JBJ,

You ask some good questions and make some good points. If I have time, I'll address them. For now:

1. I'm simply suggesting you should have someone on staff that can program. That does not preclude subcontracting programming out but you should never be completely dependent on an outside programmer.

2. You are correct, you should never have a single point of failure. That doesn't negate the point I made earlier and I think just about every person who has a lot of experience with these types of systems will back me up on this. I've seen lighting systems from the major manufacturers go down. And yes, you can encounter problems EVEN if you go the "light switch in each room route", because you can sometimes have a device on the network go down and pollute the network. In those instance, it's critical you have someone on staff that knows how to hook up a PC to the system and get rocking.