I actually agree with Presenium. I only used Key Digital as an example of major companies starting to put real $$ against the concept of whole house control and including audio/visual in the control. I have an HAI OmniPro II that is getting a little long in the tooth. The decision I am really mulling is whether I can wait to see if the Levitron/HAI combination will provide enough funding to let them expand the capabilities of their product line or whether to head in the direction of the Crestor style system. Reprogramming the remote only buys me some time to see where the industry falls out.
When I built the house I was unsure which way the industry would move so I ran 6 RGU6 and 4 Cat 6 cables to every A/V panel in the wall. Wiring is very cheap in a new/custom build relative to pulling wires if the standard moves against you. I thought the 2 cat6 cables would be able to run HDMI eventually through the use of plenums. The industry seemed to be heading that way.
The cat6 cables are all terminated at a Cat 6 patch panel and through the use of patch cables I connect them either to their dedicated device or the 2 1GB switches that run the house. This house is not by any means standard due to the nature of the work I do so I have many options and am not hampered by most of the issues you folks would be dealing with retail clients. I have very little internet or lan connectivity issues as I use both a land line (uVerse) circuit into the house and a Clear wireless connection, multiplexed into the primary switchhes.
On the reverse engineering effort, I have everything on the switching side working. This wasn't too bad as I was able to reuse everything previously done by using the same ports. In its current config, I can select the uVerse DVRs and control the volume through the MX900, then use my iPad to control the channels. I am getting closer to resolunquiries. The installer didn't use any of the advanced capabilites such as the voltage sensing as it wasn't really required for the system. The only thing left is to figure out if it would be easier to install the IR codes in the device pages left from the Mediacom configuration or adding 2 new device pages and going back and reprogramming all his macros in the MSC 400.
I am getting closer to resolution, while I wait for the 3 companies I got off the URC locator to return my inquiries. The previous reply about how to clone the remotes is correct. I requested they be made clones before the programming was accomplished for exactly the reason discussed. I don't know about many of you but the ability of my wife to not have to keep track of which remote she is using based on room was definately worth the $$ I spent. I had a very good relationship with vendor and we agreed to pay by the hour vs requiring him to eat the risk of a fixed proice job for the programming. It worked very well, probably cost a little more but it did exactly what I wanted including the creation of clone remotes.
I will tackle that after I take my lovely wife and 4 grandchildren, (3 in the 3 year old range, and 1 almost a year) out to brunch.
Relative to your Rasberry Pi comment, I thought of it, my son in law has one and thought it would be a pain in the butt to build in the 8+ IR ports and xx number of serial connections to replace the MSC 400. A solution where I can let the hardware builders work the signalling out is worth the time, plus the MSC400 is doing a fine job of handling the switching to get proper devoce to route proer signals to the proper location and if I can buy time to see where industry is going that would be good. I would rather give this work to someone local to help keep my local installers in business and let me get on to what I do well, architecting large scale network based financial services platforms. Athough.... I am going to Europe for 2 weeks starting next week so I may pick one up and rethink the control issue for fun. Sitting in a hotel for 2 weeks is incredibly boring and I may just see what I can do.
