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2017 Thoughts for Control4


mic2010

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As a technical person myself it is impossible to read the second paragraph of anything. The first paragraph must contain all information as the rest is skipped ... unless there is a diagram or the first paragraph specifically references the second paragraph etc ...

Only non techs will read this part.

Well, I'm a technical person and I read more than one paragraph. I hope you're joking, because if not that's one of the most ludicrous things I've ever heard.

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

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19 minutes ago, ILoveC4 said:

Well, I'm a technical person and I read more than one paragraph. I hope you're joking, because if not that's one of the most ludicrous things I've ever heard.

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

I actually have no answer for this, even in the form of a song. I did read the second part this time and have learned that you have an iPhone with the Tapatalk app, which my therapist will see as definitive progress.

Sorry couldn't help it, surely reading my post you can't possibly think I was being serious?

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3 hours ago, jfh said:

They were originally upset when I had a remote dealer found here install some drivers and do some config for me (it was a couple hours work for which my dealer wanted to charge me $500 research time for plus the actual time to install.

My dealer went berserk when I had someone form this forum make some remote tweaks. He threatened to void all of his warranties.

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6 minutes ago, FLA said:

My dealer went berserk when I had someone form this forum make some remote tweaks. He threatened to void all of his warranties.

I can't say I blame him - how can he warranty programming when someone else potentially changed it.

He can't void hardware warranty...

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In my case the dealer said he wasn't going to support any part of the system, including hardware, and did not honor the support contract I had.

I certainly don't care about any warranty on programming - I do everything in my project except driver installs and bindings.

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2 hours ago, therockhr said:

Did you not read the next paragraph of his post? He said exactly that. 

 

1 hour ago, ILoveC4 said:

I'm guessing you failed to read the rest of my post, where I said I went back later and part of it was powered by Control4?

hadn't had my caffeine yet.

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14 minutes ago, NextGenAV said:

Out of interest, what is the average day rate / hourly in the US for an engineer to come out to a job?

Can't speak for everyone, but at my last company it was $150 hourly.

Though that was just the posted rate. If I remoted in and changed one little thing, they didn't get charged for that.

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1 hour ago, msgreenf said:

I can't say I blame him - how can he warranty programming when someone else potentially changed it.

He can't void hardware warranty...

Frankly, how can ANYONE have a programming warranty? Because customers have the ability to change that part of the system, I could never be sure who did what.

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4 minutes ago, funnyfarm299 said:

Frankly, how can ANYONE have a programming warranty? Because customers have the ability to change that part of the system, I could never be sure who did what.

well I mean warranty the work he did...

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How much of your private life are you willing to put in someone else's computer?

(Recent news regarding Echo, and murder, and the smart water meter that showed 100+ gallons of water usage at 2am.)

Sir, we have your cloud report... it shows your garage door opened at 1:15am, then you turned on the kitchen light, and the basement light where the axe was stored...

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11 hours ago, jfh said:

 

In my case the dealer said he wasn't going to support any part of the system, including hardware, and did not honor the support contract I had.

I certainly don't care about any warranty on programming - I do everything in my project except driver installs and bindings.

Actually in my case my dealer said that it would void all warranties including R&R for hardware and he even said that regarding the hardware he would claim that I was rebooting the system too often which would have rendered a negative effect on the hardware. Of course he didn't have a leg to stand on but as a consumer I certainly didn't need the heartburn, especially for a minor tweak that a well respected member of this forum graciously did remotely for me . I wound up having the member of this forum put the system back to the way it was and we moved on. I love my C4 equipment but unfortunately I've have many problems most of which I believe to have originated from my dealer. Unfortunately over a year later and I we are still not done trying to make everything right although it is much much better than it was a year ago. 

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50 minutes ago, RAV said:

How much of your private life are you willing to put in someone else's computer?

(Recent news regarding Echo, and murder, and the smart water meter that showed 100+ gallons of water usage at 2am.)

Sir, we have your cloud report... it shows your garage door opened at 1:15am, then you turned on the kitchen light, and the basement light where the axe was stored...

I never tell Alexa when I'm planning an execution.

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2 hours ago, funnyfarm299 said:

Can't speak for everyone, but at my last company it was $150 hourly.

Though that was just the posted rate. If I remoted in and changed one little thing, they didn't get charged for that.

Anyone got an easy going single sister in the US? 

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Perhaps I just lucked into a good dealer - but, here is my recommendation for folks like us who are picking a first-time or new dealer.

1) Be upfront - I told my dealer that I was going to be a diy person and he should tell me to go elsewhere if he didn't want to support it.  I asked how he made his money - and how he was going to make money from me in particular.

2) I try to be prepared, and only hit him up when I really need something.  This includes lumping together upgrades every fall - so he makes a little money and supports my changes.  I try very hard to be patient - other clients are making him more money - they are going to be first. 

I live in a high cost metro area - and he is local.  Of course, I would switch if it wasn't working out.

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On 1/2/2017 at 7:40 AM, ILoveC4 said:

I remember walking through the "smart, connected home of the future" in Disneyland 15 or 20 years ago. Sponsored by Microsoft, with all this technology they were going to be bringing to market to do all these amazing things. None of those products are commercially available today (nor have they been in the past...at least not widely).

I also remember going through that same exhibit sometime about 10 years ago and seeing a bunch of it powered by Control4. I had already invested in Control4 at the time and thought it was pretty cool.

Like I said...you'll continue to see solutions like the Nest, Sonos, Google Home, Hue, etc... come out and address different aspects of what C4 does. I just don't see one of them taking on the A/V portion where they're producing handheld remotes that have the ability to control every device in your home.

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

At some point of time before Control4 ran that house, it was ran by Lifeware. Talk about a horrid, POS platform.

We did a whole house in Lifeware because the owner insisted on it over Control4. I spent weeks with lifeware tech support and the lighting contractor trying to get simple lighting scene status to work. The whole house was switched over to Control4 and now the owner is finally happy.

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Yeah, LifeWare was "huge".  They were backed by MS, spent ungodly amounts of money on advertising at CEDIA, and couldn't make their demo home at CEDIA work properly.

Pretty much a bad case of "FIRE! Aim, Ready".

RyanE

 

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11 minutes ago, RyanE said:

Yeah, LifeWare was "huge".  They were backed by MS, spent ungodly amounts of money on advertising at CEDIA, and couldn't make their demo home at CEDIA work properly.

Pretty much a bad case of "FIRE! Aim, Ready".

RyanE

 

I don't know much about the Lifeware product but I sort of like the idea of combining the controller with the AV system (in their case WMC). Wasnt one of their big problems that they thought all AV devices would move to web services (TV's, DVD players, etc.)?

While others have mentioned Google, Apple and Amazon as eventual competitors to Control4, I think the only companies that would try to compete in the AV control space are the cable/satellite companies. For example Dish; they already have the dealer infrastructure in place. With their whole home DVR setup, they also have controllers (hopper and joeys) and remotes in place. They could start out by adding software to control thermostats (nest, honeywell, ecobee) and lights (lutron caseta, wemo) pretty quickly.

Dish just announced Alexa and whole home audio today at CES

http://about.dish.com/press-release/products-and-services/dish-adds-multi-room-music-hopper-dvr-upcoming-launch-new-mobile

http://about.dish.com/press-release/products-and-services/dish-and-amazon-deliver-alexa-voice-control-hopper-dvr

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4 minutes ago, therockhr said:

dish really has always been on the up and up on their technology. 

My biggest issue on the equipment is speed. its can take 3-5 times longer for me to launch pandora from my hopper than it would to find my phone launch c4 and select pandora to play.

hopefully the android app will help.

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Dish announced an 'Automation Play' a year and a half ago at CEDIA 2015.

They've since discontinued it.

I'm not saying they couldn't do it, and not saying they won't eventually do it, but for now, "It's dead, Jim".

RyanE

 

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I've been in this industry for 18 years now and have had Crestron, AMX, RTI, URC, Pronto, Demopad and some other stuff installed in the house. Control4 has been the only one that stayed, mainly due to the speed I can make changes and I don't get bogged down in Photoshop doing GUIs.

I loved developing in AMX early on as you could make a beautiful GUI, but changing from one AVR to another or adding a component (even IR) was a pain in the butt. Bug hunting with dynamic GUIs took ages and most of the time if you needed a driver you wrote it yourself ... hours and hours of work.

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48 minutes ago, NextGenAV said:

I've been in this industry for 18 years now and have had Crestron, AMX, RTI, URC, Pronto, Demopad and some other stuff installed in the house. Control4 has been the only one that stayed, mainly due to the speed I can make changes and I don't get bogged down in Photoshop doing GUIs.

I loved developing in AMX early on as you could make a beautiful GUI, but changing from one AVR to another or adding a component (even IR) was a pain in the butt. Bug hunting with dynamic GUIs took ages and most of the time if you needed a driver you wrote it yourself ... hours and hours of work.

the proxy model - while not always as visual appealing - is a great architecture that allows for what you said.  

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2 hours ago, RyanE said:

Dish announced an 'Automation Play' a year and a half ago at CEDIA 2015.

They've since discontinued it.

I'm not saying they couldn't do it, and not saying they won't eventually do it, but for now, "It's dead, Jim".

RyanE

 

Correct. I think they were working with Sage or something. They also were supposedly scrapping their whole home audio solution to only just announce it would be released in February. 

My point was more that while everyone always says "wait until amazon, Apple and Microsoft get into HA" when really the large companies best positioned to try and tackle it are the cable and sat companies. 

If Control4 wanted to make some of their investors happy they would partner with Dish and make all the Dish dealers Control4 dealers. 

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53 minutes ago, msgreenf said:

the proxy model - while not always as visual appealing - is a great architecture that allows for what you said.  

Yeah. It's basically what has made Control4 affordable to the non millionaire crowd. A system can be configured as opposed to programmed. 

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