CTMatthew

Just think of wear you'd be if you'd have been paid!

I think the advice from the pros in the field would be that unless you're looking at Ketra specifically, that wiring for this topology is unfortunately premature. I don't know if it's premature by 24 months or 5 years, but given the supply chain antics it seems like we're a ways away from this category having enough selection to be considered mature.

You can because you'll also be installing compatible controls in the room. The issue with Hue isn't meeting code, it's reliability.

Almost certainly not.

You'd wire them to power only - like an outlet.

This topic has to be thought of less as an individual's decision to "work for free" and more as one where society is organized to pay the least for the most and how best to navigate a larger system as an individual. The thought experiment of the plucky go-getter that works for pennies and proves his worth doesn't really map onto the incentive structures at play - meaning that individual outcomes can still vary, but the statistics are oriented so intensely against these sorts of serendipitous outcomes that you'd be better off playing the lottery. As an individual, your best outcome - statistically speaking - is to always demand the most pay possible at every juncture.

Ketra bulbs are similar in that the "intelligence" is moving from either a wall control or back-end module into each lamp/fixture. They communicate over ClearConnect TypeX and the keypads in the wall (or the app) issue the commands to the lights. This has many of the potential advantages of a Hue-like setup without the flaky electronics. We've been installing Ketra for a bit now and it's proven to be every bit as robust as anything else Lutron makes.

A lot of guessing and imagining. Panelized lighting is an established lighting control topology. Electricians are quite comfortable with it and it meets electrical code while simplifying control for the end user. The building I'm sitting in has a 17 year old panelized lighting system. If there's power to the building it works. I don't think I've experienced a Philips Hue system that works for more than a week without something flaking out. You might be well served to look into Ketra. It functions along some of the same lines as Philips Hue, but with the reliability of panelized lighting.

This is a good candidate to move off a tech forum and on to one of economics - but establishing any tradition of unpaid work is ultimately corrosive to a thriving economy. If it were one person here or there it would be an anomaly - but unpaid internships and rock-bottom starting wages have become huge barriers to the vast majority of people that can't afford to work for free or almost for free. The next time you go into a store and it's understaffed, disorganized, poorly stocked, etc. you're looking at the direct results of that company undervaluing labor. It's a terrible practice and shouldn't be perpetuated on the employee or the employer side.

Don't work for free. And I'll add to that: don't employ someone without paying them.

I can't imagine basing a home design on Philips Hue. That's not asking for trouble, it's demanding it.

LMAO don't ever offer to work for free. That being said, you have to be a dealer to send people to training so your only pathway is to get hired first and train second.

In theory, yes. In practice that might be another matter. Not all products have great drivers. Bluesound, so far, has been a terrific platform and allows control, content browsing, grouping in sessions, etc. Bang & Olufsen is sort of OK, and at least mapped their "Join" command so you can add and drop rooms without the sessions proxy. Naim was basically non-functional when I tried it and it doesn't seem to have gotten any better.

I wouldn't bother. What are you hoping to get from the integration?

Furthermore, we've just started to move toward standardizing a network backbone that can support 2.5Gbps minimum through to the APs. Verizon is starting to offer those speeds and whether anyone needs it or not is almost irrelevant. It's available so people will want to see those speeds reflected on their speed tests.

I don't think it makes sense to admonish anyone for spending more money than they need to. It's why most of us are in business

I have 2-way audio on some UniFi Protect cameras, but I know there are strong opinions about that ecosystem.

We've sold a few Roon systems and love them! You're right - it's a great way to knit together a variety of manufacturers (I wish B&O was fully Roon compliant). I wish Control4 offered a similar ability!

I'm very interested in systems that have more than one streaming ecosystem at play. We go to great pains to unify the various rooms, but oftentimes an Arc or Beam are ideal for some use cases and a matrix and amplifiers work better for the rest of the house and never the tween shall meet. Obviously if rooms aren't adjacent or client interest isn't a factor we can splinter, but it would be great to have the sort of sound bar solution that Savant offers.

Yes, that's been my experience. I have that set in our showroom because we always start demos from the same place and it's fairly choreographed. I'm actually surprised that B&O is the only company (that I've found) to have this feature. Sonos has something similar, but only for a hard press on the physical product. It's not available in the driver for programming. B&O has a principal called "one touch to music" which means that there's always going to be a way to press a single button or issue a single command and hear something, whether it's stored or random. When I tap the Join button on my keypad it will either pick up where I last left off (maybe Spotify, TuneIn Radio, etc.) or if there's another active session on the system it will join that. If there are multiple active sessions each tap will cycle through them.

Now that's interesting - I've only seen the ability to join specific rooms, not rotate freely through active sessions. I'd be delighted to have missed something. Can you elaborate on how you're doing this?

Lol, no it's fairly popular! It also has my favorite multiroom feature - "join" which just roams the network to join ongoing sessions and makes a great hard-key button on a keypad. For two channel I have BeoLab 9s and BeoLab 3s with some BeoLab 6002s in a closet waiting for some future use. Then I have a BeoPlay A6, BeoPlay M5, BeoSound 1, and BeoSound 2 around the house.

My main house has Bang & Olufsen Cores and a variety of standalone speakers. My weekend house has Sonos sound bars and standalone speakers. Both are technically controlled by Control4, but I mostly cast to both systems and use the integration to control things like volume and transport control from Lutron keypads. I love the Bluesound integration, but I'm not a fan of their standalone speakers so it didn't make sense.

You've either misread my comment or are looking for a reason to be pissy (this is a forum, so I assume the latter). I'm comparing my experience as a dealer to strangers on an internet forum, NOT to my clients. My clients ARE my business and success is the sum total of their satisfaction, just as my woes are the sum total of their dissatisfaction. Often times I find myself more genuinely frustrated or upset over matters of system performance than my clients. This is because they trust me to find a solution when I don't have as much trust in the manufacturer whose products are at issue.

There's something to be said for some good old fashioned "being mad online"