Your post is full of win, win win! I rarely come here anymore, but this thread has really caught my attention, as well as the attention of many other pros. I will come out right now and posit that this installation is likely to turn very ugly with much finger pointing after finish. Too many disparate systems, and some that have no earthly right in a home of this caliber. Although, if the homeowner is cutting corners like this on integration, it is likely that it is happening with every other trade on the project, and this house will turn into a 90's american luxury car. That is to say that it will look shiny and enticing at first, but will be fraught with problems and will not wear well with time. Mark, I really do wish you the best, but the red flags are unfurled.

I was as suprised by the name as much as anyone, changes were made after I submitted my story.  I now request that the final story be submitted back to me before going out.  Editors always make changes, that's what they do......edit.

and greg it says 20 million dollar project, which it is, not install.

When you say pros I always think "businesspeople" but you mean good technicians.  That is really the divide here, too many mechanics and not as many businesspeople.  I have met some of you and have found good people who work hard, but very, very few will ever make any real money.  Do I wish the client would spend more, yes, will he, not much if any, that's business.  Can he buy a system for 500k, yes, that's my business.
All these comments revolve around what everyone thinks should have been done instead of looking at what can be done.

If we want to get philosophical, then we can say that you can stuff a square peg into a round hole. Question then becomes, should you? :)

You can power your house with AA batteries if you had enough of them (and an inverter). Do you want to do that? :) :)

Control systems let you solve the problem in infinite ways. But there are a handful of good ways, and many bad ways. The trick is finding the best solution, not picking something and then having to make it work.

The headliner "Tracking a $20M Project: Breakthrough with Client" is still deceptive Mark. If my name was on an article and I was partnering with a magazine or otherwise I would make darn sure they got it right from the get go. If they made a mistake the first time and you requested a title revision, then why is the headliner still deceptive? If the truth is to be told, the article should have read "Tracking a Project in a 20M Home": Breakthrough with Client. Amazing what switching a few words around can do to bring truth to a story, eh?

Anyway, I'm done with this; best of luck on your "project in a 20M house" . I hope it goes well for you!! I mean that Mark!

I guess if this works it will have an impact on how everyone looks at automation.  Instead of being some elitist voodoo magic that costs a fortune there will be affordable options for every and any size home or office, not everyone wants the biggest and best if it doesn't fit their lifestyle.
So far as your peg theory there is no one size we are trying to fit.  I did my research then picked the control system.  So long as we push this ultra high end myth about good automation we limit our market share. 
Electricians will, over the next decade move into the void we are leaving, make a lot of money and fully establish themselves in our market satisfying a need (I already know a few doing it).  They make low margins, charge for every single hour allowing them to be profitable on every job. 
We both have an agenda here, mine is to show there are choices in the market that will satisfy our clients and you Amir, as owner of a brand new high end custom company might just have a dog in this race too.  You aren't the norm on this forum, most of these guys work their butts off for a working wage, you'll start in a brand new state of the art showroom.  Now you have to sell your wares, AMX with HDbaseT instead of JAP, good product and I like where it is going, just another option though.  Tell Mr Stanley hi for me when he comes back from Toronto.
I still have lots of friends in Seattle and having a choice over DA or Mag is a good thing.  Home Tech really muddied up that market and now with them gone, it should improve.
Talking about how to increase business and not about every new shiney thing would have been a much more constructive conversation.
The people reading this are your/my peers and I talk to many of them everyday and know what they are going through.  This is a complex and tough business model still finding its' way.  It will be interesting to watch.

This is a deceptive label Mark, you and CEPro know this. It kills credibility and challenges the integrity of both you and CEPro. Most of us here work on projects. None of them happen to be 20 million dollars...

Roddy,

I suspect everyone by now, and in fact from the first story on, understood what this project was about.  Hammering this one thing out of this whole article is just grinding.  That's all you got to challenge my integrity is the fact that the editor named the story and didn't run it past me.  Being new to working with this editor I have had to learn how things work.  I honestly believed on my first article they would publish as is, not so much.  Whole sections have been cut out of articles for one reason or another.
So far as the size of this job it only points to the fact that that almost anyone on this forum (almost) could take on bigger systems given good design.  Dave Kirns over at K2 Dealer Services, that many of you know, could fully engineer based on whatever needs a client had.
Integrity cuts both ways, trying to throw a little mud based on the title of a story 11 months after the first article ran is a joke.  This is your best shot, not the design is weak, or I would have speced fewer or more wires, but the article name is misleading.  This is why some guys have only bought themselves a job, their perspective on their business is skewed.
I'll bet you Amir has a solid business plan he is following and watching his monthly numbers like the professional he is.  You guys want to talk about something on this forum there should multiple threads on how to run your business and be more profitable.  Go to an AIN meeting and you don't hear them talking about boxes but bottom lines, margins and ROI.  Stop the nonsense and start acting like businesspeople to increase profits, forget about hardware except where it increases sales or margin(this means performance, price, reliablity, the same reason a client would buy).
How many posts have been about the name of this article?  This is going nowhere fast.  I'm out, talk amongst yourselves.

Mark

I have already stated what I felt about your design Mark. Being put in the position of using a lighting panel because the control system does not currently have a panel large enough is just another. Knowing the client has bad eyesight should be one of the first thing taken into consideration, that is a huge oversight IMHO. Good you can hodge podge something to cover this, but bad design... You put it out there and you are being challenged, you knew this from the get go.

So enjoying the spinning... Good luck on your 500k project, I really hope for the client's sake thing can be pulled off. Telling us they changed the name of article when they did not challenges what you are saying. And what I am bring up challenges CEPro on the naming as much as anyone. Like it or not honestly is honestly, and the naming is not honest.

For the sake of the entire industry, my hope is that you *will* make it work. Not "if" it works. :)


While that is a dream that I share with you, I am not following you in this context. You have Vantage lighting. In what way does that present a solution for everyone? You are replacing a $2 switch with a $300 one. As such, you are not ever going to go into "every any size home."

I have not heard the full scope of this project. If I assume that the client is spending 5% of the total building cost on this subsystem, that would net us $1M. How would that, or worse yet, a "$20M project" ever be looked at as the blueprint for the masses?

Further, we all know the cost savings that C4 and things like iPad bring. And put Crestron Prodigy in the same bucket. If there is some magic here that we don't know, please explain. As I said, I love to learn :). But based on what I know, and I suspect what everyone else knows, there is no whole house automation system including lighting that is affordable for the masses. All solutions are still for elite group of customers unfortunately. But again, I love for your vision to be true but unfortunately I don't think it is.


Agreed with the caveat I mentioned above. A C4 controllers is only a few hundred dollars cheaper than a high-end controller. A new Crestron series 3 for example, has the same GUI output now as C4, and MSRP is what, $400 to $500 more?


I have anecdotal proof that is is not occurring. Before getting into this business, I taught my electrician to install the Crestron lighting system for me. I wrote a full tutorial for him. And you know what, even though he was super smart, picked up all the details, installed the whole system, *and* has a low-volt guy that came from our industry working for him, he has zero interest in taking on our business.

Why? Because they run like a machine. In their business, there are no unknowns. As soon as you tell them what you need, they spec out the system. There are no LCD displays having HDMI problem. There are no programming unknowns. And yes, they never run into a situation where the client asks them for a touchpanel they don't know where to buy :D. It might look like they pull wires like us, but the fundamentals of their business is very different. And if they are good at it, they make excellent money without any of the headaches we go through.

Again, as I said this is anecdotal.


Yup. As I said, the smart ones make great money but they do that, and take low margins, because they don't have to deal with the unknowns. They don't have to keep learning new things. They don't have to go to CEDIA and CES to understand this year's flavor of things.


You are right that we all have agendas :). But it is not what you think. As a person who also writes for the trade and participates in these forums, I am always after two things: either learning something or seeing that the right information is shared. Any time I asked a question here, I said I am open to learning.

You represent our entire industry with your article. I like to see the highest standards of correctness and professionalism applied to what you do for us to all collectively benefit from it. Leaving misleading headlines doest fit that. Saying one control system is great, but in the next one saying you have a problem but have options you won't discuss in the article won't do that. Asking for comments for the article and then making fun of the person who just did, doesn't do that (did you really need to make fun of the guy's alias)?

You said you want to increase the reach of the industry. Please, please help us do that by following the above principals. I know you have severe constraints in the job. But you have a great opportunity to have our collective voices heard.


I worked my butts off for a working wage just the same Mike. You make it sound like I got some kind of inheritance to be where I am. First year I worked, I spent the entire Christmas holiday reading through 200,000 lines of Unix code. The next Christmas was spent in snow outside of Boston at an unhappy customer site debugging a minicomputer crash and performance problem. On and on for the next 28 years. Fortunately, half of what I learned, also applies to this business. And no one ever forced me to do what I did. I enjoyed it as I assume anyone working their butts off does in this business.

For my new business, I have invested heavily into it financially and with due stress, getting into this business in such a tough economy. I will trade places with anyone in a heartbeat who wants to do what I did for the business, and have me go work there as a system designer and programmer :).

But this thread is not about me. Who I am doesn't matter. Spotlight is on you and your article. And I love for you to do justice for all of us with high standards and high quality of material being presented in the article. Spend half the energy defending the headline being wrong, in convincing CEPro to fix it. Explain the choices better in the article. Help us better understand you choices. Don't assume our knowledge base is lower than yours. Always take the high road and treat people commenting here and especially the ones at the bottom of the article with respect no matter how personal and nasty they get. If someone used a foul word at President Obama in an event, do you think he will return the favor in kind?


There is that JAP thing again :). Look, I took a beating for days over defending the product. I went as far as contacting my Intel HDCP contacts to see if they consider the box kosher. I did those things because I see its potential (although that potential is diminishing given the single cat-5 HDMI distribution now). If the product delivers, and my customer is not picky, then it is an excellent innovation and we will carry it.

My shop carries HomeLogic as a lower end alternative (and easier to program as compared) to AMX. I am always looking for something better as I consider all the systems I have seen, sans Crestron's series 3 new programming environment, as arcane and difficult to use compared to the tools we use to program computers and phones. So you are not going to see me take a position just because I want to defend AMX against your choice of Control4.

BTW, Mr. Stanley could not speak more highly of you and your product. Your personality and capabilities outside of this specific project and article are not on trial. Hopefully mine is not either ;) :).

There are so many uncritical assumptions in the statements above that it's shameful. Whether you are a business that does 5 million, 15 million of 500k you have to deal with the same issues. The difference is scale and sometimes, given the size of a job, managerial and engineering complexity. What types of loads are in fact being installed; not what the cut sheet says. How many keypads can go on a wire without voltage drop effecting the devices on that run. Will there be EDID issues if you are using computers on that display? How will you route video and audio to that room? If you are doing satellite telephones, whose system and does the client know that this product is not available 24/7 while that product requires you to pay overseas charges.

If you are automating commercial HVAC what is the protocol and can your control system deal with that "language.?" If you are providing pool control are there one set of pipes or two? Is data available all of the time for pool and spa or is it one or the other? Do you have to have a tech on site every day to manage the job, to ensure that mill work doesn't bury wires.

We have not even mentioned programming and the complexities it introduces.

Yet, I was a very small contractor and I did multi-100k jobs in the 90's when 300k was a huge job. I am sitting today on a million dollar AV job and I promise you that the differences between the small job and this one are merely scale and politics. The design and engineering challenges do not change just because of scale. There are more challenges to be overcome but dimming a led load is the same on small and big jobs. Dealing with load size and type are the same on big and small jobs. Dealing with heat issues and power fluctuations not different on large and small jobs.

This does not mean that the jobs are the same. But one of your "working man"
has to deal with HDMI, with load issues, with GUI software code that doesn't work, and just about every other problem the contractor installing a large job must overcome. The large systems integrator can do more jobs than a small shop and he can off load responsibility to his CAD department, engineering tasks can be portioned out to mulitple poeple, job site meetings can be attended by all number of people whereas I have to wear all those hats when I'm doing a large job. But the job is not different save by scale. There are more challenges, not different challenges.


Having money permits you to have a show room. Having a showroom may help to sell expensive gear such as 2kx4k projectors, HDMI switching, large touch panels. It's not essential. Having deep pockets allows you to pay to have competent people build systems and practices, job tracking and proposal generation. It makes for a more sophisticated managerial structure. It has nothing to do with the design paradigm or the cost parameters of a job.

It allows you to evaluate devices and solutons in-house prior to deploying them. Ultimately, the same issues need to be overcome. There is certainly a difference of learning on the job or in the lab but the challenge is the same.


I'm not interested in your history. I'm evaluating the decisons you are making and the solutons you are pushing in run time. I'm not the only person questioining your decisons or absence of process. I'm not alone is wondering how poorly you express yourself.

Alan

Love on the rocks?

Anyone notice that Prime has ceased to name Firefly and has now started naming K2 Dealer Services?

My two cents.



I don't give a sh** about this entire matter. It's nothing more than a FLUFF piece that I haven't the time to waste reading.

So, you reply in a thread about it. Got it, makes sense.

I don't have a pony in this race, but WOW does the $20M figure in the title irk the hell out of me every time I see it. If you installed $50k of gear in a $2M home, do you tell people that you did a $2M project? I realize it doesn't matter at this point, but I just can't get over it. Maybe if it wasn't posted in an industry rag I would feel differently.

I do think the banter is interesting. Hope the project goes well.