TundraSonic

I don't know the answer to that. For simpler networks I think UI are still the way to go. For a network like mine or @ejn1 I'm not sure anymore and I think a lot depends on the person and situation - how critical is up-time and performance and how tolerant someone is of having to deal with issues. Cisco is the obvious other alternative. Their stuff is rock solid, you don't have to worry about firmware upgrades breaking anything, and promised capabilities are always delivered and work well. I used it for years. But you pay a lot of $$$'s for that and it's not worth it for many situations. Some people have begun looking at Extreme. I've no idea how they compare. From what I've seen Araknis is similar to Meraki (Cisco entry level). Costs about the same for the same capabilities. Meraki seem a bit more solid but Araknis isn't bad. The issue with both is that they are both cloud/integrator managed so you'll be forking out $'s every month which for some is worth it and for others not. There are also a lot of security/privacy concerns with Araknis and OvrC. Do you want a bunch of $20/hr techs moonlighting from their day job at McDonalds having access to your security cameras?

I would classify your network as on the larger side for UDMP networks and is similar to what we have in our home. If you've avoided the problems that we and others have experienced then you've perhaps lucked out. I agree regarding the UDMP value - at least if we'd not experienced so many issues. I agree also that for many people the UDMP and other UI stuff works out well. There are always going to be problems - the issue is how widespread. UI appear to be crossing over the acceptable to unacceptable line for how many problems there are, how many people are affected by them and how long they take to get rectified. How frequently do you upgrade firmware? What is your plan for a UDMP hardware failure?

A backup unit minimizes pain from those problems though and for $350 seems cheap for the insurance it provides. I can do a firmware upgrade on the offline UDMP, import the backup file from the current online UDMP and then make the offline the online. If a problem in the new firmware shows up I can quickly and easily switch back to the exact prior setup that was working before. Without a secondary UDMP it'd be impossible to go back to the prior setup. The best you could do would be to manually re-install the former firmware which itself isn't difficult but as we've seen over and over this doesn't result in the same setup due to changes that the upgrade made and sometimes changes that the downgrade makes. So you're on the same firmware as before with supposedly the same settings but you often find new unexplained problems that hadn't been there before. Once we're confident that a new firmware is good enough to stick with then we update the now offline UDMP to look identical. So it's ready in case the online unit fails or to be used for the next trial firmware upgrade. The one issue with this strategy is that for us, except for one case, the UDMP's are different hardware versions and there have been issues that show up on one hardware version and not another. Fortunately this has proven fairly minor so far. ----- As to using the product. Ubiquiti were a very easy value choice for many networks up until about 18 months ago. The Edge stuff and AP's were solid and firmware was reliable. The past 18 months have been a totally different story with significant bugs taking long periods of time to get fixed (and some still not fixed) and firmware releases very often introducing new bugs. There is a bit of 'you get what you pay for' and so some anomalies and missing promised capabilities are the price of getting equipment at the UI price point. Overwhelmingly the biggest pain for us has been the poor QA and so new bugs introduced with new firmware. Existing bugs not getting fixed is irritating and promised features not being delivered is irritating but new bugs are painful. The problems that we and others have been through the past year have begun to argue that UI are not worth it for some and they've begun to get an increasingly bad reputation.

There are numerous critical bugs that have existed for some time and that are not helped by any kind of clean install. Perhaps the most prominent is a memory leak (or now it appears multiple memory leaks) that lock up part or all of UDMP's. Many of us have to reboot UDMP's daily or weekly to avoid problems with this. This has existed for nearly a year. There are numerous other bugs, some non-critical and some critical, that are well detailed on the UI forums. For many of us the biggest issue is a lack of confidence in firmware releases. While every release might fix some issues, they also nearly always break others. Trying to figure out what release will work reliably in what environment is difficult and stressful. I think UDMP's work well for very small and simple networks, not so well for larger or those needing more complicated or advanced features. People who have been strong supporters of UI for years have begun to bail this past year because of the poor quality of firmware releases.

Thanks. I've not used TP-Link w/ C4 before. I'll have to look in to that.

Small garden shed about 200' from the house. The shed has 120v power and a switch (Ubiquiti 8 port POE) off the house network. What are good options for dimmer control of three 120v lighting loads? - Two of the loads are exterior fixtures that require 120v clear lamps so LIFX and Hue are not good options. - Am I thinking correctly that w/ Casetta we'd need both a bridge + EA/CA in that building? Or should the main EA-5 be able to see the remote bridge? I'm new to Casetta so not sure how the C4 to bridge communicates. Other options? Thanks,

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I assume that's an Edge Router? Those were rock solid. The only problem we had with them was the warts they shipped with them would give out after a while and need replacing. Similar with the pre AC AP's and even the early AC stuff. The UDMP and similar switch firmware has been a totally different story. Bad enough that several long time fanboys of UI have been moving to other platforms. For very simple networks that can tolerate unexpected outages they're a great deal and for extremely simple networks likely have few or zero outages, but for folks who need advanced features, complicated routing needs, or high availability they've been problematic.

When I go to Manage Attachments I see a list of attachments but no way of deleting them. Thanks,

Yeah, everybody's needs are different. My wife and I both work from home and our son and DIL spend summers with us and work from here so downtime becomes a major issue that we try very hard to avoid. The UDMP is about 1/4 the cost of other options like Cisco so for us having 2 of them is cheap vs alternatives and I know that if a problem in a new release shows up (which is frequent with UI lately) I can quickly cut back to the other UDMP. Having a spare in case of a hardware problem is a secondary but important benefit. Small display panels are quite inexpensive (< $100) so adding a couple so that they're easy to see wasn't a difficult decision.

The new API provides capabilities for launching specific apps and controlling those apps. So for instance a C4 button press may be able to select 'Hulu', select 'Live', select 'Channel Bloomberg'. Selecting an app s/b doable just w/ the new capability. I'd assume that stuff inside the app will require app updates to provide the needed hooks.

We recently built a somewhat similar system to what you're planning. A few quick thoughts... - Be very careful what UI firmware you run. The last couple of years have been rough with buggy releases. - Get two UDMP's. This makes it much easier to back out a bad UDMP firmware upgrade. - Keep all C4 stuff on the same VLAN. - Pre-wire for more AP locations. You may need them. - We looked at a lot of options for media distribution and ended up with an Apple TV at each TV location. After 16 months this has worked well for us. Some locations have multiple displays such as our master bath that has 3 displays (shower, wc, bathroom), in-ceiling audio, but one ATV. Everyone's needs/wants/viewing are different though. - Given their recent QA problems along with limited options it was easy to eliminate UI for security and Synology didn't have a lot of the capabilities we wanted. We spent a lot of time evaluating Blue Iris and Security Spy for DVR. Security Spy ended up the easy winner so we have that w/ 31 cameras (mostly Dahua/Loryta and Amcrest). Do not give cameras any kind of internet access as they will call home to mama for upgrades that you do not want. Put all cameras on their own switch that has only cameras and your DVR machine. - Plan for a lot of patience w/ C4 programming if you're use to anything modern. It's a structured programming interface from the 1980's and worse it lacks a lot of the features that almost all structured systems had. It's slow and frustrating but it is what it is. - Get your buddy to give you integrator access rather than homeowner access and your life will be much easier. For example, C4 only lets integrators see/change 'connections'. Not being able to see these if they exist is a major PITA (like being given code to work on but only every other line). Being able to use them would be better. I was told that this is so that integrators will continue to have something to do. Good luck!

We were having a discussion about this over breakfast this morning. Being able to control ATV from C4 would be an extremely welcomed ability.

There is a C4 driver from Phillips that we've been using for about 18 months with about 20 Hue GU-10 downlights. From within C4 we can directly control all 6 Hue parameters including RGB level, red, green and blue channels separately, 'White Warmth' and 'Lamp Color Temp'. Any of these can likewise be set in a scene and we've a number of scenes that set Hue's to various dim levels, color temps or colors. Overall it works well. HOWEVER, Hue have some major drawbacks; 1) They use Zigbee which is fine if you have a very few Hue lamps in a small space but completely falls apart if you have more than about 20 or a larger space. Zigbee also doesn't work as reliably with downlight cans as WiFi. 2) You can only use one bridge per system. We originally had a lot more Hue but had to remove all but those in our gym and rec room because we simply couldn't get a reliable signal to them. We've replaced most of the Hue w/ LIFX (which have their own problems but work much better than Hue). 3) Hue lamps are very low CRI/TM-30. The whites are all pretty vacuous kind of like florescent. They sometimes have annoying flicker. The Hue C4 driver is much better and more reliable than the very unreliable LIFX C4 driver from Chowmain. However, the LIFX lamps use WiFi which has proven much better and more robust for this than Zigbee, especially with only a single bridge and not good repeater options. Hue lamps that get a Zigbee signal are much more reliable then LIFX. As for animations, you'd need to either program them yourself or continue to use Thorlight. Thorlight can co-exist w/ C4. They both just tell lights what to do and the lights don't really care who or what is telling them they just do what they're told.

Will the Intrinsic tvOS15 driver support some of the new capabilities that Apple are providing for like selecting specific apps and controlling those apps?

RF spectrum isn't a problem. WiFi is a channelized service and if designed properly can successfully support thousands of devices.

tvOS 15 is apparently adding a lot of control capabilities that will allow Siri and other stuff to better control ATV's. I wonder if this will finally allow C4 and similar platforms to control ATV to select apps, channels, etc.

We've got Hunter Hydrawise as well. We've not yet integrated it to C4. My primary reason to integrate it would be to more easily turn it off for a period like if we have guests or maint folks doing stuff. Current lighting control is Brilliance (https://www.brillianceled.com/smart-products) that we've had numerous problems with even aside from integration. It's overall a quite poor quality product. We'll be returning all of the Brilliance stuff and likely replacing w/ FX Luxor.

How is FX Luminaire / Luxor working for those who are using it? How is integration w/ C4? Overall it appears to be a good solution if it works as well as they promise.

If that is indeed the reason for being on the DNU list, I understand their wanting to do that. HOWEVER, it would be much better if they would instead post a note that Ubiquity requires advanced configuration to work properly (which I assume is the same for Cisco and other systems) and then provide detailed notes similar to what @mindedc1 provided but perhaps expanded a bit. As to my wife... It is possible to provide her with a secure way to work from places other than her office. It is not necessary to tie her down to her office or even to a segregated system that requires her to have two of everything.

An update... First a big bunch of thanks to @mindedc1 for the thorough overview. It'd be much better of C4 would provide information like this rather than overeact w/ their DNU list. The problem appears to be excessive CPU churn in the EA-5, possibly from a memory leak in code somewhere. CPU usage occasionally ramps up and when it does then the problems start until it's rebooted. Hopefully more info on this soon.

Back on my feet again... House is 9400 sq ft but there are also AP's in the studio (separate bldg which aren't in yet so not in the count) and three covering space outside (including one solar powered at the end of an airmax radio shot that works surprisingly well). Ruckus would have cost 3x as much (plus ongoing maintenance costs), use 2 more AP's according to the design and they were still planning to use Unifi for the radio and outdoor AP's. As mentioned previously C4 is already on it's own Switch/VLAN/Subnet. I'm not sure what benefit a VPN for C4 would be??? I currently use the C4 app as if I'm on the same network. ??? Thanks @DanITman. At one point C4's concerns were PIM (which shouldn't be an issue unless crossing route boundaries) but then they removed that but left them on the DNU list. @cdepaola, They're pretty cautious with her devices and the data on them and she wants to be able to use them anywhere in the house or outside anytime. The dedicated thing in her office lasted about 2 months before she informed the IT folks how it was going to work.

@South Africa C4 user, thanks for the tip on the Keypad Enhancer. Have you used it much? Works well?

I've held off getting an energy monitor for a while but it's time to pull the trigger (mainly because I need the data for an article so that helps on cost). IotaWatt is the top contender with TED and GEM also possibilities. Sense & Curb are too unreliable, Emporia Vue and others risk being locked in to a subscription (or having boat anchor hardware if they go belly up). Wondering what others experience has been with integrating these in to C4, primarily using it as a trigger. Thanks,

Good stuff! Yeah, I've been frustrated by the lack of some built-in stuff, especially long presses and dual presses. Dual press would seem ideal for your application.