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I’ve been in the business for sixteen years and can’t say I agree with you. On several points. You hellothere is no real standard. I call :censored:. There are a number of standard communication protocols. RS232, TCP/IP, IR, ZigBee/ZWave/802.15.4, hell, even analog and digital GPIO, relays, etc. The holy grail is a single API that translates between them and that ain’t gonna happen anytime soon.
Pricier systems are boardroom systems scaled up? Maybe if you’re looking at small AV centric rigs. I’ve worked on $60M homes with $3M budgeted to the AV and stems integration and it doesn’t even remotely resemble board room controls. Resi and commercial are two very different animals.
Vendors are oblivious to each other? Oh, hell no they aren’t. They watch each other like hawks and often times work together.
Savants new line is a fresh approach? No. It’s modeled after the IR blaster systems that were abandoned by our industry ten years ago. Their new stuff is a joke. I say that as a fellow Savant dealer. Further, is say Savant is a solid control platform and a piss poor automation system.
Lastly, IP, MAC address, whatever. On the LAN, it’s just a layer 2/layer 3 issue. That doesn’t equal different standards. They’re both on the OSI model.
Not trying to be a jerk. I will say that the current crop of DIY gear is a mess. I wouldn’t invest heavily in any of them. I’d stick with solid vendors for individual subsystems and layer control/automation over the top.
Maybe you are saying this more succinctly than I did but we agree pretty much on everything you say,except that the most AV based systems I know of that offer full integration are indeed just Boardroom systems gone sideways.
There is almost no difference between Residential and Commercial systems outside of the size and scale of the system.
I have also been at this since before this was being done and while I agree that there are several companies in many different standards there has yet to be any real unified,affordable,reliable and open ended or practical way to put it all together that is truly universal.Companies profess to want to work together but then that always goes sideways too to various reasons,if you think this Lutron/Savant thing is going to be a long term viable thing I am sorry but I am tired of trying to accept that anything can ever happen between the different ideas and ethos of companies involved in the game of unifying these ideas long term.
I think Savant at least has an eye to making this approachable and affordable but they are also one of the worst companies to have to deal with that I have ever known.
Yes the new system is a glorified Harmony essentially but I also have a lot of Harmony stuff out there and people seem to love the stuff and it is available to almost any budget though it is hardly a robust solution at the same time.
It is what it is and our job has always been to try to extend things beyond what they can do and like it which can lead to issues at every turn.In the end it is up to the integrator to try to kluge this stuff together and then pretend we think that it will last.
I do think the real fun in all of this is at the bottom end of the market where people can play around and try to merge this stuff into something that will work and endure but 35 years of experience has shown me it is not that practical just yet.
I have to fly across the country next week to service a system that is less than 5 years old that the manufacturer “no longer supports” and try to make it work again with parts I had to source from Ebay?!?
This is a middle 6 figure system that is not supported any more? they actually told me I would need to do a massive upgrade just to get back into the support zone and the client would also lose some favorite features as they have now retired them as well.
They would not even tap about it with me as the OS is not even supported anymore and I am just left pout in the cold……again,on my own to come up with a fix.
I always do and have confidence that I will but come on?Another client got a new Directv receiver when his old one died recently and again they changed the control scheme required to address it from his huge system.
In short he seems to need a 6 thousand dollar upgrade if he wants to be able to change channels on his Sat. like he could before?
How can I possibly try to sell that?
Back to IR for that one….oh wait he needs more IR ports now and of course another upgrade.Of course this is what I do and the client knows going in that this game is not for the faint of heart or pocket book but where does it make any sense?
This crap illustrates the general trend that I am seeing the more upscale we go trying to provide a solution,selling the client but then ending up at the mercy of manufacturers who can no longer build products that will last or remain relevant no matter high crazy much they cost.
It is driving me crazy!
Driving you crazy? Yeah, I get that. I’m focused on gathering a bunch of acronyms after my name (certs) in 2016 and getting the hell out of this silly industry.
Also, you’re my new best friend. I, too, despise Savant. Worst support model in the industry, stupid decision making (note that they released their garbage Wi-Fi lighting controls on April Fools day) and the arrogance.
Yeah I only brought them up because of Rosie which someone else eluded too.
Who they by the way KILLED in an attempt to become a Hipster Upscale even more arrogant bunch than they already were!They actually told me to let them know if I can get it working right after telling me they would not help me with the system?
I can’t even find documentation on the part I need anymore,when they stop support they really stop support.How is that helping anyone?
I actually had to remove and eat a dozen touch screens I had installed weeks before the iPad was released yet I still did not learn evidently?
Merry Xmas!
I bought into the Nest product line after buying some of the Belkin Wemo lights. It’s nice etc, but all of the criticisms are valid. Unless you really plan everything out you’ll have multiple apps and what not to deal with. The Belkin stuff will randomly stop working and it takes some tinkering to get it back. Not often but maybe once to twice a month.
I needed to replace a wired smoke detector, wanted to have better control over the thermostat and wanted automated lights to make it more difficult to tell when we were home or away. So I really didn’t have a big list of stuff I wanted to do.
My philosophy regarding automation in the home is to avoid it. I once invested in a system and it became obsolete so quickly that I couldn’t have it serviced when it malfunctioned because the components to effect the repairs were no longer made! Now I keep my home as simple as possible. No reliance on micro-miniature-soldered components on RoHs-compliant PCBs assembled in ESD-safe environments then compliance-tested with metrology-grade precision devices.
Nope, never again.
I don’t know what I just stated in that 4th sentence above but it sounds really technical.:rofl:
Same here. For some reason, the home automation stuff I’ve played with doesn’t like being air gapped from anything that can hit the internet.
I can’t understand why a thermostat or a lightbulb needs internet access. At all.
In all seriousness, I’m not paying to give more information to advertisers.
I’ve thought about replacing the thermostats, but that’s because they’re freaking stupid….you can set temperature ranges, but you can’t have it change which system (heat, cold, or circulate only) is active based on the temperature. Because Honeywell UX engineers are bad at their jobs.
I also thought I’d use alarm.com, but I don’t. The big use case is disarming if you forgot to set the entry delay or something….but it’s a LOT easier to just set the alarm off.
I also used some little PoE IC controllers for an academic project a few years ago. I don’t remember which protocol it was, but it was freaking stupid.
Apparently, they wanted it to be easy for amateurs to debug in a packet sniffer…but it didn’t react correctly to filters and cluttered up everything because all control and status messages went to the broadcast address with separate layer 7 routing in the data section of the packets…because that makes sense.
So, yeah…I’m not a fan.
In town they are building some new homes with low voltage lighting. So easy to hook that up to a alarm panel with low voltage relays. I did that for years. too bad it is so difficult for systems for existing homes these days.
SmartThings (samsung bought em and it supports all sorts of sensors and such)
Nest/Honeywell thermostat
Belkin Wemo line
Chamberlain MyQ for garage door (theyve got stuff for lights too but i prefer the belkins)
August/Schlage for smart locks (lockitron is nice but it’s still not out on the market yet)Interesting to see the issues the pro installers are experiencing here. I installed an automation system in my (new build) house back in 2002/3. It’s a combination of an alarm system (Comfort) and, what was at the time a freeware but not open software application (Xlobby) plus X10 modules. Plus a fair bit of home rolled software elements. It’s worked solidly since and I really haven’t had to do much with it except replace one X10 unit that died. It integrates alarm status, door entry control, remote call out, lighting, multiroom audio and other house control systems (temperature monitoring).
All the software is well out of support and running on XP. Comfort has moved onto a new hardware version, Xlobby got bought up and is no longer a consumer platform (it may have gone away completely) and X10 was pretty long in the tooth even in 2002. But it all works, at least the core automation side is very solid although the audio side is now slow and flakey. Additionally, it’s not really possible to present it as a good web-based or tablet app based interface.
I’ve kept an eye on the market in the hope there would be an alignment on integrated standards for operability of different manufacturers’ hardware and software platforms to allow customisation of such. So far I’ve not seen anything that’s really made me want to make the switch for so many of the support reasons noted in earlier posts. Seems astonishing and really quite concerning. Hardly the “internet of things”. Which then takes me to a further place. I’m simply not interested in any control system that puts my automation, monitoring and information in someone else’s cloud platform where they can monitor what I’m doing and use that information for their commercial data mining and lock-in purposes. I want a solution that absolutely under my complete control!
So at the present time, I’ve no real plans to change the automation side. I will be changing the audio and splitting this off. I was thinking about Sonos there but I’, mot happy with GBP300 for each zone controller (x6…). Crazy pricing there, it’s as expensive as their individual room solutions which I don’t need as I have a fully wired multi-room amp and speaker system! However, I may have found a solution there that’s awaiting a trial installation.
Amazing how things haven’t moved on in 15 years in this space.
when I got out of the Alarm business back in 2006, Honeywell had bought Ademco. wonder if they integrated their panels for more home automation?
I have an ecobee thermostat that is fully programmable, controls everything including air conditioning and is “smart” enough to learn our schedule. Wifi enabled, controlled from my iPhone etc… My friend won it and did not want it, sold to me for 80$ but I know it was a 220$ value. Great system, would recommend.
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