skippman

I want to say I appreciate all the information I've gathered from this thread. I've learned a lot. I appreciate all the feedback and input from everyone involved. I also want to say to everyone that it was never my intention to start a war between Control4 and people who want in wall tablets. I believe both have their place and budget. For turn key installation and maximum support the Control4 T3/T4 interfaces are absolutely the best route to go. If you're a bit more into tinkering with things and want a little more flexibility at the cost of simplicity and a few features (intercom, etc) the tablets are definitely the way to go. It looks like both can be made to look quite nice in or on your wall. Once I get everything installed I plan to try a Amazon Fire tablet first. If that meets my needs I'll scale up to two more. If it doesn't, well it was a fun experiment and I'll likely just not have in wall touch panels.

Honestly, the ONLY reason I'm going Control4 is that Logitech terminated the Harmony brand. I need a way to control three separate island systems that are all colocated on one rack in a wiring closet. This seemed the best way to do it. Since I have the functionality baked in to Control4 I figured I might as well network in my thermostats and garage door opener as I didn't have smart versions of those yet in the new house.

I work for a major telecomm company. Standard policy is we don't update firmware on devices unless there's a zero day exploit or a security issue. This leaves us running typically several firmware versions behind in some of our equipment but when you're talking 100,000's of users being potentially impacted by one Juniper device going down we don't take chances. This is why I tend not to jump on the firmware update bandwagon unless it's mission critical. To be honest I won't use most of what Control4 can do. I don't want intercoms. I don't need home lighting control (yet). I don't need it to drive any Smart Locks on my doors. What I really need it for is to give me rock solid control over my home theater devices and to stay out of the way of the rest of the networks TCP/IP traffic. Cisco would be an excellent choice if it was anywhere NEAR in my budget. Right now I'm using a kludged together network of a Netgear Nighthawk WiFi6 router and a Dell Power Connect layer 3 switch. It meets pretty much all my needs. It's kind of a pain to administrate as everything has to be configured independently and I don't have total WiFi coverage in the house but it's near as makes no difference. Our new house will be twice as large and two stories so WiFi coverage is important to me. I looked into EnGenius but they don't seem to offer a router product which rules them out. I looked into Mikrotik. They currently don't have a WiFi 6 AP on the market and everything I'm reading says that's not about to change anytime soon. Do I NEED WiFi 6 right now? No. But I don't want to spend the money on 2 or 3 802.11AC APs only to want to come back and replace them again in a couple years. I'd rather buy once and cry once. As for Araknis, I very much got the opinion from them that they're almost specifically designed for remote administration and media distribution. It's not that surprising given they're owned by Snap. I want my networking gear to come from a networking company, not a company that also makes HDMI switches and home theater equipment. I also don't like how you almost can't shut off the remote access. So for right now it looks like I'm probably going to stick with the Ubiquiti stuff and hope against hope that they can get their... stuff together soon. I will absolutely be shutting off any cloud based administration. It's local or nothing for me.

So what is the recommended alternative? I'm not personally familiar with anything in the pro-sumer arena that offers the same feature set at the same price point as the Ubiquti. I'm not saying such a thing doesn't exist, only that I'm not personally aware of it. I'm open to alternatives. My system designer is really pushing for me to use Araknis Networks equipment. I suspect his motivation for that is two fold in that it's owned by Snap AV (who he's a partner with) and their OvrC management software is obviously geared more towards being controlled by an external integrater than by a local network administrator. I've been opposed to them because speed wise they seem to be lagging behind in that they offer no WiFi 6 based AP's and I'm not looking to mix and match equipment this time around. I want everything controllable by one stack/interface.

I meant it was here-say in that I won't quote him or list his name on the forum. It's not from a known, cited source. He, like many here, has a business model he needs to maintain and what he tells me in confidence as a friend I don't want to quote him on as I don't know if there isn't repercussions to his business if I do so. That's all I was trying to say.

I agree with this statement. I can get a nice wall mount, charger, and 10" tablet for less than $250 a unit. The T3 lists at nearly $950 a unit. That's a $500 cost savings for a little hassle. I'm honestly not surprised that the only people who have seemed to nitpick the idea of using a COTS tablet all have "Control4 Dealer" under their avatar. I talked to my local friend who is designing and selling me my Control4 system and even he agreed that there's absolutely nothing wrong with using tablets and concurred that in some applications (like mine) there's a strong incentive to do so. I understand that on the forum here my saying that is here-say, but it does appear to be backed up other user stories here. I fail to see the difference aesthetically between this: And this:

Is there any reason for the preference in using PoE chargers as opposed to just wiring an inverter off the house mains A/C?

This was kind of where my head was at. I'd like to be able to switch to the Ubiquiti app if needed or any other apps. I'll likely buy one Fire tablet like was recommended previously and try it out once the system is up and running.

I could use Kiosk mode with two of them. It's only the one in the kitchen I was considering using Google Calendar with. I'm also considering just building a full Raspberry Pi based device with a 24" screen for this purpose and running LineageOS on it. I know Android now allows the running of two apps in split screen mode but I can't imagine that being a particularly elegant solutions. This video makes it look like using the Fire tablets would work pretty great if I used the Kiosk app you guys recommended.

Define much slower? Do you mean loading the app itself is slower? It's slower to execute commands? Are we talking a seconds delay or several seconds? From what I've been able to glean since Control4 doesn't list prices a single T3 interface clocks in at around $950USD. For that price I can get three 10" Amazon Fire Tablets ($165USD ea), three wall mounts with power adapters ($50USD ea) and still be $300 under the cost of a single T3. For my money there has to be some serious loss of functionality to justify that price tag. Not to mention I can use the Fire tablets to run other Android apps if I want like Google Calendar.

This. Exactly this. There is absolutely zero reason or incentive to rub beta firmware on a production appliance. Beta firmware is specifically for testing purposes not for release into production environments. Honestly, unless it's to fix an exploit or security issue there's almost zero reason to ever update router firmware. As for me personally, my wife and I both work from home. She's a software engineer, I'm a network engineer for a teleco. Right now I'm running a standard Netgear Nighthawk to a Dell layer 3 switch. My gateway, switch, and router all sit on a UPS. If that fails, I have wireless tethering to fall back on. When we move I'm debating on getting a secondary circuit from the local cable company, whatever their lowest tier is, or just setting up a cellular backup. Honestly, if their production firmware is bad enough that it's routinely bricking or crashing routers I might consider another vendor. This would be the first I'd read about that though. I knew about the restore from backup thing and I know a lot of people are rightfully pissed that you have to sign up for their cloud services account. I don't know of to many other vendors that make a pro-sumer line of products with the single point interface that Ubiquiti does. I wouldn't be surprised if there wasn't a Meraki appliance like that but Cisco is to proud of their products for my budget or needs.

Yeah, that's what I was thinking too. Also, I can't afford two $400+ routers just to have one for a potential firmware issue. I don't know many people who could and many small companies wouldn't even do that.

So the general consensus is there's nothing wrong with using a tablet other than I won't have the intercom functionality. Looks like I'll be adding 3 tablets to my future Control4 setup!

Thanks for the input! The battery swelling thing is definitely an issue to avoid. Looking online it looks like there's a suite of software options to have the tablet stop charging at specific levels. It sounds like Apple even built this functionality into the new iOS's. My main reason for using Control4 is wanting to put all my home theater equipment in a single rack in a wiring closet. I've decided to add a couple Ecobee thermostats and a garage door opener control as well. Eventually I do plan to add some controllable lighting, but that's a way down the road while I absorb the cost of building my whole new system from scratch. I figured I could buy 3 Amazon Fire tablets for half the cost of a single Control4 display. If that means I loose the intercom functionality and the camera functionality I feel that's a worth while trade off. Another option would be to use Galaxy Tab's.

I'm not sure what I'd use the intercom for other than may as an interface with a Ring or other door bell. Is the no intercom thing a limitation of the software, or because of how most people are mounting their tablets in the wall and it blocking the microphone? I was planning on installing one in the main hallway just off my kitchen, one in the master bathroom, and one in the upstairs hallway. I see several companies make nice mounts to hide the wiring and make it look like a finished product. From what I've read the Control4 wall touch interfaces are like 7 times more expensive than an Fire tablet.