Below is an UNEDITED DRAFT of a Control4 story that will appear in the Nov. issue of CE Pro. (If there are typos or other errors, those would have been corrected in the final version). this is running alongside stories about the latest developments from AMX and Crestron. Most dealers are agreeing that, if Control4 delivers on what it promises, it could be a darn good solution.
-julie
Control4 Unleashes Full Line of Standards-Based Controllers
The big secret is finally revealed. More than a year after the buzz began, Control4 unveiled its suite of control systems at the CEDIA Expo. Dealers were enthralled. More than 2,000 of them attended one of Control4’s four-hour training sessions. Thousands more flooded the company’s booth that anchored the second-floor exhibit hall.
And in the aftermath, the Control4 thread has been one of the most popular areas of installer-oriented bulletin boards. “These guys could really change the face of home automation for the masses if they don't screw up,” reads a typical post on avsforum.com, in this case by Brent Huskins of Media Design, an integrator based in Ft. Worth, Texas.
Ah, where to begin. Let’s start with price. Wireless light dimmers for as little as $99 retail. Web tablet/touchscreen controller starting at $2,000. Integrated home theater receiver and controller with 7.1-channel surround and 80 GB hard drive for less than $3,000.
Then there’s the issue of open standards, which Control4 embraces. All products—indeed all ports--in the ambitious product lineup are IP addressable—even the light switches. Furthermore, Control4 is apparently the first company to adopt IEEE 802.15.4 (Zigbee) for residential applications. Zigbee is an industry standard for low-cost, low-power, low-bandwidth wireless applications.
Extensibility is an exciting element, too. Each device on a Control4 network remains an integral component, no matter how large the system becomes. Customers can start out with one in-wall Mini Touch Screen controller, a few dimmers and thermostats to enjoy a fairly robust, completely wireless lighting and HVAC control system for as little as $1,000. Later, by utilizing the touchscreen’s Ethernet (or WiFi) connectivity, the touchscreen can be used to receive and deliver audio streams.
What is, perhaps, Control4’s most spectacular accomplishment is the sheer variety of products introduced in one fell swoop—an industry first. At the CEDIA Expo, Control4 introduced more than 20 classes of products including light switches, thermostats, touchscreens, keypads, surround-sound receivers, media servers, amplifiers, switchers, tuners, programming software—everything except for video-distribution, it seems (see box xxx). For this and other “gaps” in the Control4 line, the company has scores of drivers that make all of the popular subsystems readily compatible with Control4.
What is more, Control4 swears the products will ship this year. “We have shipped some product already,” says chief technology officer Eric Smith. “Some will ship in October but it is already spoken for. Everything in the booth will ship this year.”
That’s a tall order for a company founded only last year by Smith, Will West (CEO) and Mark Morgan (vice president of marketing). But the company has a $20 million purse, a storied history in the home automation space, and a wealth of former customers eager to give the team another chance.
Smith and West, after all, founded PHAST Corp. in 1995, delivering a unique (at the time) graphical environment for programming and controlling an automation system. PHAST was sold to AMX in 1997, and the founding twosome ran another venture before returning to the home-control business last year.
Andy Willcox, president of Chicago-based ProLine Integrated Systems, was a PHAST dealer and “definitely” a future customer of Control4. Although Willcox is happy with the Crestron and AMX systems ProLine currently installs, “Control4 offers a different approach,” he says. “They showed us a system that fundamentally functions quite well and offers some interesting spins on technology.”
One of those spins is the patent-pending EZID technology, which solves that nagging problem of plugging the right cable into the right I/O. Accompanying virtually every port on most components is an LED, which blinks during installation to indicate where the wire goes. Installers need not refer to complex wiring schematics to figure out if the lighting-control system plugs into serial port 1 or 2; no more squinting at tiny labels to locate the right relay—just look for the blinking light.
“I’ve never seen a product where you plug in one jack, and another port lights up so you know where to plug it in,” says Willcox. “It’s an installer’s dream.”
Another dream: RF control using industry-standard Zigbee. Zigbee is a two-way RF protocol that employs mesh networking, meaning each node on the network is a transmitter and receiver that amplifies and routes RF signals, ensuring prompt delivery to the intended device. The more devices on the network, the more robust the network.
Each device in the Control4 lineup (except the hardwired Ethernet light switch), is a Zigbee node, meaning they can be controlled by Control4’s Zigbee-compatible handheld remote, keypads and touchscreens. Since Zigbee is a two-way protocol, all of the controllers can receive (and respond to) realtime information from any other device on the Control4 network.
For example, CD information from the media server can be delivered to the four-line LCD on the universal remote, from which users can make their music selections.
For all its capabilities, the Control4 system remains relatively easy to configure and program, if the propaganda, hands-on demos and dealer testimonials are to be believed.
Control4 devices are automatically discovered upon startup, and the graphical user interface for the respective devices are generated automatically. Control4 even handles the pesky task of managing things like TV lineups. “We have programmers who constantly check the Dish Network channels,” says Smith. “If the lineup changes, they make the changes in our database, updating the customer’s touchscreen automatically. It happens all the time, where dealers have to make the changes manually after the customer complains.”
The entire product line and business philosophy for Control4 are far too complex to cover here. CE Pro will continue to report on the newcomer, with hopes that it will be the first full-line supplier of IP-based home controllers to succeed in the residential marketplace.
**** SIDEBAR ****
Control4 Product Highlights
Home Theater Controller – Entry-level unit ($599 retail) for robust home theater control and limited whole-house automation, three RCA jacks configurable as inputs or outputs (for whole-house distribution), video outputs for onscreen display, six IR ports, four video sense inputs, two looped outputs, one Ethernet and two USB ports (for external hard drive media storage), one serial port, one relay output, one contact input, Zigbee for communicating with any Control4 keypad, touchscreen or universal remote (included)
Home Theater Receiver Controller – 7.1 surround with amplification (100 watts D2Audio Digital per channel into 4 Ohms), eleven audio inputs, six video inputs, four video outputs (including VGA), 80 GB media server, AM/FM tuner with XM option, backlit front-panel display, Ethernet and Zigbee for communications and control, full suite of IR, contact, relay and serial connections for whole-house control
Media Controller – 80 GB music server, streaming up to five hard-drive music sources wirelessly or up to 10 over Ethernet, in adition to three analog outputs, home automation controller with full array of connection/communications options including IR, contact, relay, serial, WiFi, Ethernet, Zigbee
Speaker Point – Remote audio node with built-in 35-watt-per-channel digital amp, two configurable analog I/Os, Ethernet or WiFi for streaming audio, Zigbee for control (similar Audio Point product lacks amp)
System Remote Control – Bidirectional RF communication using Zigbee, backlit four-line LCD
Wireless Touch Screen – 10.5-inch TFT with 800x600 resolution (SVGA), microphone jack, built-in mic and speaker, 802.11b and Zigbee for wireless communications, preprogrammed to work right out of the box
Mini Touch Screen – Self-contained wireless control system, 3.5-inch active matrix 16-bit color LCD, jog dial and programmable hard button, built-in mic and speaker, RCA for analog out, RCA for audio in (tabletop version), Zigbee for communications, WiFi or Ethernet for streaming media
Wireless Dimmer – Zigbee RF compatible, customizable LED lights, controls incandescent/halogen, dimmable magnetic low-voltage and dimmable electronic low voltage (line also includes plug-in dimmers and switches)
Composer Software – Programming environment for professional integrators, drag-and-drop configuration, customizable templates, integrated media manager tied to Gracenote database, remote access, real-time updates (Navigator Software is user interface)
Other – Triple tuner including two AM/FM and optional XM satellite, 16 x 16 audio switch, 16-channel amp, wireless thermostat, wireless LCD keypad, wireless 3- and 6-button keypads, extenders (WiFi and Ethernet) for adding contacts, relays, RS232 and IR communications to remote locations
|
