall, I'm impressed! Of course, take it with a grain of salt, as I'm an employee, and of course, get an employee discount... RyanE

The UI to show the track quality is a 3.0 feature. Hi-rez audio is an EA controller feature. Unfortunately, I don't know offhand the exact difference in the quality output of the HC series vs. the EA series, but that was one of the reasons for the EA series' development, High-resolution audio... Added: What PorterTX posts above sounds about right: 16-bit up to 44kHz for the HC800, 24-bit up to 192kHz for the EA. RyanE

There's no reason to upgrade if what you have is working well for you. I'm planning on getting a CA-10, because with the number of touchscreens, lighting devices, and Driverworks drivers I have, I think it would make some difference in the responsiveness of my system. Of course, as an employee, the math is different for my value calculations. RyanE

Watt happened? RyanE

It does have a 5 year warranty, which should get you well past the 'first failure' on the bathtub curve. RyanE

Unfortunately, I'm not familiar with the dual load dimmers and their wiring. RyanE

This is something Control4 has been moving towards for some time, and I assume will continue to move forward. Driverworks drivers, for example, can be released and updated (assuming no new OS release is required for driver functionality) at any time, and with the online database, often are. RyanE

The Lua script needs to be run *within the driver*, not as a command-line on the controller, so this wouldn't do it. The proper way is to get the driver fixed. RyanE

Not confirming or denying, but if you were included as part of any theoretical beta, this single line would break the beta agreement, and if you're not part of a beta, someone telling you this would be breaking their beta agreement... RyanE

The typical rule in the past has been that if it's announced at CEDIA, it will be available for ordering within 30 days, although sometimes products are announced at CEDIA and available to order at announcement. Of course, there are always exceptions, and I'm not making an official SnapAV/Control4 policy announcement. RyanE

A few points about the Auto Lock driver: The Door Auto Lock driver is free, in Control4's online database. Your dealer may charge you something to install it, but it doesn't cost anything for the driver itself. You've never been able to adjust the values of the auto lock driver on a T3's User Interface. You may be able to adjust individual lock's auto lock time via the lock UI, but I recommend you disable that if you use the auto lock timer driver. You can programmatically turn on/off the auto locking via ComposerPro programming, but can't adjust the locking time. There are a couple of other benefits of the Auto Lock driver vs. using the built-in lock timer: Auto Lock driver works with a contact for the door being closed, so doesn't lock the door until *after* the door is closed. Auto Lock driver shows up as a UIButton, showing state of the door, open, closed and unlocked, closed and locked. Auto Lock driver can be configured to lock the door via the UIButton on the UI, but to not allow unlocking, for security reasons (which you can't do with Control4's standard Door Lock driver) It's a great idea to add a way to adjust the auto lock time via a variable, but unfortunately, I don't have the time to add functionality (and test / verify it's working) to that driver at the moment, with CEDIA coming up and plenty of family activities and responsibilities as we approach the school year. RyanE P.S. My Auto Lock driver is *not* encrypted, so if you know of another developer who can figure out Lua, they could probably add the variable, and have it update the property, and then it'd be available for ComposerHE programming.

I totally agree that Charlie is great and I don't think there's a better fit for CTO at Control4, and he's done wonders in the time he's been here (getting OS 3.0 out the door with a level of quality that was required), but I'll also say that Martin Plaehn as CEO took the company up a lot of notches during the time he was leading the company, and without Martin, we wouldn't have Charlie. I'm looking forward to seeing how John Heyman leads the combined company. From what I've seen, the whole SnapAV team is very forward-thinking, and I have high hopes for the future. RyanE P.S. Nothing I'm saying in this post should be construed to be an official communication of SnapAV+Control4, but I'm guessing they wouldn't mind me saying it...