stornyoung Posted November 6, 2008 Share Posted November 6, 2008 What are the advantages and disadvantages of using one controller(the 1000) over 2 separate controllers(the 500 and the 300)? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
slemay Posted November 6, 2008 Share Posted November 6, 2008 1000 is just a brain - no inputs / outputs... no on screen interface etc... it's JUST a brain for a large project - so you'll still need HC-200, HC-300's and or HC-500's in the project somewhere. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
thecodeman Posted November 6, 2008 Share Posted November 6, 2008 I posted this in the other duplicated thread."You can't have a 1000 without either a 200, 500 or a 300 in the project. The 1000 is geared for installs that have greater than 16 zones of audio, and a ton of dvd/cd cover art, to speed things up. It does not have any IR or contact connections, nor is it capable of the on screen display. These are just the things that I can remember off the top of my head, someone else can chime in if I forgot anything." Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TurboKuake Posted November 6, 2008 Share Posted November 6, 2008 When do you guys generally spec out a 1000 for a customer in real life? Is it simply due to the cover art and audio zones? What about zigbee devices and/or amount of programming?I'm interested to see when people think a 1000 is truly necessary. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
thecodeman Posted November 6, 2008 Share Posted November 6, 2008 When do you guys generally spec out a 1000 for a customer in real life? Is it simply due to the cover art and audio zones? What about zigbee devices and/or amount of programming?I'm interested to see when people think a 1000 is truly necessary.Definately with programming too. I dont have too many things in my setup or in my friends, but I have seen some pretty crazy things people are doing wtih programming and I could see a slowdown potential there, especially with more than one user at a time trying to do something or event based triggers. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
slemay Posted November 7, 2008 Share Posted November 7, 2008 Very large installs... I disagree with greater than 16 zones of audio - as we have clients with 24 zones that work just fine.It's usually spec'd when you're doing large installs... ie: 100+ light switches, multiple touchscreens, lots of zones of audio (16+ is a good start)... basically it's when the DIRECTOR in the project is being taxed quite heavily for various tasks - it makes sense to add a HC-1000 at that time. In our cases, we usually do NOT spec it, but advise customers of it and that we may want to add it to a project (toss up between an HC-500 and the HC-1000). We'll explain the pro and cons of both. Most of the time, customers go with the HC-500 as they don't mind the extra second or two there system takes to perform a task. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TurboKuake Posted November 7, 2008 Share Posted November 7, 2008 I should run some logs on my system to see how often it is maxed out. Why the HC-500 when it has the same processor as the 300? Just for the hard drive? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RyanE Posted November 7, 2008 Share Posted November 7, 2008 The differences are a hard drive, and more I/O.The HC-500 has 3 Audio outputs, as well as Digital audio out and in, HC-300 has 2 audio outs, no digital.HC-500 has more contact and relay I/O, 4 serial ports (as opposed to 2), and can do SD OR HD on the Component output. It has 8 IR outs, instead of 6 on the HC-300.If you need the IO and you would prefer a faster access hard drive for music (as opposed to USB or networked, which would be slower), the HC-500 is a good solution.RyanE Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TurboKuake Posted November 7, 2008 Share Posted November 7, 2008 Yeah, I'm aware of all that. But I was meaning in terms of processing power. If it was a toss up between a HC-500 and a HC-1000 like Shawn was stating. Obviously they're totally different units. the HC-1000 having no I/O, IR, Contacts, Relays, or OSD.I would be interested though, Ryan, when would you think it necessary to spec a 1000 for a customer? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RyanE Posted November 8, 2008 Share Posted November 8, 2008 I think there are several things that would cause me (if I were a dealer) to consider an HC-1000 over an HC-500.I'm putting them in what I would consider the 'seriousness' order, but this is just my opinion, there are no hard and fast rules, it depends on so many variables.* Response time very important to client -- The HC-1000 is a 1.8 GHz processor, and the HC-500 or HC-300 is a 350 MHz processor (and a 600MHz DSP co-processor), and response time of the overall system is slower (although certainly acceptable) with the smaller processors.The fact that the HC-1000 does not run any additional servers or an on-screen Navigator, it amplifies the effect of that 1.8GHz processor. It ONLY runs Director, very fast.* Lots of Navigator devices -- Navigator devices communicate a *lot* with Director, and can slow down Director's responses to other devices. Getting an HC-1000 also will speed up Navigator navigation as well.* Lots of controllers. Each controller runs a set of services to handle the Serial, IR, Audio Servers and Clients, Contacts, Relays, and Zigbee Servers. Each of these services connects to Director, so Director can use all the resources of all the controllers in the project. Director has to service each connection, which takes time.* Large number of devices / Lots of programming. This is mostly noticed when the project is saved or when Control4 programming is running. Although Control4 programming is efficient, it does take time, and Director can't do anything else while it's running. New DriverWorks drivers also run a Lua interpreter within a driver, which takes more resources as well.* Lots of Zigbee Devices. This is similar to the many controllers issue. The faster Director processes data from Zigbee devices, the better your Zigbee throughput can be.I'd say if you have any of these things, you should seriously consider an HC-1000:* A demanding end user client* 8+ Navigators and/or Slave Controllers* A very large project (100+ Zigbee devices, multiple rooms of AV devices, many audio zones (15+), etc.)At my house, I have an HC-300 running master (without running Navigator, which does help), but I have 60+ Zigbee devices, 2 Zigbee servers running, 3 controllers, 5 mini-touch devices, 10 zones of audio, and the HC-300 seems to work well, but I do notice having to wait occasionally.RyanE Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
slemay Posted November 11, 2008 Share Posted November 11, 2008 I agree with Ryan - and to compare:I have an HC-500 running w/o Navigator. 2 HC-300's, 2 HTC's, 1 10.5" TS, 1 MTS, 1 LCD, 5 Zones Audio (actual "true dedicated zones), 3 Zones audio (that have their own receivers / surround sound), 60-70 Zigbee Devices - and I'm running Zigbee and Director on the same HC-500 (again - no Navigator) - and it's quite speedy. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RyanE Posted November 11, 2008 Share Posted November 11, 2008 But if you want to give me an HC-1000, Shawn, I'll let you know if it speeds my house up.RyanE Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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