On the iPad/iPhone an App can directly call the Sonos App and a swipe or touch can go back to the App. Note that, while using the Sonos App, the Sonos Volume Control will rule. You can use the hard buttons for your own Volume Control in your App.

Some years back Crestron paid to have marketing consultants give their take on the future of our business. Their advice: don't sell products and don't sell automation systems alone. Develop your own take on automation, picking and choosing solutions that differentiate what your company offers from what those selling off-the-shelf solutions crafted for you.

As a GUI developer pointed out, there is less of a market for custom GUIs. What is offered by the manufacturer and customized by individual programmers suffices. On residential projects I will occasionally get requests or complaints but NEVER on commercial projects. No one cares about font types or button shapes. They want a system that work and that systems tend to be standardized. It is a dsp, codec and some number of presentation sources. The key challenge is to get non consumer sources ( laptops and PCs ) on displays using a consumer based mechanism ( HDMI ). It is true that HDMI/DVI inputs and there are MOCA mechanism to send recordings to other TVs. But these are compromised solutions that do seem to be enough for value consumers. But is it? Some of this I suspect is poor salesmanship and uneducated consumers do not grasp what they give up by using cable boxes to transmit recordings to other locations.

There are a number of real pressures on this industry. Value consumers do not wish to spend money on solutions they do not think they value. Programming is a line item increasingly harder to justify, particularly as the race to the bottom increases. Replacing light switches with "controllable" light switches removes the purpose of those systems: aesthetics. Repeatable, tested systems that do not endless challenge what is possible with current technology is what we ought to offer. Most commercial jobs I can code from scratch in under 3 hours. That is certainly within the bounds of affordability of what a contractor can afford and will not put a Crestron system out of his ability to bid. Residential is often afflicted by those who will not sell repeatable solutions. They want to use every UI, every possible product and control every possible subsystem. Those subsystems often have their own idiosyncrasies that eat up profits as it increases time on sight.

The biggest problem this industry faces is its size. Don't like Verizon? Go to Time Warner or Comcast. Or there is Dish and Directv. But ultimately these solutions are what they are. You get what you get but we are too small to tell a client to sit home between 3-7 and wait for a service call. We are too small to tell a client that this is the price, take it or leave it, as we don't have the size to withstand lost business. I am betting of those participating in this thread maybe 1 or 2 have the testers to certify their data and HDBaseT systems. They don't understand how HDMI works or worse, which systems they sell and install are profitable. Few will understand the difference between gross and net profitability. You sell what you have been sold: technological solutions manufacturers have pushed on to you which you turn around and sell. The problem is that everyone else is offering those very same solutions, which makes market differentiation impossible.

And what is most overlooked is marketing. Everything is going well for some of you as feeder systems are working. But I'm wagering few of you understand how to market or if you are even marketing yourselves correctly. In other words, what ever the merits of your sales decisions there is not empirical basis to any of your business practices. There are assumptions that you think true because they have worked for you. But you do not know if that is chance or empirically true. Real businesses test these propositions. We are typically not real businesses run by businessmen. Owe it to yourselves and read "The E Myth."

Until recently I had been installing Crestron since the panels were black and white only, and they would send the owner to the bigger jobs. A few years ago i said enough and cut my ties. I have not had one customer ask me for Crestron and any who had Crestron told me to get rid of it. I did a major install at a commercial resort that had lighting, HVAC, A/V, etc etc. Huge job, It was in magazines and promoted by Crestron. One year later the resort told me to pull out most of it, they hated it and had problem and couldn't understand why Crestron wasn't being more supportive.
Crestron has fought to not include Sonos for years. I was in a DM programming class 5 years ago and they said during the class that Sonos would be out of business in 2 years. At the same time i also complained about how a client said how ugly their thermostat was (and still is) and that my client wanted to try the Nest. The response then from my Crestron rep was "Nest will be gone in a year because Honeywell is going to sue them and they will lose lose". A year later they were bought for billions!
Crestron has a great product but their attitude of we are better then the rest and nothing can keep up is an outdated way of thinking and doing business.

You all mention C4, RTI, and URC, and i am familiar with all of them. What you all are ignoring is companies like Apple and Google that have unlimited amount of cash and can alter the market with their products to suit their needs.
I am amazed that Sonos has not been purchased by an Apple or merged with them, but don't be surprised when it happens.

When my clients can buy a wink interface at home depot for 40 bucks as well a Ring doorbell, nest camera and thermostat and connect to most of the devices in their home by themselves - on their phones ----then how far away is Apple Home and Sonos from teaming together and putting the remote companies out of business? Not far!

I really think you all are also missing bigger picture. Even my wealthiest clients have asked me why they need a touch panel of any sort, or even a remote when they always have a phone in their hand anyway?

Soon, very soon....Apple and Echo will be able to have a client talk into their phone or base unit and control everything with voice commands or to be able to save combined commands to a one button push. Savant is headed that way, and so is logitech. Who is going to pay for programming and custom gui's in the future? No one!

People want the technology to work, the first time. then if it looks cool as they do it, great. But if they can say one command and it works, even better.

Maybe Crestron should sell their private jets and focus on making people integrators and end users happier, then they might survive. That's what i do with my clients - and I have been doing this for over 20 years.

Can you imagine the discussion when a young engineer proposed "Digital" to the Kodak elite? ("Son, silver rules the world, look at the cash flow. Come back when you can show us how this Digital thing can sell more silver.") The sad part was that Kodak had a huge digital photography patent portfolio.

Customization in the commercial world isn't about what color the buttons are or the font size. It's about the fact that the customer needs what is effectively an application written, that does the things he needs done. The sports bar scenarios I mentioned are good examples. So you can write an actual application, which is a lot of work, or you can use an automation system that supports extensive UI customization and create the application there for a fraction as much and make it work like the customer wants it to.

And customization doesn't mean every system is one-off. Once you've created that sort of targeted system, you can mostly reuse it in others of the same sort, but still have the flexibility to adapt to the specific circumstances.

So, anyoo, customization isn't just about the look, it's about the actual functionality. Unless C4 comes with a "does everything a sports bar needs" package, then you have to be able to do extensive customization to meet those needs. These systems manage 50 to 75 TVs, multiple media players, a large matrix switcher, read in schedules as to what to play where at what times of the day and carry out those commands, but also provide the customer with manual override of schedules in any given area, control lights, and provide digital signage.

It's going to be pretty difficult to do that if you don't use an automation system that allows for not just changing the colors and the fonts, but the actual building of real, interactive applications.

And of course there is the asymmetrical advantage that the highly customizable system can also be used to do very canned systems, because a canned system is just one application of it's customization capabilities. Whereas a non-customizable or limited customization system can't go the other direction and provide extensive customization. It's better to have it for when you need it, even if you don't have to use it all the time, than to not have it.

What I still have not seen Apple, Google, or Logitech produce is a whole house distributed amplifier. Most of my clients don't want sonos Play 5's sitting around the house.

Also, while these companies may be developing ways for customers to create simple macros, what they won't be able to get DIY friendly is logic based events. I had a customer want one button press music through the whole house, and one press off. Simple enough. In fact, Elan has this really prebuilt if using their amp. But then he wanted the volume in each room set at the "perfect" level. No problem, again, it's a built in feature. Then the next day he called, "music is perfect, but I can't hear the tv" in rooms with tv. So, now I have to go in and create different events based on the source. And not just for power on. If he switches the source, the volume has to change. Some rooms the audio is on the Elan amp. Some rooms have AVRs. I have to make each one right. Great! He loves it. Then, couple days later, he calls, upset, "I was watching tv and my wife hit off on the keypad in her bathroom and it turned my tv off". Yeah, you wanted it to do one press off for everything. "Yeah, but not if I'm watching tv. Make it turn everything off unless I'm watching tv in the den. Then, don't turn the den off". Ok, I text him 20 minutes later, it's done. Couple days later, "hey, she turned off the tv when I was watching in the bedroom". Ok, give me time to get to the office where I can get the laptop out and I'll fix it.

Then we got to his cameras. "Hey, I want my sons to have access to the system. But I don't want them to see the cameras if my wife and I are home." Ok, I'll take care of it.

The only problem I haven't been able to solve for him, his Apple TV has to be rebooted every few days because it will lose audio. So I don't think Apple Home is going to create a true smart home system. They will have a remote access with some simple macros.

Voice control isn't going to replace touch screens. It's just a practical matter of how good your memory is and the limitations of voice control in certain conditions. Until we have dangerously good AI, which is a long way off, using a voice control system for a lot of stuff is just not going to be practical. Can your mother in law remember the names you gave all of the security zones or the media players or the lights in your house? Do you want to have the system read out all of the movies you have on your server so you can vocally 'press 118 if you would like to watch Tora, Tora'? Do you want to have to tell the kids to stop screaming every time you want to adjust something? What if you are outside on the porch or in the back yard or cutting the grass?

And the other thing is that, even if the family members who use the system a lot manage to remember at least a core set of commands without having to pull out a cheat sheet, it'll be totally opaque to any visitor. A touch screen, OTOH, if designed reasonably well, can guide a completely new person to the option he wants fairly quickly, and can be room specific as well.

I think that the future home will be a combination of touch screens, portable touch screens, and voice control/feedback. This tool for that job and so forth, but so many people seem to always think that the latest hammer makes everything suddenly a nail.

What is wrong with a Sonos connect linked to a single or multi-channnel amp that also has volume control for each channel? i have used many and some have A/B inputs so you can connect a tv source to the main input and when a sonos is connected it automatically switches to that input. Sound is muted and it switches back...easy. Done it any times.
Or a sonos amp with in wall or in room speakers?

Whole house music buttons are on every one of my systems, and with an AVR or even a sound soundbar the preset volume can be set for each input when it is set up. again, standard tweaking with any system. If it didnt then the systems would be cranking when switched between netflix and TV, DVD. Not sure why this is an issue it should be standard. If the clients wants specific tweaks then that is to be explained and billed for. BUT the new savant and i believe some of the logitech remotes have a "scene" button that allows you to save all the settings as they are an recall them. If apple is controlling systems via a network then recall is easy becasue it knows what state everything is in.

This is a custom control that needs to be addressed or explained to the owner - and billable.

Apple TV issues depends on connections. I haven't had problems. I also don't let the apple go to sleep, i would check the audio settings and change from to auto or PCM, use the optical audio, or if it is stereo use a optical to analog adapter. Or create a macro to restart it with an automatic powering off and back on with the power conditioner, etc.

Wow, I see you completely missed the point.

Another difference is that if Apple cant make a billion dollars with it they will kill it. iPhones are easy because it is what it is and you use it the way it is or you go somewhere else. Try that with a home. Apples investors dont have a long enough attention span to wait and see how your clients house goes. They aren't flying down to meet with your client to go over how they want the system to work for them.


They might be able to piece something that looks custom together but they are a long way off from putting any of us out of business. Your wink+nest+ring customer cant open his iPad while on a plane and have 1 single customized GUI page that lets him see his front gate camera, open the gate for a visitor, turn the exterior lights on for them, open the garage and unlock the side door for them without a single page flip.

"MOST PEOPLE DONT NEED OR CARE ABOUT THAT"

Most people aren't and never will be our customers.


Because they have kids a wife and grandparents a baby sitter a house sitter and holiday parties. Is your client sure he wants to pass his phone around to all those people? He better make sure his nude selfies are all deleted.


And "everything is going wireless" right? I have been hearing that one for 20 years and it still isn't true.

My X1 remote is great when i say "Judge Judy" it pulls everything Judge Judy related up for me to browse through. But if i say "Judge Judy Season 12 Episode 1" it just brings up the same Judge Judy page. With Siri half the time i just get search results because i didnt phrase things the right way.

Apple/Google/Amazon whoever will only ever takeover the entry to mid level market unless they open their box up and let 3rd parties customize it. The people who will pay for custom UI's today will pay for them tomorrow.

We have a client that was totally unable to make any cell phone calls from inside any of his homes. His IT guy tried the little internet to cell boxes and they tried wi-fi calling but they eventually settled on a $15k (per house) solution because its the only one that lets you walk in from outside and through the whole house without dropping the call.

"Who needs that?" the same people "WHO NEED" luxury automobiles and more than 1 bathroom in their house.

LOL

Which one? That you have a pain in the a** client who didnt listen to or wasnt train correctly?

Or, that the systems you install aren't designed as they should be?
Or, you are stuck using the same old tricks with specific amps and gear for to long?

Besides your camera issue all of the others you mention are standard button pushes with any system.

If you dont think these items can be done on remotes that wil; be developed soon you are mistaken.

Sounds like you are being force fed the Crestron kool-aid. and if all of your clients are exactly like the one you refer to, that's what you need, and should sell.

All three of my billionaire clients have asked me to install Savant and dump Crestron. The standard run of the mill millionaires have all complained or switched.

The smaller systems are happy with simple control from and RTI, URC or Savant.

They won't be done by end users setting up their own stuff. As mac said, Apple isn't going to make something that can't be plug and play