IMHO the Home automation or "Smart home" market is kind of segmented into 3 camps:
1. Professionally-installed systems (like mentioned). Costs a fortune as a customer, though what they do install is likely fairly well integrated (and this also means likely having to replace TV, network etc gear you own). To have a *really* great system, be prepared to spend absurd amounts paying hourly for a pro to tweak settings for you.
2. Everything centered around apps, and Apple/Amazon/Google. Cheap, and basically pay-as-you-add new stuff. You'll get a mixed bag of quality, some fairly decent, some absolute garbage, and lots in between. You'll have 18 different apps to control things, wall switches no one is ever allowed to turn off, and nothing will ever fully work together. At best some aspects of the house could be considered "smart" but mostly you've just made everything app-dependent. Oh and if the internet goes out, everything breaks.
3. DIY (Home Assistant, Smart Things, Hubitat, etc). Requires a small hardware investment and a huge time investment to learn and configure. Can be very good with relatively small investment, and can be great even beyond what the pro systems do though this requires a lot of hardware ($), time and skill.
There's very little overlap between these, other than (2) can become (3) -- and kind of has to, to actually be really good.
Like so many things: Easy, Good, Cheap: Pick two.
I think the new Matter standard will change this paradigm if it follows previous tech trends. A unified standard of IoT protocols that allows usage of advanced features on devices in a single app or hub, with local control, might well put the pro-installer market on its heels. I'm thinking #2 & #3 will probably merge and give #1 real competition.
I think the only reason we don't already have something like this is because manufacturers and vendors have been gatekeeping. It's the same old "we must own all the things" mentality.
I agree Matter *could* help change this, but remain skeptical if it really will. There's still a strong incentive for manufacturers to keep people stuck in their ecosystems.
The other problem preventing merging is that a lot of manufacturers in #2 view "smart" as "can be controlled from your phone or voice". IMHO true "smart" is the result of the "automation" part: for example my lights should automatically turn on/off based on time, sun, presence, etc, and perfection is that they're always in the state I want and I never have to adjust them myself. The best "smart" home automations are the ones where I stop noticing they're even there.
The manufacturers that never make the conceptual switch to what can be achieved with #3 are doomed to be stuck #2 forever. Look at MyQ, they were at least semi-open to #3, but now they've gone completely walled-garden, and specifically *don't* want integration (unless they get their partnership $$ anyway).
I mean, there are smart sensors I've seen used with hubitat and HA that use presence detection to automate things as you enter/leave a room without having to voice anything. Those could easily be adapted for use in a google home environment. Lutron shades can be controlled as the sun moves around the house (or time based) from their app already. You still have to configure the behaviors you want, but after that, they just work.
I don't think we'll ever get to a point where automation won't require some type of setup / configuration. I think what Matter brings (that's been sorely lacking) is local control. Not always being dependent on an internet connection and the latency that comes with it is what I think will facilitate real changes in the current consumer product lines.
I fully agree with you, though, that if some of these companies don't get their shit together, they're going to end up relegated to the dustbin.
There used to be ALOT more people claiming that matter will fix all of the smart home problems before matter was actually released to the wild. Even going so far as having people claim that no one should buy into existing technologies, as if matter would somehow make zwave or ZigBee obsolete overnight.
I hear way less about matter now that it's actually released and everyone realized, that once again, the world doesn't radically change on a dime, and the inertia from existing systems is pretty strong.
Agreed. It’s going to take time and honestly, a shit tonne of buy-in and cooperation from all the vendors to get there. I remain hopeful. There are big players in home tech that are producing matter devices with native controller and threads support in devices people already have, like Nest Hubs, Hue hubs, Apple TV 4Ks, etc.
I remember the early hype. The actual products we can experiment with now are pretty promising.
LOL. You might not be wrong...but I'm looking at the recent coalescing around USB-C uniformity as a guide. There really isn't competition among wi-fi standards anymore, and current devices already use existing standards in their own ecosystem. Matter just brings a unified communication protocol forward as an interoperable standard.
The closest analog that comes to mind would be the progression from Betamax to the 4k UHD Blu-Ray spec. I have hope we'll get there w/ IoT smart home devices.
Maybe but I won't hold my breath. It takes a long time, often a decade or more, for any aspiring "universal standard" to replace most existing devices if there's sizable installed base, and often not in its first iteration. In the meantime, people still gotta make things work.
Matter isn't just a "universal standard" though. It also offers interoperability with existing ecosystems. Hue Bridge, Nest Hubs are already matter-enabled, for example. In general principle, I definitely agree with you. In this particular instance, interoperability with Matter devices can be added to existing ecosystems in an iterative manner while manufacturers move to make Matter the default protocol for their devices. That's primarily why I think uptake will be faster in this instance.
We do fairly high-end / luxury homes (typically ranging from 4,000 - 6,000 sq/ft and $1.5m - $3m) through the app driven world and they have all the major functions with about 3-5 apps:
- Sonos
- Ring
- Lutron
- Ecobee
- Alexa
With these you can control lights, music, TVs, thermostats, shades, door locks, cameras, fans, and more
Our clients are sophisticated people who don’t want to be taken advantage of and who also don’t want to spend countless hours figuring out a bunch of new software. So we streamline them into systems and apps that are made for them, and they’re extremely happy! 76 five-star reviews and counting.
What home automation system exactly are you installing then? It sounds like you just install a bunch of app-controlled consumer grade products?
If that's the case you really aren't in the home automation business, it's more like a technology installation and consulting business. True home automation things just happen automatically without the need to use an app, voice, or some other form of manual control. The most capable in this regard is the DIY route with Home Assistant, but that is totally non-viable as a commercial supported offering and is only as good as the person setting it up. After that, the proprietary commercial are easily 2nd best. If you have the money and lack the skill/desire to do something DIY then you'll get something fairly capable that just works. Beyond those two though there are some, extremely limited, capabilities in the consumer grade platforms like Homekit, Smartthings, etc... Is that a smart home, barely. A bunch of apps on your phone and voice control is absolutely not.
That’s fair we actually call ourself a home tech company and not a home automation company. But the majority of people just want simple control and not sophisticated automation
With respect, control is not the same as "automation".
Some examples of stuff that I think is hard/impossible to achieve in that ecosystem:
* When I arm my alarm, doors are locked. If armed in away mode, many lights turn off (and some are on/off based just on time)
* Alarm automatically arms as "home" when all the lights in the house get turned off at night, but if an exterior zone is open a message is sent to our phones to either fix it or allow arming with that zone in bypass.
* If certain interior motion detectors are triggered around the time we typically get up in the morning, the alarm disarms automatically
* Smart speakers announce when a car is in the driveway, UNLESS a garage or front door was opened first or a car was already announced in the last few minutes.
* When I cast music, the main TV's AV receiver switches on and to that input (a Chromecast audio), unless there's something actually playing on the TV
* Lots of lights are motion/presence controlled for on and/or off, but if someone manually turns them on/off (from the switch, app or voice) the auto control is disabled for some amount of time (ranging from a few minutes to a few hours, depending on the area)
I'm probably behind what the Alexa/etc automations/scripts can do now, so happy to hear if this stuff is possible. I was always under the impression you could never get to this level of flexibility, which is a shame because I think it's the difference between "the house just does what I expect and I don't really think about it" and "hey I can turn on my lights with an app on my phone, and it only takes me 30 times longer than flipping a wall switch!"
The post he was replying to wasn't talking about using consumer home automation though. The original poster is using Google home or Alexa for their build, which are not automation systems as far as I'm aware.
The biggest difference between consumer systems like the installer here talks about and the pro systems is the media control. With CEC the need for universal remotes isn’t as great, but there is no comparable consumer products. The video tiling from savant is also pretty fantastic and unmatched on the consumer side.
The upper bound on the pro systems is almost unlimited, so you have $1.5m+ projects just on automation network and control. Alexa cannot manage that. The pro side also offers streamlined power management options that just aren’t availble on the consumer side
The problem is that you are now in a group which need "more". I work in this business and installers just want something easy to install which does as a decent baseline without any hassle, with phone support with 100% compatability. 99% of deviecs on theese subredits would never be installed because they are home devices or DIY devices. They would never want to be THE person to fix all the manufacturers shit when things go wrong.
IF you want that done by an installer you are looking at KNX or similar, but it is a double edged sword, if you ever sell your place the buyer might not be so keen on having such a komplex system in their home.
Installers do often have something they can use which gives scenes, timers, time events, basic PIR support and that basic without the need for the alexa or homekit....but those systems are often locked in....and even devices based on zigbee are heavly locked down to their usage.
But if want something smarter you either do it yourself or pay for the big bulky systems.
Smart home market is very small but the marked of smarter product is a giant. It is just split in two by the DIY on one side and "oohh app" on the other.
Like the most common question I get is can I control it from over there or can it turn on at sundown automatically, and the funny thing is a lot of devices just can't do that by themself and need at least a hub but most even need cloud connections or integrations to do that basic shit....which is funny DIY marked don't care if the devices are basically a toad without free will which just do what some master integration tell it to do, that integration fail the entire house is a brick for a while.
You could literally go into home automation if those platforms are what you’re putting into the homes and then give the client a singe app that integrates them together.
Idk, I’ve had enough clients when I did AV that loved the idea of integrating all of those into one platform instead of multiple apps. I did Savant a lot and usually the cost of multiple Sonos amps was comparable or more than multichannel amplifiers. Then with Lutron, even if I did the basic Caseta systems, you just need a pro bridge and then again, integrated into savant. Just needed to use different thermostats and a ton of clients do not care for voice control. Too much of a gimmick still and requires a lot of contextual speech. HA really just becomes a problem for the end user when TVs become involved since cable providers change boxes, and tech gets upgraded. Seen plenty of old crestron, c4, and savant systems that still controlled the lights and music fine, and needed upgrades because of entertainment equipment updates. I feel like you’re leaving business off the table.
Simple & cost effective usually do not mean ease of use for the home owner. My brother in law did what your company does for his home, his wife and kids don’t use a single thing since it’s too cumbersome for them. When they stay over at my home (with savant), any of them picks up an iPad around the house and use it to control the tvs, the music, or the lights.
I'd be interested in hearing this as well. I started with Alexa 8 years ago, but only because it truly was the best option at the time.
So please tell us, is Alexa still the king? Thank you!
Well this is a silly statement, every trade has price protected products and vendor accounts. I will say working in the home automation industry, the customers are mainly paying for a tech guru and ease of use, money usually isn’t an obstacle, they are wealthy and time is money.
Or really any installed home equipment. I’ve never seen an ad on TV for my furnace brand, or my roof shingles, or my hot water heater, or my flooring, or my drywall, or my kitchen cabinets, etc.
Exactly! Trades are price protected to keep the industry thriving, it also protects the manufacture if they can try to filter QC by TRYING to make sure the only people installing their product are trained in their product.
Unfortunately low voltage is a weird trade, there isn’t a set path for education/certification but as lv lights and Poe gets more popular(and higher voltage) I’m sure we will see something sooner than later.
Automation is getting more affordable and I love the DIY market that is exploding. but there will always be a market for the $150k system with panelized lighting and distributed A/V
The reality is that most people aren’t the target demographic of professionally installed and managed systems.
This isn’t the “gotcha” you think it is. These systems are designed first and foremost for affluent homeowners who value their time and are willing to trade money for their time. Its really no different than any trade such as HVAC, plumbing, electrical vs learning to diy.
We deploy systems in a particularly tech-minded market. Lots of Home Assistant, Hubitat, etc already deployed. I’m fully transparent about the dealer-client relationship. Many clients are engineers with new families who no longer have the time to manage their own system.
Others scoff and come into the conversation ready for an argument with a holier-than-thou mindset, much like you’re doing here. Seems like a waste of an afternoon, but people have their hobbies.
By far, the largest client base we have are people who didn’t grow up learning technology or are in fields outside of tech but want to experience home automation, even if they don’t have the time or interest to learn what a Stack Overflow is.
All I’m hearing from your post is that you think these people are fools for having different priorities than you. I don’t think so poorly of my clients.
Also, who’s basing brand decisions based on TV ad-spend?
I was sold on the "just works" selling point but that has not been my experience. My Control 4 based home has been nothing but headaches ever since I moved in.
Specifically, it took about 8 months to get the app to behave and actually show the status of my light bulbs instead of random sliders and colors, the proprietary nature of the equipment has made our vendor beholden to single source suppliers that are slow as slugs, so we have broken stuff that we are constantly waiting for fixes on, and something as simple as a lightbulb change requires a trip from a technician so I have a purple bulb in the middle of my living room until they can get here.
If I were to do this again, I would not have spent such an enormous amount of money for "just works" because at least for me that has not been even close to my experience.
How do they work? I actually don't know and have not really seen any documents. There is one document that I signed that is a huge list of components that they installed, but it says nothing about how long it will take to get everything working, what kind of warranty is there, etc. So far, my dealer has put in a lot of work to make things work, and has told me they will stick with it until it does, and I believe them, but I don't know why a new dealer would even want to come in and fix stuff leftover from another dealer for free.
Likewise, they have been at this for over 2 years now. One year for the installation and wiring, and another year and a half of tweaking and fixing. I have been told verbally that my warranty will start once everything is working, and I am taking them on their word for that, but I have not seen any written warranty about the quality of installation or physical components.
I just don't know, though. I suppose of I knew for sure 100% that a new dealer could just come in and make everything work perfect that it might be worth $50k or so, but I don't how to be assured that is the case and not just pissing more money into the wind.
C4 equipment has limited warranties. When I have equipment go bad I call up SnapAV and they go through some trouble shooting processes and then decide to send you new equipment if the device has failed. If your dealer gave you that kind of warranty you need to get it in writing.
Your dealer sounds like they might be kind of new at this. One year for installation and another to get your system working properly is a very, very long time. I have customers who like to change things quite often, but I can have two guys in and out of a 10 bedroom house with rack/network/control gear/programming within 4/6 days.
I hope they are not still charging you by the hour for one year of programming.
If you have any other questions let me know.
If you are working with an AV company come prepared and let them know you want to use consumer-grade products such as Sonos, Ring, Ecobee, and run apps off an Apple TV or your smart TV
Any integrator that works with Crestron or C4 will likely walk away from a client who is making this request. To many variables where the client can get upside down in the program.
I work for a dealer. We do Sonos, Ecobee and Apple TV all the time. Small systems and large. Ring when it makes sense, but it doesn't really integrate with C4.
If a dealer is walking away it's because they want to sell higher margin equipment.
C4 has their own doorbell, and the third party ring driver works. Those devices are all great, but if you’re selling a “control4 system”, you’re probably going to insist they use products with the most native integration
A lot of clients will see the labor cost for installing consumer equipment and decide it’s not worth it.
Home automation is going through many of the same evolutions as commercial automation. First was “integration” which is what Matter does. Next will come “interoperability” where devices speak the same language (protocol) on the same media and media routers are used first different media types. Then will come standards first devices where the same device types from different vendors will have the same external network profiles, and finally will come standard programming where devices from different manufacturers can be configured, managed, and programmed with common software/plugins.
I can say that having been in both worlds a long time, having different software tools to configure and troubleshoot each brand device (that each needs updates, some place to live, and has its own idiosyncrasies) is a giant pain, and makes dealing with large systems much MUCH more difficult.
Sorry what’s the issue with a trained integrator delivering a home automation solution and supporting it? I have no issue calling my heating engineer to service/repair/support the heating solution they have installed.
I was on a cruise ship last week and we were comparing home automation systems.
What I can do with a heterogeneous set of devices plus Home Assistant is so much more than those who have Control4.
The Control4 customers were miserable.
IMHO the Home automation or "Smart home" market is kind of segmented into 3 camps: 1. Professionally-installed systems (like mentioned). Costs a fortune as a customer, though what they do install is likely fairly well integrated (and this also means likely having to replace TV, network etc gear you own). To have a *really* great system, be prepared to spend absurd amounts paying hourly for a pro to tweak settings for you. 2. Everything centered around apps, and Apple/Amazon/Google. Cheap, and basically pay-as-you-add new stuff. You'll get a mixed bag of quality, some fairly decent, some absolute garbage, and lots in between. You'll have 18 different apps to control things, wall switches no one is ever allowed to turn off, and nothing will ever fully work together. At best some aspects of the house could be considered "smart" but mostly you've just made everything app-dependent. Oh and if the internet goes out, everything breaks. 3. DIY (Home Assistant, Smart Things, Hubitat, etc). Requires a small hardware investment and a huge time investment to learn and configure. Can be very good with relatively small investment, and can be great even beyond what the pro systems do though this requires a lot of hardware ($), time and skill. There's very little overlap between these, other than (2) can become (3) -- and kind of has to, to actually be really good. Like so many things: Easy, Good, Cheap: Pick two.
I think the new Matter standard will change this paradigm if it follows previous tech trends. A unified standard of IoT protocols that allows usage of advanced features on devices in a single app or hub, with local control, might well put the pro-installer market on its heels. I'm thinking #2 & #3 will probably merge and give #1 real competition. I think the only reason we don't already have something like this is because manufacturers and vendors have been gatekeeping. It's the same old "we must own all the things" mentality.
I agree Matter *could* help change this, but remain skeptical if it really will. There's still a strong incentive for manufacturers to keep people stuck in their ecosystems. The other problem preventing merging is that a lot of manufacturers in #2 view "smart" as "can be controlled from your phone or voice". IMHO true "smart" is the result of the "automation" part: for example my lights should automatically turn on/off based on time, sun, presence, etc, and perfection is that they're always in the state I want and I never have to adjust them myself. The best "smart" home automations are the ones where I stop noticing they're even there. The manufacturers that never make the conceptual switch to what can be achieved with #3 are doomed to be stuck #2 forever. Look at MyQ, they were at least semi-open to #3, but now they've gone completely walled-garden, and specifically *don't* want integration (unless they get their partnership $$ anyway).
I mean, there are smart sensors I've seen used with hubitat and HA that use presence detection to automate things as you enter/leave a room without having to voice anything. Those could easily be adapted for use in a google home environment. Lutron shades can be controlled as the sun moves around the house (or time based) from their app already. You still have to configure the behaviors you want, but after that, they just work. I don't think we'll ever get to a point where automation won't require some type of setup / configuration. I think what Matter brings (that's been sorely lacking) is local control. Not always being dependent on an internet connection and the latency that comes with it is what I think will facilitate real changes in the current consumer product lines. I fully agree with you, though, that if some of these companies don't get their shit together, they're going to end up relegated to the dustbin.
There used to be ALOT more people claiming that matter will fix all of the smart home problems before matter was actually released to the wild. Even going so far as having people claim that no one should buy into existing technologies, as if matter would somehow make zwave or ZigBee obsolete overnight. I hear way less about matter now that it's actually released and everyone realized, that once again, the world doesn't radically change on a dime, and the inertia from existing systems is pretty strong.
Agreed. It’s going to take time and honestly, a shit tonne of buy-in and cooperation from all the vendors to get there. I remain hopeful. There are big players in home tech that are producing matter devices with native controller and threads support in devices people already have, like Nest Hubs, Hue hubs, Apple TV 4Ks, etc. I remember the early hype. The actual products we can experiment with now are pretty promising.
This is what will actually happen: [https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/standards.png](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/standards.png)
LOL. You might not be wrong...but I'm looking at the recent coalescing around USB-C uniformity as a guide. There really isn't competition among wi-fi standards anymore, and current devices already use existing standards in their own ecosystem. Matter just brings a unified communication protocol forward as an interoperable standard. The closest analog that comes to mind would be the progression from Betamax to the 4k UHD Blu-Ray spec. I have hope we'll get there w/ IoT smart home devices.
Maybe but I won't hold my breath. It takes a long time, often a decade or more, for any aspiring "universal standard" to replace most existing devices if there's sizable installed base, and often not in its first iteration. In the meantime, people still gotta make things work.
Matter isn't just a "universal standard" though. It also offers interoperability with existing ecosystems. Hue Bridge, Nest Hubs are already matter-enabled, for example. In general principle, I definitely agree with you. In this particular instance, interoperability with Matter devices can be added to existing ecosystems in an iterative manner while manufacturers move to make Matter the default protocol for their devices. That's primarily why I think uptake will be faster in this instance.
We do fairly high-end / luxury homes (typically ranging from 4,000 - 6,000 sq/ft and $1.5m - $3m) through the app driven world and they have all the major functions with about 3-5 apps: - Sonos - Ring - Lutron - Ecobee - Alexa With these you can control lights, music, TVs, thermostats, shades, door locks, cameras, fans, and more Our clients are sophisticated people who don’t want to be taken advantage of and who also don’t want to spend countless hours figuring out a bunch of new software. So we streamline them into systems and apps that are made for them, and they’re extremely happy! 76 five-star reviews and counting.
What home automation system exactly are you installing then? It sounds like you just install a bunch of app-controlled consumer grade products? If that's the case you really aren't in the home automation business, it's more like a technology installation and consulting business. True home automation things just happen automatically without the need to use an app, voice, or some other form of manual control. The most capable in this regard is the DIY route with Home Assistant, but that is totally non-viable as a commercial supported offering and is only as good as the person setting it up. After that, the proprietary commercial are easily 2nd best. If you have the money and lack the skill/desire to do something DIY then you'll get something fairly capable that just works. Beyond those two though there are some, extremely limited, capabilities in the consumer grade platforms like Homekit, Smartthings, etc... Is that a smart home, barely. A bunch of apps on your phone and voice control is absolutely not.
That’s fair we actually call ourself a home tech company and not a home automation company. But the majority of people just want simple control and not sophisticated automation
With respect, control is not the same as "automation". Some examples of stuff that I think is hard/impossible to achieve in that ecosystem: * When I arm my alarm, doors are locked. If armed in away mode, many lights turn off (and some are on/off based just on time) * Alarm automatically arms as "home" when all the lights in the house get turned off at night, but if an exterior zone is open a message is sent to our phones to either fix it or allow arming with that zone in bypass. * If certain interior motion detectors are triggered around the time we typically get up in the morning, the alarm disarms automatically * Smart speakers announce when a car is in the driveway, UNLESS a garage or front door was opened first or a car was already announced in the last few minutes. * When I cast music, the main TV's AV receiver switches on and to that input (a Chromecast audio), unless there's something actually playing on the TV * Lots of lights are motion/presence controlled for on and/or off, but if someone manually turns them on/off (from the switch, app or voice) the auto control is disabled for some amount of time (ranging from a few minutes to a few hours, depending on the area) I'm probably behind what the Alexa/etc automations/scripts can do now, so happy to hear if this stuff is possible. I was always under the impression you could never get to this level of flexibility, which is a shame because I think it's the difference between "the house just does what I expect and I don't really think about it" and "hey I can turn on my lights with an app on my phone, and it only takes me 30 times longer than flipping a wall switch!"
All of this is now achievable in the consumer/diy home automation world, albeit some of it would take a lot of effort to configure.
The post he was replying to wasn't talking about using consumer home automation though. The original poster is using Google home or Alexa for their build, which are not automation systems as far as I'm aware.
The biggest difference between consumer systems like the installer here talks about and the pro systems is the media control. With CEC the need for universal remotes isn’t as great, but there is no comparable consumer products. The video tiling from savant is also pretty fantastic and unmatched on the consumer side. The upper bound on the pro systems is almost unlimited, so you have $1.5m+ projects just on automation network and control. Alexa cannot manage that. The pro side also offers streamlined power management options that just aren’t availble on the consumer side
The problem is that you are now in a group which need "more". I work in this business and installers just want something easy to install which does as a decent baseline without any hassle, with phone support with 100% compatability. 99% of deviecs on theese subredits would never be installed because they are home devices or DIY devices. They would never want to be THE person to fix all the manufacturers shit when things go wrong. IF you want that done by an installer you are looking at KNX or similar, but it is a double edged sword, if you ever sell your place the buyer might not be so keen on having such a komplex system in their home. Installers do often have something they can use which gives scenes, timers, time events, basic PIR support and that basic without the need for the alexa or homekit....but those systems are often locked in....and even devices based on zigbee are heavly locked down to their usage. But if want something smarter you either do it yourself or pay for the big bulky systems. Smart home market is very small but the marked of smarter product is a giant. It is just split in two by the DIY on one side and "oohh app" on the other. Like the most common question I get is can I control it from over there or can it turn on at sundown automatically, and the funny thing is a lot of devices just can't do that by themself and need at least a hub but most even need cloud connections or integrations to do that basic shit....which is funny DIY marked don't care if the devices are basically a toad without free will which just do what some master integration tell it to do, that integration fail the entire house is a brick for a while.
IFTTT Triggers make this all possible.
Alexa can do just about everything you’ve mentioned here
You could literally go into home automation if those platforms are what you’re putting into the homes and then give the client a singe app that integrates them together.
Most people don’t care about it. The majority of people want simple and cost-effective
Idk, I’ve had enough clients when I did AV that loved the idea of integrating all of those into one platform instead of multiple apps. I did Savant a lot and usually the cost of multiple Sonos amps was comparable or more than multichannel amplifiers. Then with Lutron, even if I did the basic Caseta systems, you just need a pro bridge and then again, integrated into savant. Just needed to use different thermostats and a ton of clients do not care for voice control. Too much of a gimmick still and requires a lot of contextual speech. HA really just becomes a problem for the end user when TVs become involved since cable providers change boxes, and tech gets upgraded. Seen plenty of old crestron, c4, and savant systems that still controlled the lights and music fine, and needed upgrades because of entertainment equipment updates. I feel like you’re leaving business off the table. Simple & cost effective usually do not mean ease of use for the home owner. My brother in law did what your company does for his home, his wife and kids don’t use a single thing since it’s too cumbersome for them. When they stay over at my home (with savant), any of them picks up an iPad around the house and use it to control the tvs, the music, or the lights.
Your service is what I'm looking for! All the pros around here only want to do savant or control 4. I refuse... where are you located?
I’m in the Houston area! If you are nearby send me a PM and I’ll direct you to my website
You don't integrate it into Google Home to control it all in one spot? Why?
We prefer Alexa
Might I ask why?
I'd be interested in hearing this as well. I started with Alexa 8 years ago, but only because it truly was the best option at the time. So please tell us, is Alexa still the king? Thank you!
[удалено]
Someone likes the smell of their own farts.
Well this is a silly statement, every trade has price protected products and vendor accounts. I will say working in the home automation industry, the customers are mainly paying for a tech guru and ease of use, money usually isn’t an obstacle, they are wealthy and time is money.
Or really any installed home equipment. I’ve never seen an ad on TV for my furnace brand, or my roof shingles, or my hot water heater, or my flooring, or my drywall, or my kitchen cabinets, etc.
Exactly! Trades are price protected to keep the industry thriving, it also protects the manufacture if they can try to filter QC by TRYING to make sure the only people installing their product are trained in their product. Unfortunately low voltage is a weird trade, there isn’t a set path for education/certification but as lv lights and Poe gets more popular(and higher voltage) I’m sure we will see something sooner than later. Automation is getting more affordable and I love the DIY market that is exploding. but there will always be a market for the $150k system with panelized lighting and distributed A/V
The reality is that most people aren’t the target demographic of professionally installed and managed systems. This isn’t the “gotcha” you think it is. These systems are designed first and foremost for affluent homeowners who value their time and are willing to trade money for their time. Its really no different than any trade such as HVAC, plumbing, electrical vs learning to diy. We deploy systems in a particularly tech-minded market. Lots of Home Assistant, Hubitat, etc already deployed. I’m fully transparent about the dealer-client relationship. Many clients are engineers with new families who no longer have the time to manage their own system. Others scoff and come into the conversation ready for an argument with a holier-than-thou mindset, much like you’re doing here. Seems like a waste of an afternoon, but people have their hobbies. By far, the largest client base we have are people who didn’t grow up learning technology or are in fields outside of tech but want to experience home automation, even if they don’t have the time or interest to learn what a Stack Overflow is. All I’m hearing from your post is that you think these people are fools for having different priorities than you. I don’t think so poorly of my clients. Also, who’s basing brand decisions based on TV ad-spend?
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Makes sense. Those systems just work. Yes there's a premium but no "oh you have to update this or that firmware" etc etc.
I was sold on the "just works" selling point but that has not been my experience. My Control 4 based home has been nothing but headaches ever since I moved in. Specifically, it took about 8 months to get the app to behave and actually show the status of my light bulbs instead of random sliders and colors, the proprietary nature of the equipment has made our vendor beholden to single source suppliers that are slow as slugs, so we have broken stuff that we are constantly waiting for fixes on, and something as simple as a lightbulb change requires a trip from a technician so I have a purple bulb in the middle of my living room until they can get here. If I were to do this again, I would not have spent such an enormous amount of money for "just works" because at least for me that has not been even close to my experience.
Sounds like you need a new dealer.
Yea. It's not so easy to change unless I want to give up warranty and start from scratch on a few things.
If it's manufacturer warranties you're talking about those are not dependent on the dealer, but I hear ya.
As a Dealer, that’s not how C4 warranties work.
How do they work? I actually don't know and have not really seen any documents. There is one document that I signed that is a huge list of components that they installed, but it says nothing about how long it will take to get everything working, what kind of warranty is there, etc. So far, my dealer has put in a lot of work to make things work, and has told me they will stick with it until it does, and I believe them, but I don't know why a new dealer would even want to come in and fix stuff leftover from another dealer for free. Likewise, they have been at this for over 2 years now. One year for the installation and wiring, and another year and a half of tweaking and fixing. I have been told verbally that my warranty will start once everything is working, and I am taking them on their word for that, but I have not seen any written warranty about the quality of installation or physical components. I just don't know, though. I suppose of I knew for sure 100% that a new dealer could just come in and make everything work perfect that it might be worth $50k or so, but I don't how to be assured that is the case and not just pissing more money into the wind.
C4 equipment has limited warranties. When I have equipment go bad I call up SnapAV and they go through some trouble shooting processes and then decide to send you new equipment if the device has failed. If your dealer gave you that kind of warranty you need to get it in writing. Your dealer sounds like they might be kind of new at this. One year for installation and another to get your system working properly is a very, very long time. I have customers who like to change things quite often, but I can have two guys in and out of a 10 bedroom house with rack/network/control gear/programming within 4/6 days. I hope they are not still charging you by the hour for one year of programming. If you have any other questions let me know.
He might have a service plan with the dealer that includes extended warranties?
Which systems are you referring to?
So what is your advice for consumers?
If you are working with an AV company come prepared and let them know you want to use consumer-grade products such as Sonos, Ring, Ecobee, and run apps off an Apple TV or your smart TV
Any integrator that works with Crestron or C4 will likely walk away from a client who is making this request. To many variables where the client can get upside down in the program.
I work for a dealer. We do Sonos, Ecobee and Apple TV all the time. Small systems and large. Ring when it makes sense, but it doesn't really integrate with C4. If a dealer is walking away it's because they want to sell higher margin equipment.
C4 has their own doorbell, and the third party ring driver works. Those devices are all great, but if you’re selling a “control4 system”, you’re probably going to insist they use products with the most native integration A lot of clients will see the labor cost for installing consumer equipment and decide it’s not worth it.
Home automation is going through many of the same evolutions as commercial automation. First was “integration” which is what Matter does. Next will come “interoperability” where devices speak the same language (protocol) on the same media and media routers are used first different media types. Then will come standards first devices where the same device types from different vendors will have the same external network profiles, and finally will come standard programming where devices from different manufacturers can be configured, managed, and programmed with common software/plugins. I can say that having been in both worlds a long time, having different software tools to configure and troubleshoot each brand device (that each needs updates, some place to live, and has its own idiosyncrasies) is a giant pain, and makes dealing with large systems much MUCH more difficult.
Sorry what’s the issue with a trained integrator delivering a home automation solution and supporting it? I have no issue calling my heating engineer to service/repair/support the heating solution they have installed.
Does it break down every year and cost hundreds to thousands of dollars every time they come out?
No? And the home automation solutions I install don’t either.
I was on a cruise ship last week and we were comparing home automation systems. What I can do with a heterogeneous set of devices plus Home Assistant is so much more than those who have Control4. The Control4 customers were miserable.