Dueport

well then it should be a configurable option at a minimum, because there is a reason every other home automation company has standardized on this approach, and I'm pretty sure you're in the minority.

if i was starting a new home automation system/company this is probably the architecture i would use. only create controllers, remotes and touchscreens that communicate TCP/IP. Rely on 3rd party systems for all the lighting, climate, video, audio, IO, etc.
We will see what happens. I wouldnt think the existing HA companies are too happy about them entering this space after they built integrations with them when it seemed they were audio only.

Going here - first time attendee.  Must see's for me:
Kaleidescape new Terra SSD's Crestron Home 4.0 SnapOne indoor & outdoor experience centers.  Includes new OS update to Control4 Grimani Systems/Storm/MadVR theater demo Josh.ai Lighting solutions (Colorbeam, Ketra, DMF) Savant AVPro/Audio Control since mergered/acquistion

You guys rock.  I did the firmware update when I first installed, but it must not have uploaded.  I just updated and now working perfectly, thx!

Hear hear! A great update to a great driver!

If you are getting errors likely a firmware update is needed

I appreciate those vocal for the voice control side, and realize that I've probably discounted it's general usefulness for control.
I think if Josh were not 3rd party, I'd likely use it somewhat more than I've used Alexa, although it's set up.
RyanE

For sure.  As Elon likes to say "All user input is error."   But, OTOH, you can only automate default preferences/behaviors (including default actions based on (non-voice) sensors).  You can't automate based on dynamic preferences.  Sometimes you want the lights at a level different than the automated default.  If you find yourself consistently overriding defaults (with voice or with clicks), you should update the automations.  But you can't automate everything and using voice to over-ride is often faster and more convenient than walking to T4 or KP or pulling out your phone.   I'm never going to rip out my KPs or delete the C4 app, but having voice as an option seems to me unambiguously good (cost aside).   Whether having this alternate mode of control is "worth it," is a personal preference.

Ironically, in my limited implementation of voice controls, the biggest "problem" is setting expectations with family and guests about the scope and depth of voice controls.   You demo some things you can do and they think they can use voice for EVERYTHING, creating frustration.  
 

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.

Thanks to @JSTRONG I am going to try out Josh and I will report back my opinion after!

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.

Good to know about the Pulse Eight switches. I'll mention those as a possibility for future jobs.
Thank you for confirming for me that the matrix -> controller -> matrix path was a bad idea. Appreciated!

https://www.pulse-eight.com/c/74

Check out pulse eight


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

At my company we end up with a lot of projects in large new-construction homes with more zones than a single matrix can handle.
We used to use the Triad 24x24, but it's been discontinued (why??) and now we use the AV Pro Edge 24x24 - but we still sometimes encounter homes where we need more zones. I come from live audio, where something like Dante could be used to chain matrices together - but I don't think something like that exists for residential, unless I am wrong. (I'd love to be wrong!!)
Our standard practice in such a case is to split everything going to an input to two matrices - but that's messy and convoluted. A field technician asked me today why we don't backfeed one matrix out into a Core5 input, and then use a separate Core5 output for the other matrix. That, to me, seemed like it would not work - but I wasn't really able to articulate why in a way that they understood so I'm open to being fully incorrect on this.
What is the recommended practice in the case of multiple matrices? Does anyone here have a 24 zone (or larger!!) matrix that they recommend? The AV Pro Edge 24x24 is limited in some ways.

Look around for people with spare amps especially if you aren't using the video aspect of the amps, which it sounds like you aren't.  I have some unused AVRs because the freaking things became obsolete so quickly due to changing video standards from S-Video, to Component, to various iterations of HDMI.

there is an agent you need to install called navigation agent.  Once you install that (you can in HE) you will program off that agent

My keypads are set up with one button per floor, so I can easily see if any lights are left on, and turn them all off at once, which is quite a bit easier than finding each one and/or going to each one...
But yeah, I agree, it's possibly not as convenient as voice in some situations.
In my case, I'd rather press a button with a LED lit up on it than to issue a voice utterance at midnight or later when my wife and kids are probably asleep in the same or next room.

RyanE

IMO - Keypad isn't really any easier than a light switch, except you have all your switches in a room in one place, which is nice.  
The occupancy thing doesn't work for me personally with young kids who are constantly running everywhere.  I need more control than that.
I'd actually love to have Josh and I should be the absolute target market for it as someone who used Alexa a ton, but didn't find Alexa to have enough integration.  However, the price and, more importantly, my fear that the company will disappear have been what have kept me from it.  If I'm investing $10K in tech, I have to know I can use it for a decent amount of time.  If a larger company bought Josh, I'd probably buy it right away.

I don't typically touch light switches at my house, without voice.
They come on based on occupancy, and are shut off automatically, and/or with a single press on a keypad.
I'm glad you have a solution you like.
RyanE

This is an opinion, as valid as those who don't like using voice.
I'm personally in the "I don't talk to my house" camp.
Neither is right, neither is wrong, as they're just opinions or anecdotes.
The best thing is having the ability to do whatever you like best.
RyanE
 

Keep in mind this is Crestron Home which is an app based plug and playish type intuitive scaled down version of the system. 

Someone is always catching up with someone else. 
There will always be plenty of features Control4 still needs to implement / improve.
RyanE

Well said/we're generally in agreement -- I was commenting more broadly on 'center-of-the-universe' voice platform market entry and basic buy vs. build vs. partner logic in doing what they need to do to meet the niche.
Your assessment of Big Tech-challenges sounds right; however, the longer-term investment/competitive risk of them not enabling downstream integration in a space as broad as the home should be motivating (or dynamics will change).
Have no idea what the deal is with Josh but that could be the case and/or they were hoping it'd quickly turn into a sale and things just generally soured when it didn't, which happens all the time.
Lastly, I think the bigger question for C4 is where to play/their business model over the longer-term. The 'dealer-double down' via bolt-ons and sales pull through strategy made perfect sense for H&F's purpose but will become sooner rather than later become untenable IMO.

IDK.  I think it depends on what "it" is.  I don't think anyone is suggesting that C4 offer something that people would buy *instead of* Siri/Alexa/Google, but rather some kind of better bridge/integration/support for having C4 stuff being controllable via voice commands interpreted by one of these existing voice solutions.  The existing Alexa/Google C4 (semi) support is evidence of this approach.  Halo talking to AppleTV (and, thus, Siri/Homekit) is another quasi step in this direction.
I think voice control is becoming so ubiquitous in the low-end consumer space that the absence of some kind of C4 workaround is going to be an increasing impediment to selling expensive C4 deployments.  I think they need to do better, and fast.  I suspect the biggest challenge for tighter integration with the big boys (Apple/Amazon/Google) is not so much the competitive threat that those guys would perceive, but more along the lines of "Don't care/not strategic/why bother?"   
Josh.ai is the most obvious partner, but they are a niche product already, so tough for them to further their narrow their market and corporate "Enterprise Value" / exit potential by being seen as too tied to one player (C4).  Plus the natural strategy of everyone wanting to be the "center of the universe" versus a "mere add-on."
So the economic realities are tough, but I think they must do *something*, IMHO.
I biased toward the Apple ecosystem, but I would love C4 to buy (or build) a C4/Homekit bridge driver, and make it a supported solution.  That would be (relatively) cheap/easy for C4 to do, and they could charge for it-- and it might also "pull through" additional Halo sales.

Good write up Greg. I think we will continue to see great control4 and josh integration. It would be in everyone’s best interest.