I've been looking at the numbers on projects that we have done with Prodigy and not surprisingly, we have never met our budgeted time for any project ( but one). This is not a bitch session; I am just curious if anyone else is meeting their projected budgets on this product. With all of the issues with SB and defective product, are you padding your quotes to compensate for these circumstances?

Don't take this wrong but are you proficient with the programming? If you aren't then that will eat up budget, especially if you cost out programming at a higher rate.

On easy one room jobs done in Composer, yes. On more complicated ones, yes, because we program it in SIMPL.

No offence taken. I think we are proficent. We initailly went through a learning curve with SB but soon found that there were many issues that were out of our control if we let SB build our projects. We then ( thanks to the advice on these boards) began to create our own templates and build from scratch. But again we would lose time because of quirky stuff in SB. Add that we have recently had our fair share of defective products which, as you know, takes time to troubleshoot to determine the fault.
Because we have been so busy, I have spoken to and used 3rd party programmers and even they are reluctant to do contract quotes with respect to SB.

 Yes. Last few jobs have been very solid. Doing media rooms with DA, iPhone/pad control. Programming in SB. Sure the learning curve has kept us from makings much profit as we'd like, but every job is a little better.

Yes and no.
I outsource my programming to be written in Simpl and it works every time with no issues.

I cannot state how angry I am over the damn PTX3. I love the way it looks and functions (when it works) but believe this has to be the worst remote out in terms of over all quality.

I know others have had issues but swear by the latest release but I just installed one of the new ones only to have the touch screen go all wonky and not respond after 6 hour of usage. Another RMA here we go.

Crestron is by far the best company in the industry to partner with because they are bending over backwards to address any customer related problems but that remote has issues.

I feel your pain. Yesterday we received 2 replacement PTX3's because the first 2 wouldn't wake up after being on the dock overnight. You have to take it off the dock then put it back on the dock for it to work again. I took one home last night to test and this morning awoke to the same problem. Back it goes......

This is a good point which brings up another question.

If systembuilder actually worked, how much time do you think you would save vs. programming in SIMPL?

What happened to the new development environment I have been hearing about for 6 months now, any updates?

If you understand System builder and what it is designed to do in a Prodigy environment then it isn't bad, its when you try to make it do more than it is designed to do that you run into issues. I like system builder and like letting it build my pages for smaller projects. Anything more than these I call a Pro and let them take care of the programming.

I've decided that my strength at this time doesn't include advanced programming and I'm OK with that, I have a company to run and subbing out the programming, especially on larger projects makes my life much easier.

I hope you don't mind me answering your question to Greg. System Builder is obviously a different environment for putting a system together. Assuming everything was perfect in SystemBuilder, which assumes it works how you want it to work (not you personally but the programmer), then it might save some time. The big advantage SB gives is in laying out panel files. That is the most time consuming portion of the SIMPL/VTPro traditional programming style. For programmers who have been working in a template long enough they really can copy/paste from one project to another, in VTPro and SIMPL. Really efficient programmers will have a stock VTPro file they always start a project off from and some may go so far as to have a pre-joined SIMPL file for that panel project. This could expedite the programming tremendously. Starting from scratch each and every time in SIMPL/VTPro versus starting from scratch in SB means that SB will win....until you want to do something outside the framework of SB. Most 3rd party programmers wish to stay away from SB because they can't make any money on the programming. It may take 16 hours to do a complicated SB program which could be as much as $2400. It is doubtful that the dealer has bid that much in a project for programming in SB. So you have to bid at a lot less than what it actually takes to do the project. Some won't touch SB at all. Others will but they may seem reluctant to take on the project. It's not what most programmers use once they get their head around SIMPL/VTPro programming.

Think of it this way. You wish to have a system that you can modify which is why you would rather have a SB based project. If you feel that you could not make modifications to a SIMPL based program that is not true. You need to go to the Essentials class at a minimum so that you have some working knowledge of SIMPL/VTPro. This will do two things for you. The first is that it will help you understand how Crestron is really programmed, even by SB, and second it will also show you why SB could have some bugs in it. I guess it would also give you some experience so that editing a SIMPL based program would be easy enough. Even if you didnt write the program you could ask your programmer to explain what needs to be edited. He/she could then tell you that you need to go to S-4.1.11.16.3, which for example might be a stepper2. You need more delay between TV_Power_On and TV_HDMI_Input. Your programmer might tell you to edit the value between outputs 3 and 4 to meet your needs. I mean that would be easy enough to do without working knowledge of SIMPL. Just some food for thought.

It's coming. I expect to see more about it at Master's class this year. The new IDE will be a little ways out. It is still SIMPL and VTPro programming. It's just an integrated IDE built on C# from what I understand. The demo last year gave that indication anyway. It felt a lot like Visual Studio in how you can move between tabs in the programming environment. I do not expect to see any C# programming allowed from the start. Maybe the Python scripting will work but I expect that would be in Day 2 as well. We may see a SB version based on the new IDE before we see the actual IDE released. This may improve on how SB works but it's unclear right now.

I just spoke to TS about my issue with the PTX3's not waking up. He sent me a beta version of firmware that is supposed to fix the issue. I'll be watching it throughout the day. If you like, send me a PM and I can forward the beta firmware to you.

Not at all. This is a good discussion to have


Agreed, working in the template environment is the way to go but the business side of me has a difficult time justifying the amount of time SB can take to create a working project vs. profitability on a job. Many of us come from that URC/RTI /Elan world where programming a remote or basic system was fairly straight forward. Now we are faced with a programming wizard that is quirky (to be polite). I cringe whenever we are asked to add something to a project that was initially programmed in SB. On top of that, it's hard to tell a client that you can't quote him on the programming because you don't know if the implementation is going to take 2 hours or 10 hours. I'm being facetious of course!
I completely agree that Crestron is by far the best and most reliable product on the market. Their TS guys are aces. It's just very costly when working with SB.


And this is a good point as well. As a dealer, I need to make a profit on programming time. If I can't bid it for what it's really worth (time wise) and feel confident that it's only going to take that amount of time....then why even bother with SB. Many people have said that it is a powerful software. While I agree with that in principal, if I'm not confident that it can do what is said it will do then that mutes the point.


I'm with you on this. I've made the decision to stay the heck away from SB going forward. I was hopeful for awhile that it would get worked out but my bank account has brought me back to reality...lol

 I think that it is important to pint out that while SB has it's limits, it can do A LOT of stuff. However, learning how to customize projects or templates takes time. systems that are built within the crstron templates are extremely fast and easy. A good nesters ding of toolbox helps.

Spending time learning the template functions has helped my projects the most. I have pnt had any problems with ptx3 remotes since they redesigned the hard button and I change from the default ID to something other than 09.

I did just have my fist PAMP failure, but it was at 11 months and Crestron took care of it.