Just curious what is the general concensus is? We are thinking about picking it up. Any problems with it? Thanks.

Lots of it. Far better than our previous control platform. Customers love it. Not one has ever expressed any buyers remorse. It does what it claims, without the hours and hours of programming.

+2 on that.

Been doing Savant for about 2 years now, but only recently started installing it some projects. We took our time getting to know the product and what its capabilities were. We didnt want to jump full bore into another fly by night automation system.

Savant has delivered.

We are now getting towards the end of a project thats been in progress for almost 3 years. Its one of, if not the, largest in Chicagoland and has been going very smoothly. System 36 chassis,8 Minimacs, Component distro to about 16 rooms, HDMI to 5 surround sound setups, Home Theater, 8 Output itunes Server, Squeezebox, Multiple Cable and Satellite boxes..... 40ish zones of audio, Homeworks Lighting system, Ademco Vista 128, 20 zone Aprilaire radiant heating system, Call server for Intercom and VOIP. Controlled via 20ish ipads, couple iphones, 5 of the older 9" Savant in-wall panels. We'll probably be switching his geo-thermal AC system to the new aprilaire thermostats as well once we confirm the new stats will handle it as well. Not doing the True image lighting yet, but we expect to do that once the project is "Complete"....

Couple of minor hiccups, but thats to be expected with a system this large. For the most part, its been a steady string of getting things up and working.

Programming is easy for the most part... But with a project this large, the "Connect the dots" environment gets VERY cluttered and doing custom macros and functions via apple Automator can get a little confusing. I'm at about 40 hours of programming/setup right now... If the system was AMX, I would easily be close to 100 if not over. (Those numbers, of course, dont include any of the actual installation of the hardware).

These guys are serious players in the home automation game now and are VERY focused on the residential market. Support has been top notch as well. Its so nice to just put in a Trouble ticket and have someone get back to me in a reasonable amount of time.... and usually I just use iChat so that the support person can get a hold of me even if I'm in a basement without cell reception. Share my screen, see what I've done and show me what I can do to make the situation better.....

Very happy.

Lets pretend your firm has been doing AMX and Savant for a while and you are versed with both products. So no learning curve involved in this scenario.

If you had to engineer the project you mentioned today...

How long would it take to configure/program AMX vs Savant? (assign addresses, id's, ips etc and update any firmware and configure devices and do the actual programming... not counting any physical installation of anything)

Would it still be 100 hours vs 40 hours?

I am not familiar with AMX programming... is it possible to create/reuse modules for your switchers/zones etc? If so are you saying that even with being able to reuse blocks of code your still at 100 hours?

What are you giving up? (in a typical high end residential environment, not commercial)

Thanks

I am an experienced AMX Programmer and we still sell and install AMX. so thats what i'm directly comparing this too. Yes, you can reuse AMX Modules and code blocks.. But most of the AMX Modules you get from them are pretty raw and not suitable for directly integrating into a project. THey use Strange color pallettes instead of default so dropping a premade touchpanel file into your own program generally results in a god awful color scheme and needs to be reworked to match the theme you are using. This eats up a lot of time, but once you do it, you can reuse it. (For example, Kaliedascape has a very nice module... But It took me about 2 days to reset all the buttons to a more universal palette and look so that I could drop it into multiple projects.)

I'm not a great Touchpanel programmer though.. (Graphics wise) I like Line code. I like writing tight efficient code...

Thats the other thing that bothers me about the Premade modules from amx and many other manufacturers. The code is broken up into 5.. 6.. 10 parts sometimes... They work... But Its a lot of back and forth and I spend a lot of time just writing my own codeblocks/Includes/Modules for integration and reuse.

Savant pretty much eliminates ALL of that. They write the component profiles as long as you give them time. and if you need to change/add something, Its just an XML file.. So if you know XML and have a halfway decent editor, you can modify them pretty easily on the fly.

I havent found anything I have to give up with Savant. If I want to do custom Touch panels, I can... Buttons have to be made with photoshop, but they have a nice selection you can drag and drop into their panels as well. Its not hard to modify their default layouts.

I think the Touchpanels is where I really save time... The default panels they give you are nice. Clean. Very user friendly. The software generates all the files automagically. With AMX, I can reuse the panels, but I still need to load each one separately. With savant, I Upload the program to the Main host processor, and it feeds all the panels the program. So if I have to update 25 panels with a new device, I can do all of them in the same time it would take me to load couple AMX panels. (About 10-15 minutes if I'm compiling a huge program like the one I'm working on now) Sending a Large file to 25 AMX Panels... Can easily take 5-10 minutes per panel.

heres the other part of the equation..... I'm still learning a lot of this Savant stuff... I think in time, I can cut the time down on a project like this substantially.... maybe 50%? and they are constantly refining and updating the system. the sheer amount of component profiles they have done already is amazing for how long they have been around.

This is what i was asking/getting at.

I have been doing Savant for almost a year now, we used to be AMX, and have been very happy. We are a small company and could not afford to have a full time programmer on staff. Savant makes it so some one with a good head on their shoulders, but not a code jockey, can pick it up pretty quickly.

Savant keeps releasing new features, sleep timers, thermostat scheduling, and they require nothing more than making sure a box is checked.

I have drank the Cool-aid and it is good.

What are the total retail prices of equipment on the Savant jobs you guys are doing?

Just savant gear? you can do a basic system for under 3k with Mininac Host controller, ipad, and enough control ports to do almost any single room system.

the big job I described.. I dont even know.....

Great info, Impaqt, thanks

The fact that not too many bad things have been said about Savant is intruiging - whereas Prodigy threads are full of complaints about programming issues.

Is there a theatre solution under $1000? What are the requirements for being a dealer? I'm thinking about calling the rep to learn more.

what are they using as a remote? I saw they had something you slip and Ipod touch into, is that piece released?

they arent a $1k theater remote. They dont pretend to be. 3k is about the minimum in hardware you can get away with. That a Minimac with all the Savant stuff pre-loaded, a RSC-0007 which provides 6 IR outputs, and 1 RS-232(And basically unlimited IP Control), and a Base iPad.

if someone wants to use their own iPad or iPhone, you can shave that cost off the system....

As for requirements... thats going to require a call to your rep.

This is most likely because there are 100 to 1 prodigy to Savant dealers. Prodigy is available via distribution where Savant is the typical line that requires direct access & training to go a long with it. Plus... if their programming really is "installer-configuration" there shouldn't be any issues with it. Most of our drama with any new products comes from hardware reliability and programming.

Hardware reliability has/will fall on us every time. There isn't a product in the world that always ships working and ready. From iPhones to Crestron and Savant HDMI switchers. So its up to us to update firmware and test until we get 1 that works and move to the next room. Obviously there are some products that are just junk and wont ever work. But for the most part we can figure out what works and what doesn't and do our best to use solid products.

That leaves programming. IMO this is the biggest bottleneck for every CI firm on the planet. The more complicated systems cant be programmed by the installer because um... hes busy installing! You have a few REAL choices. Everything else is a rig job that will bite you in the ass one day.

A.Hire a full time programmer and hope that he can handle the work load and not end up without any projects because business is slow.

B.Outsource programming. This is a great option but it forces you to totally have your act together in terms of documentation and project management. When you are outsourcing a piece of the puzzle you have to remember that you are dealing with another company and not one of your own employees. You cant yank him off one job and send him to another in a moments notice. You have to schedule things properly or you will end up with no programmer when you are trying to wrap things up.

C.Hire a full time programmer and Outsource programming.

IF a control system company could actually pull off wizard programming properly and have it be robust enough to handle a large system... They would quickly rule the market. Control4's success is evidence of that. Savant is more of the same.

We all know (even those koolaid drinkers out there) that Crestron & AMX are more flexible/customizable/scalable than boxed products. Any of the "product x can do whatever crestron/amx can do" comments are always from those who don't have the correct information. Some guy gets meta data from an iPod dock to his netbook and he thinks he is going to put Crestron out of business.

Having said that... especially today in 2011... Many projects can be handled with boxed products with a handful to no "visible" limitations. Many customers don't care about all of the bells and whistles so long as they can get the ones they want. This is the market that Control4 targeted and why Prodigy was born.

So where does Savant fit in to all this? From what i have read over the last few years it costs what a typical crestron system costs. Why is that? Is it the monster cable of automation? Commanding higher pricing for no apparent reason? Gets the job done but doesn't really do anything more than a less expensive product does? Or have they bridged the gap between wizard programming and flexibility?

I don't care for the way their iPad demo GUI navigates. Its confusing to me but i could learn to live with it if it meant that i could (me as an installer) configure a 6 or 7 figure project and not run into any nonsense like having to leave buttons on the screen that don't do anything. Sure beats building a custom GUI and waiting for someone else to program it.

Impaqt said that he cut down his AMX programming from 100 hours to 40. By his 3rd job IMO that will become 20 hours. Thats 1/5 of the time it take to program the system. Thats pretty damn significant. I dont know anything about AMX programming or how long things take. Maybe AMX programming takes 5 times longer than Crestron making this phenomenon a wash. But if AMX and Crestron take apx the same amount of time then there really is only one question left... Does it blend? Can you really spend 1/5 of the time and get the same or better system with Savant vs amx or Crestron? Or are there other compromises we are not thinking about here? And most importantly... do these compromises matter to the typical residential client?