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Discussion of new CA-10 controller


jfh

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On 9/13/2019 at 5:40 AM, ILoveC4 said:

Can you share what all you have that is taxing your system that hard? I have over a hundred lighting devices, 16 zones of audio, JAP Video distribution, 2 AVR's, 8 security cameras, DS2 Mini, motion sensors, thermostats, DMX lighting, tons of drivers, etc... I'm using every I/O on the EA5 AND the HC800 including the contacts and relays. My house is comparable in size to yours. I don't feel like I tax the EA5 at all, so just curious what else might be going on in your place...

 

On 9/13/2019 at 5:48 AM, Cyknight said:

^

^

I would agree - the CA-10 may well help, but it takes a LOT to throw an EA-5 off, it sounds more likely to me that there's a driver (or several) that are causing high memory usage.

My own system is quite a bit more involved than our beloved Village Idiot's is in some ways at least, and I'm still not pushing the EA-5

Thanks for the interest.  What is strange in my situation is that no new drivers have been added in the last month or two although we have added 30 or 40 instances of existing drivers / sensor types etc.

From memory, my system covers approximately the following:

26 virtual (C4) rooms 

130 lighting circuits (all with keypad dimmers or switches and an additional 10 standard alone keypads)

12 audio zones

3 video zones (over and above the audio zones)

Around 10 video inputs (via a matrix) and 2 AVRs

Pentair swimming pool, chiller and spa integration (including 7 pumps, 2 heat pumps, 1 chiller pump, 20 or so auxiliary and lighting circuits).

10 “zones” of underfloor heating (thermostats and underfloor hearing itself)

2 heat pumps for underfloor heating and a further 2 circulation pumps.

10 “zones” of air conditioning (each controlled separately - I.e. no central Aircon controller).

DSC security system with 64 zones (around 50 used).

12 cameras coming in from 2 different systems

2 DS2 door stations

10 zones of irrigation (using native C4 drivers only).

5 IO extenders

5 EA1s

2 HC800s

1 EA5 (Director)

a further 30 thermostats used to display variables

100 Driver instances from Driver Central (mainly Chowmain)

2 Annex4 drivers

3 Blackwire drivers (TTS, renamer and emojis - around 20 instances of the latter).

3 garage doors

2 gates

Basic energy monitoring

Around 100 native sensors (some linked to security, others linked to other contacts and relays)

Around 40 native C4 experience buttons (controlling items like jacuzzi covers)

Lots of programming (couple of hundred macros, couple of hundred variables, 100+ timers, 30 or so emails set up and 30 or so push notifications - these have not been set up efficiently)

200 or so movies, 500 or so CDs in MyMovies and MyMusic

6 Tidal drivers

8 Shairbridge drivers

3 blinds

4 T3s

250 Alexa voice scenes, devices and lights / lighting scenes

The Wakeup goodnight Driver in a few rooms.

A few other drivers from individual developers.

I am sure that I am missing some items...

 

 

 

 

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9 hours ago, RobbieF said:

Do you mind me asking what you use the 4 IO extenders for? 

To be honest, I can’t recall everything but I know they are fairly full. Main items that I can think of:

1. Irrigation

2. Underfloor heating

3. Power sensing

4. Gate control and sensing for a gate that is not linked to the security system.

5. I think my pool links through an IO extender but I may be wrong. Can’t recall if an IO extender has RS232.

6. Control of DVR and various other items that I want to be able to reboot by dropping power at the push of a button from within C4

7. Aircons

8. Heat pumps and circulating pumps

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Wow that's massive system..  I have 2 I/o's and use ea1 in a few spots where I needed I/o and couldn't go back to my rack..  every TV I have in my system uses IR and most of my devices all have IR except receivers and Apple TV's but everything else uses IR..  I wish Comcast had an IP driver, but I think my boxes are old so I haven't been able to get the IP driver.  maybe I'll get around to upgrading the boxes but its been working so I haven't rushed to change..  amazing what you have in your system

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10 hours ago, Dunamivora said:

Ferbor, as far as I am aware, there is no way to have a secondary backup controller that automatically kicks on when the primary fails.

It will be interesting to see the CA10, but my initial thought is it doesn't have redundant firmware/backup OS in case the primary OS fails to boot.

@Dunamivora In a Raid 1 configuration, the drives are an exact, concurrent mirror of each other. The way I see it is that the CA10 has: Redundant storage, redundant power supplies, and redundant NIC's. Short of the processor dying (which is usually the most reliable part of a controller) it is effectively two home controllers in one.

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10 minutes ago, MobileEMP said:

@Dunamivora In a Raid 1 configuration, the drives are an exact, concurrent mirror of each other. The way I see it is that the CA10 has: Redundant storage, redundant power supplies, and redundant NIC's. Short of the processor dying (which is usually the most reliable part of a controller) it is effectively two home controllers in one.

I agree with you, but redundant storage is not the same as a secondary image for an OS.

I haven't seen many issues with the processor or nic dying outside of a lightning strike.

Power supply and harddrive failure I have seen, so that's a great addition.

 

The one I have seen more is corruption and these redundancies don't solve that, nor if the primary goes completely down. Those would be the next step. If the OS breaks, then I doubt it magically loads the good one from the other half of the RAID 1 because both sides would have been updated with the bad data.

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1 hour ago, CTO said:

interested to see how much of a difference it makes in your system..  I have a large system but you make mine look tiny.. lol

I am very interested to.  I would probably have bought the CA10 anyway just to see what it did but given the problems I’ve had for the last 2 or 3 weeks, I now “have to”.

I have convinced myself (and, I think, my dealer) that this I have some sort of resource issue. We played around a lot today.  If I take any 4 non-essential items out of my project, I can reboot and get things up and running and stable.  If I take any 2 items out, I can coax the system up and it seems to work... if I leave my project as is (i.e. remove nothing), it is a disaster and things fall apart within half an hour.

I have settled on unplugging one T3 and one DS2 and am going to try and nurse things along like that for 2 weeks until the CA10 arrives!

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1 hour ago, jfh said:

The emoji drivers are resource hogs.

 

When you say “things fall apart” what do you mean?

 

Are you having the latency issues that some have seen (myself included) with OS3 where commands seem to get backed up and then execute rapidly?

I have had various issues:

1. Latency issues (as you describe) but only in the last few weeks.

2. Unable to log in using the iOS app.

3. The navigator on the T3s gets all messed up (wall paper disappears, wake and sleep Agent loses the number in the middle, some thermostats lose the number, cursor becomes a circle of death for minutes - not seconds etc.).

4. My security driver started firing off code that happens when a panic is triggered despite the panic not being triggered (at first we thought this driver was the root cause, but it does not seem to be).

Etc. 

.

 

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As far as Redundancy goes control took the easy route here.
Raid 1 and redundant power is nice and will cut the failure rates quite a bit.

But it is not really redundant. If RAM, or anything on the Mainboard brakes the system is toast anyhow.

A really redundant approach would be a system with 2 CA-10s and active fail over.
But on the software side that's quite a lot of work as everything happening in the main HC has to be mirrod on the 2nd instantly

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10 hours ago, South Africa C4 user said:

I have had various issues:

1. Latency issues (as you describe) but only in the last few weeks.

2. Unable to log in using the iOS app.

3. The navigator on the T3s gets all messed up (wall paper disappears, wake and sleep Agent loses the number in the middle, some thermostats lose the number, cursor becomes a circle of death for minutes - not seconds etc.).

4. My security driver started firing off code that happens when a panic is triggered despite the panic not being triggered (at first we thought this driver was the root cause, but it does not seem to be).

Etc. 

.

 

You are not alone 

we have had the same issue on the T3 touch screens - well only one - this got taken back to 3.0 and the upgraded again to 3.1 ~ testing at the moment.

losing icon and saying connecting 

our alarm system at 12.14 am says the back two doors have been open ~ this happens had hoc and it’s hard to trace ~ Alarm company coming round on Monday to check there side 

dealer confused by this one and we are looking at taking the alarm off c4 and see what's t’s state on the morning if the alarm panel is showing these doors been active

doors have been taken off the bedtime alarm set  

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5 hours ago, Gary Leeds UK said:

You are not alone 

we have had the same issue on the T3 touch screens - well only one - this got taken back to 3.0 and the upgraded again to 3.1 ~ testing at the moment.

losing icon and saying connecting 

our alarm system at 12.14 am says the back two doors have been open ~ this happens had hoc and it’s hard to trace ~ Alarm company coming round on Monday to check there side 

dealer confused by this one and we are looking at taking the alarm off c4 and see what's t’s state on the morning if the alarm panel is showing these doors been active

doors have been taken off the bedtime alarm set  

Interesting! I unplugged the RS232 connection for my alarm and still had the same issues so am (99%) sure that the alarm system, is not the issue.

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Reading the specs posted above for the CA10, I see that it can handle 1000’s of devices.  On the C4 website, I think that I read that the EA5 can do hundreds of drivers and devices.  We did a quick count of drivers on my system today and it was somewhere between 650 and 700.  My dealer deleted 20 or 30 driver instances that I don’t use today in the hope that I can limp along for 2 weeks until my CA10 arrives...

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Reading the specs posted above for the CA10, I see that it can handle 1000’s of devices.  On the C4 website, I think that I read that the EA5 can do hundreds of drivers and devices.  We did a quick count of drivers on my system today and it was somewhere between 650 and 700.  My dealer deleted 20 or 30 driver instances that I don’t use today in the hope that I can limp along for 2 weeks until my CA10 arrives...
Let us know how it goes.

From a theoretical point of view one could load control4 on a brand-new Epyc 7302 and 64gb of ram and run millions of driver instances - so control4 is really holding themselves back
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34 minutes ago, blub said:

Let us know how it goes.

From a theoretical point of view one could load control4 on a brand-new Epyc 7302 and 64gb of ram and run millions of driver instances - so control4 is really holding themselves back emoji23.png

Not really. You'd be better of with an i9-9900K. DDR4 would be awesome though. More cores wouldn't help out much, the higher single core speed would though.

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Then that's a design flaw. If CPU development has shown us one thing in the last years it's that frequency isn't likely to go up.

And actually you are technically are wrong :
9900k doesn't support ecc ram, so no way it's a good fit for a 24/7 controller.
Even a xeon gold wouldn't have a significant higher single core score than the current 16 and 24c Epycs and xeon gold is like 3x the price..

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24 minutes ago, blub said:

Then that's a design flaw. If CPU development has shown us one thing in the last years it's that frequency isn't likely to go up.

And actually you are technically are wrong :
9900k doesn't support ecc ram, so no way it's a good fit for a 24/7 controller.
Even a xeon gold wouldn't have a significant higher single core score than the current 16 and 24c Epycs and xeon gold is like 3x the price..

I don't believe the Atom D525 (HC800) or Atom CE5335 (EA5) support ECC.

I don't know the cpu model on the CA10 since I haven't used one yet, but the previous two top controllers didn't have ECC.

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On 9/14/2019 at 9:43 AM, Gary Leeds UK said:

You are not alone 

we have had the same issue on the T3 touch screens - well only one - this got taken back to 3.0 and the upgraded again to 3.1 ~ testing at the moment.

losing icon and saying connecting 

our alarm system at 12.14 am says the back two doors have been open ~ this happens had hoc and it’s hard to trace ~ Alarm company coming round on Monday to check there side 

dealer confused by this one and we are looking at taking the alarm off c4 and see what's t’s state on the morning if the alarm panel is showing these doors been active

doors have been taken off the bedtime alarm set  

@Gary Leeds UK - as a matter of interest, what make of alarm and what driver?

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34 minutes ago, South Africa C4 user said:

@Gary Leeds UK - as a matter of interest, what make of alarm and what driver?

Our Alarm is a Texecom Elite - IP Driver

Just checked our Notification on My Control and it Turns off at 12.14am and turns back on 12.14 am the last two days ( No issues with the Doors over the last two days)

Also just released with 3.1 the Alarm now works with Mockupancy Driver (Link with Security Panel)- This did not work under OS2 or OS3.0 - Could be a Red Herring

Its a interesting one 

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26 minutes ago, Gary Leeds UK said:

Our Alarm is a Texecom Elite - IP Driver

Just checked our Notification on My Control and it Turns off at 12.14am and turns back on 12.14 am the last two days ( No issues with the Doors over the last two days)

Also just released with 3.1 the Alarm now works with Mockupancy Driver (Link with Security Panel)- This did not work under OS2 or OS3.0 - Could be a Red Herring

Its a interesting one 

A bit weird. Not dissimilar to my alarm issues (but not fully the same).  I have a DSC, so if the issues are related, they are not a driver issue.  My problems started when my whole system started to struggle. I am hoping the CA10 will fix everything but am a bit worried that I will install it and all other issues will be fixed but the alarm problems will remain. Certainly hope not!

Lots of red herrings - me thinks!

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