I am setting up a system with an XP-8 and four Denon Receivers all connected via RS 232. When a receiver has been on and left idle (no volume change for 30-45min) while watching something and I go to change the volume via the T2C it takes a good 5 seconds before it registers the volume command. Is this the Denon going idle or the XP-8 going idle? After the initial delay it is responsive until it sits "idle" again and then the delay on volume commands.

Never heard of this problem what model? You could have the xp8 poll the denon every 20 minutes or so to keep it active

Is this a zigbee remote? Because there are about 20 threads on the zigbee network association time that takes 1-5 seconds when the remote is sitting idle for 20 minutes.

even with 2 way ethernet this happens if the system is set for 2 way communication

On my T4's/ XP8's you can see the wireless light on the T4 go out when the remote goes to sleep: it takes a few seconds after wake up to re-establish the wireless connection: no commands are executed during that time

The point of zigbee was suppose to resolve this problem. The reason they decided to use zigbee instead of wifi is because when the wireless connection is lost your device needs to reestablish the link. Has to do a bunch of crap that supposedly you don't need to do with zigbee. I don't know if maybe zigbee does have this limitation and RTI wasn't aware or if it is RTI's implementation of zigbee. Does C4 have this same issue? They aren't doing anything crazy with 2way on their remotes but they do have it. They could be hiding the fact that they do this. With RTI it would be more apparent in that 1-2 seconds.

If it is a zigbee issue I'd be interested to see if buetooth 3 would be implemented in remotes in the future. The biggest limitation and it is a big one would be range. But using bluetooth to establish a link and then use wifi for transferring sounds like the best of both worlds.

It looks like bluetooth can actually go up to 300ft. but it has to be a class1 device which is specified as mostly industrial.

From what I've read online, Control4 and RTI (as well as the other big names) both use Zigbee chipsets from Ember. Not sure if they are the same chips or not.

[Link: ember.com]

is there anyway to POLL the remote or have the remote send a blank command every 15min to keep the connection active (prob kill battery life)

Tell me if I am way off base or an idiot please:

I have not tried this but was thinking about it today. Could I not use the processor "events" to call a macro every 20-25 minutes to change the page of a remote based on a flag set when navigation to that page was made such that it is always back to the same page? Wouldn't this initiate a wakeup of the zigbee connection?

you might try this:

in Denon drivers menu on the processor is an option to check:

'Enable Media Server Polling' it says only use it to update a counter (cannot read the whole thing)

might be worth a try?