Time2Jet

Voice will be the UI when the pocket screen is no longer an object of our affection.
Over-simplifying people into "glued to screen", and it's a "communicator".
The glued to screen who live through their phone on social media, music, streaming, email, text, and all their apps, will not look beyond it for other means of world interaction.
Why do I want anything else? Everything I need is right here, in my hand, every waking moment. This is my world.
On the other hand, people who aren't so, are more living in the moment and voice becomes a 'less techy' way to interact with their environment. No touchscreen (wall phone), not keypad (button phone), not remote (wireless button phone). They also tend to be less control detailed. I want classic rock, set the lighting to chill. Not the extra thoughts of which artist or song, or what do I need to achieve chill, let me spend 10 minutes getting that just right, opps lost that mood moment.
And with AI being drawn into voice now, it's a simpler place to get the answers to questions; no typing, searching, clicking, opening closing, etc.
Again, less screen time. I spend all day at work staring at a screen, typing, mousing.
Addressing time2jet's comment regarding the automated house, reacting based on time, location etc. You're right. But who's going to program that? That's a lot of personal information for a programmer to learn from a client who took 10 minutes choosing white or black speakers, and the ideal client isn't interested in spending his own hours to figure it out. And their spouse is different from them, so double that, and they may have little interest, I just want to flip a switch. For the few though, their is added satisfaction is defining that perfect moment. So ultimately it will come with a learning AI.
I always laugh when Piccard has to ask for Earl Gray Tea Hot. Really? He can self destruct the ship with a voice command, but has to go all Alexa for a drink. "Tea" that's all, fix the programming. Now granted maybe other times he wants it different, but not that we see, should have a default. (Or perhaps Star Trek is incorporating the Dune doctrine of non thinking machines, nerd but not super nerd).
Josh AI isn't there yet, but it's the closest.
Watch your client, glued to their phone, it's a hard sell.

I rarely ever use my phone other than IA when I’m away from home. I find it more cumbersome when I can use my voice or a remote. And this is coming from a guy that rarely looks away from his phone during the day at work.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Personally I just don't find voice to be a compelling ux

We normally agree on things, but I beg to differ here. In my opinion, true automation should lean toward less user interaction and more intuitiveness. This isn’t to say that Voice integration is “intuitive” per se, but certainly removes some of the physical actions required to fire a “then” scene (scene being a very common Josh term).

If you look back through some of my old posts I have always felt that the future of automation was voice, motion, occupancy and fencing (since they haven’t figured out how to read our minds… yet) via programming. When we walk into a room at a certain time or day, maybe certain lighting fires at one time, a different brightness fires at another time and potentially no lighting fires at another time. When someone is sensed in a room for a predefined period of time, maybe the temperature is adjusted differently. When you leave your home, certain “scenes” may fire and others when you arrive home. When another person leaves the home or arrives home, maybe any of those actions are different arrive/leave scenes depending upon if anyone is still or already in the home. Maybe a scene is fired when a vehicle arrives in your drive and maybe that’s different depending on which vehicle or what time it arrives. Maybe an event fires when someone enters a specific area of your home or property. And amongst many many other automations, maybe scenes fire based on time of day, day of the week, month or year. Could also be when you leave the home and rain is in the forecast, you’re sent a notification telling you not to forget your umbrella. The possibilities are endless.

Voice control, eliminates the need to rise out of your chair or bed, walk across the home or room and other overt physical actions to fire a device or scene or to check a status. In the most simple of benefits, Voice eliminates the need for fumbling for a remote or getting up to use a touchscreen.

Control4 is an automation platform and not simply a AV/lighting Remote Control system. We strive to make our home smart and work the way we live.

Josh integration is leaps and bounds above any of the other voice control systems in every way. Integrating Josh with Control4 creates a much more powerful home automation system than either as a standalone. Anything you can do in Control4 can be done via a voice command with Josh using natural language tailored specifically to you. “Hey Josh, who is at the front door” will show you the front door camera (Yea, even a Chime) on the display in the room you are in at that time. And the room level scenes feature allows you to say “Hey Josh, turn on the lamps” (or turn on the ceiling lights, turn off the TV, and turn on the music for example) and Josh knows to turn on the lamps only in the room you are in. If you call the foyer “foyer” and your kids call it the “entry” it doesn’t care. You can say “hey Josh, it’s a little warm in here” and Josh will lower the TStat. It also handles compound commands “do this, this and this” and it accommodates. When I leave carrying something to my car I can say “hey Josh I’m leaving, lock the door in 1 minute” so it gives me time to clear the door before it locks and fires my away scene”. And of course the most advertised feature is that you can walk into a room and say “hey Josh, turn on the lamps, close the shades and let’s watch S1E3 of Better Call Saul. Josh will deep dive programming for you. You can ask for a movie and it will find options for you. (During setup the Josh driver for Control4 finds all of your steaming services and you can prioritize both where it looks first for video or music).

Okay, that was a lot… but it’s my opinion that voice control is very important and Josh is the gold standard in that space, nothing else is remotely close today. It pains me as an end user and dealer for both products that they didn’t form a better alliance and they are at odds legally right now. It is in the best interests of both to resolve this quickly and to the benefit of each.

Turns out this has been a very productive topic.  Good job all.  

MoIP is great, but MXNet is an upgrade. Not by leaps and bounds. The original MXNet 1g product line was very similar to MoIP 900 series. (4K HDR @444 was limited to 30hz - most of us wouldn’t care to be honest), but has a better interface for the installer.

A good solution here could be the modular AxionX platform by AVPro. It allows for video matrixing (via HDMI and HDBT Sources and HDBT or HDMI outputs) as well as audio independent matrixing. (There are also some crazy modular upgrades that does mission critical video scaling “think medical applications”.) The max on a single unit is 16x16 (independent audio streams count as inputs against the 16 Ins). But the units can be looped out and stacked (AVPro will customize a stack solution to get you to 21 zones). Regardless of any of these solutions, you will still need amplification. I don’t mind Triad one bit. I haven’t experienced the same issues others mention. Triad has been solid amplification for our clients. AVPro just bought AudioControl which is another gold standard company (in terms of product quality). They mfr audio products such as AVRs, amplification and distributed audio. This allows you to have your entire AV distribution project heavily supported and warranted.

Give them a call, they are really nice people with crazy expertise in AV distribution. If ever needed, support will be second to none.

Feel free to DM me and I can give you some names to speak to at AVPro. They can elaborate and recommend a solution to you (or your dealer) that will work very well and provide you with a minimum of 10 years of peace of mind. They’ll likely be able to send you a recommended solution that you can hand over to your dealer. These are pro and enterprise grade devices that are not sold direct to consumer.

As far as pricing, be prepared to pay a premium, but considering that you will enjoy this equipment for at least a decade supported, do you really pay a premium? I still have plenty of AVPro Connect (prior company name) devices working flawlessly in the field for over 12 years. Jeff and Matt are hands on owners and attract and hire the best engineers in the industry. Although we all know AVPro for Residential and Commercial AV, their products underly mission critical applications in medical and transportation etc., (in areas where there has to be near zero tolerance for failure).


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Can anyone comment on any real experience trying to bring in Homeseer HS3 series lighting with the new Core based Zwave and generic drivers?

11 hours ago, brucecampbell said:

Its a core5 and yes a reboot did not change the behaviour.

cheers.

 

Awesome!  It’s definitely easy to overlook a reboot.  Funny how in 2023 the electronics/automation technician’s best tool is a simple power cycle.  

7 hours ago, time2jet said:

WiFi or PoE and what network are you running?


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Just meaning if it's Araknis or Pakedge for instance, your dealer has rooter to tooter support from Control4.  You need to have that looked at by your dealer.  The chimes themselves generally perform well. 

Have you rebooted your EA3?


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

WiFi or PoE and what network are you running?


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

28 minutes ago, pbir said:

Please explain.

Thanks Paul.  Please excuse my ignorance, but I believe we are locked to using button 4 or 5 to set cycling of playlists/stations?  I’m sorry if I’m wrong, its been a minute since I’ve installed the driver for a client.  My recollection was that was the only thing I didn’t love, but otherwise it is fantastic as are all of your keypad drivers.  Fantastic work. 

I wish there was a way to choose which key.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

I did use custom buttons agent, but where do they show up on the Halo Touch remote?

Look for the screen icon named what you named the custom button. Since the Touch, I’d name them something like “Buttons” (instead of the room name) and position that icon comfortably on the room’s Home Screen.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

yes they is Control4 Say - CORE3 only 100 Devices and then it will start to fall over 
We are just talking about Discount on CORE5 and swapping out 
it controls - 
Hue lights - 16 Number 
Hue Senor - 7 Number
Alanrm with - 6 pirs - 7 number 
Sonos - 10 Number 
TV`S - 3 Number 
Sheilds - 2 Number 
Sky BOX - 4 Number 
Control Puck Dimmers  - 6 Number 
CCTV - 9 Number 
Amp - 1 Number 
POPCORN Hour - 2 Number 
Lock - 1 Number 
TS3 - 3 Number 
DS2 - 1 Number 
Blinds - 9 Number 
EA1 - 2 Number 
Core 3 - 1 Number 
Anexx Senors - 4 Number 

That project should have zero issues with the Core3 @Gary Leeds UK And constant rebooting would not be what you’d expect if the processing is taxed.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

2 minutes ago, Gary Leeds UK said:

We had a 

We had a HC800 and to honest we have not got a massive Project 

9 CCTV Cameras / Sonos / Hue Lights / Texacom alarm / Q Motion Blinds 3 Number / 3 TV rooms all separate with Sky Boxes 

All drivers from 3rd Party Come from Driver Central 

Dealers deleting and re adding drivers at the moment to see if they can find the issue 

 

Support can look at logs and usually tell them in 10 mins. 

Be very Careful - Get your dealer to confirm in writing that the Core 3 can run everything 
Reason been - We updated to Core 3 after our dealer confirm everything will be fine -  We now have the Core3 Re Booting every few days - Control4 saying the Core 3 Can not cope with processing - Dealer looking into - my project is not big 

What were you upgrading from that handled your processing load? What seems to be eating up processing? The Core3 is pretty adequate for 90% of projects that require 3 simultaneous streams of Ryff. Now that said, the Core series has not been without some launch pains (like anything else), but updates have resolved most known issues.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

The limit is zigbee standards, not Control4. Not sure if Control4 adopting the latest iteration would increase that, but that would be a zigbee question versus a c4 question. The c4 guidelines follow establish protocols to ensure the best experience.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Why do you have to ask? It's Savant! Of course 

Lol


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

18 hours ago, wnpublic said:

LOL

Which remote ever launched by anyone is better, bugs withstanding (will get addressed)? Serious question.  

Hi all,
 
if I have a room with two wired speakers to my C4 amp, is there anyway to add a third wireless speaker to that room I can also play the same music that the wired speakers are playing?
Thanks so much in advance.

Actually, you could just run all 3 with the Triad one and ditch wiring that room back to the rack amp.

It will end up being an audio zone like all of the others. Can stream all native services and join/group with other zones.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

You add a Triad One and run speaker wire back to it. It will sync with native audio.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Let’s say it does get swapped out, even if I have to pay the fee hundred dollars, any experience on what the actual difference is? I do have to admit they seem very similar/close on paper. But I also don’t feel right installing a 7 year old controller to run my system. Hmmm…


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

To be honest, I don’t think any dealer would swap it out for a Core5 for a few hundred dollars. But even at $1500 it’s a good swap based on the residual value of the EA5 versus the latest price of the Core5.

On your case, you wouldn’t see a remarkable difference in processing performance and at this time I don’t think you’d need zwave control. One benefit for you might be that you do get 5 simultaneous unique audio outputs “plus” the HDMI out versus 4 plus the HDMI. The OSD is now 4K, but I don’t see a use-case for that in your project. I’d ride out the EA5 until there is a real benefit to you. They open up something new quite often lately.

I’m a dealer and obviously make money on upgrades. But we don’t push the Core series controllers with clients on EA series controllers at this time. Just seems like frivolous. A potential better upgrade
right now would be adding a CA-10. But again, your project is perfectly fine with an EA5.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

There is a fantastic free led driver by one of our members @Ryan in the database.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

What’s that saying… someone would “bitch if you hung them with a rotten rope”?

The Halo Platform Touch Remote is the by far the best remote ever released to date in the AV industry. We’re always going to find something we don’t love or we feel is missing, but they didn’t miss too badly here. And I’m sure as new things roll out, the Halo platform will only get better and better. As a dealer I’m not privy to much more than interested end users (outside of Betas with NDAs), but what we have been told is that there is a lot coming to enhance the experience and the Halo Platform remotes are designed with this in mind.

One thing overlooked is that if you use a third-party HomeKit driver setup with a bridge device etc, you can focus on AppleTV and voice control your home via Siri-(ish).

$550/$900 net is a big ask, but if we think about what they asked for the SR platform remotes and reconcile to today’s dollars, it’s not insane.

I’d suggest everyone try just one. I’m terms of touch, I was shipped Silvers only so far, but I think they look fantastic and I’m one to prefer black remotes. I had the Halo tactile day one. Had reasons to complain (WiFi & battery life issues) but FW fixed all of them. I do miss the 3 customs on the tactile they didn’t carry over to the Touch, but a few experience buttons favorited works.

All in all, I’m sure there has never been a better remote launched by anyone to date.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Thanks for the Sonos Extras trial @DanITman   It’s been flawless and definitely makes the Sonos integration much better.  I particularly like the Soundbar Modes considering I had bars in every bedroom.  So nice to be able to have night & dialog enhance modes favorited to the room on the remotes. Having to reach for my phone at night to open the Sonos app every time was a pain.  The Clear Queue feature you added is also huge.  Thanks.  
 

One favor if you could… My trial expired, do you mind shooting me a new trial until it’s live on DC?  

14 minutes ago, ekohn00 said:

What do you listen to most? As some said i guess Spotify has is limited. I think Airplay sounds better and by far anything you stream will sound better. I went to bluesound for roon intigration into my C4 Matrix, but at the same time, everything sounds far better.

As @LollerAgentmentioned earlier, Bluesound really sounds superior to native and a lot else.  Mirage also sounds fantastic, but I notice some issues regarding volume stabilization from track to track. Funny when I really noticed was when a Beyoncé track played it sounded louder than other artists on a Tidal playlist.  I can’t be just imagining that.