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Crestron or Control4

M

Mrci10

Member
I'm looking to install a control system to handle the K system I will purchase for my theater and distribute the media thru-out the house. Control lighting in my theater the theromastat in the theater and have 3 zones for music.

I've narrowed my choice to Crestron or Control4.

Anyone have opinions on which system would be better?

Russ
 
Before I answer your question have you considered Savant as well?
 
Yes I've looked at Savant. I thought maybe that was more of a system than I needed.

A big draw back for me is the need to have these systems programed by a dealer. I'm more of a DIY'er but I'm not sure a DIY system would provide all the flexibility I may need.

Do you have experience with one of these systems?
 
Mrci10 said:
I'm looking to install a control system to handle the K system I will purchase for my theater and distribute the media thru-out the house. Control lighting in my theater the theromastat in the theater and have 3 zones for music.

I've narrowed my choice to Crestron or Control4.

Anyone have opinions on which system would be better?

Russ
Click to expand...



Because you indicated you have narrowed your choice to those two systems, I'll restrict my comments to C and C4. I've had direct experience with both. As a dealer, I no longer work with either product, but the factor's that have led me to another company are too many to discuss here and are not relevant in answering your question.

At one point historically if you wanted to control whole house, or multiple components (lighting, shades, theatre, audio, etc.), you primarily looked at Crestron or AMX (although there were others). These days, most of the other smaller companies have increased their offerings and technology to serve these larger installs. Control4 is one of these companies.

I was a big believer that spending more on equipment and programming provided a better and more reliable control system, but over time I learned that is not always the case. A lot of equipment, from all of these companies, is now manufactured in China, and the differences in quality are no longer obvious. Some of this equipment is well built, some isn't. I've also found that the end result in controlling equipment is just about equal between companies.

There are certainly fans of both of the systems you are considering, usually divided by ownership. Those that own Crestron tend to be very satisfied, and should be given the cost. The same holds true for Control4 owners (but at a smaller financial investment). I think both are equally reliable, and both require programming, the complexity being determined by your control requirements. It is "probably" still true that Crestron offers a bit more flexibility and likely has a component to do just about anything you could want in a control system, but Control4 can certainly handle all of the normal control requirements in a typical home.

If you have any interest in hearing my personal reasons for moving to a different product, feel free to PM me, but I'll close by commenting that either of the two you are looking at will likely serve you well, so it may come down to personal preference in the way the equipment "looks", and of course your personal budget. If you select the same degree of control with both systems, Control4 should be the less expensive option, and also less expensive to add, or change, equipment in the future.



Jim
 
Jim is an expert. Im just an owner/ hobbiest. I completely agree with him. I have Crestron. Its OK. Any of these systems comes down to programming- which means you really need someone with experience otherwise you will encounter issues. Just my experience.

If I had it to do over today, I would try to make as little investment in these systems as possible because things are moving so quickly to iOS or other type layouts. The primary benefit of a lighting system to me is the ability to turn zones on or off easily. Thats about it. Whole house distribution of audio or video becomes a pain in the neck and the family members who don't want to mess with it don't and just play things on their phones or tablets..... My advice is to save the money (sorry Jim/ other pros).....
 
I recently replaced two larger scale home automation systems of my own. Both were dealer installed Crestron systems. I liked both systems and I liked my dealer...a lot. But I got sick of the $$$$.

I replaced them both with a combination of iRule and Indigo and iOS apps.

IRule is great for everything that's one-way control. Indigo is great for anything that needs feedback. They mix nicely. K's iOS app is wonderful, and if you do your Indigo thing right you can even control volume on your system directly from the K iOS app.

All of it is completely DIY friendly and cheap. I won't say it's 100% as robust as Crestron done right, but it's way closer than I thought you could get and costs pennies relative to Crestron.


--Donnie
 
JerryL said:
.......My advice is to save the money (sorry Jim/ other pros).....
Click to expand...


No need to apologize to me, I agree. I've seen many over-priced (IMO) systems over the years, some very reasonably priced systems, some DIY systems, and they all got the job done.:)


Jim
 
djb_rh said:
I recently replaced two larger scale home automation systems of my own. Both were dealer installed Crestron systems. I liked both systems and I liked my dealer...a lot. But I got sick of the $$$$.

I replaced them both with a combination of iRule and Indigo and iOS apps.

IRule is great for everything that's one-way control. Indigo is great for anything that needs feedback. They mix nicely. K's iOS app is wonderful, and if you do your Indigo thing right you can even control volume on your system directly from the K iOS app.

All of it is completely DIY friendly and cheap. I won't say it's 100% as robust as Crestron done right, but it's way closer than I thought you could get and costs pennies relative to Crestron.


--Donnie
Click to expand...

+1 for iRule. I went from Crestron to iRule and love it. I can keep tweaking it whenever I want and upgrade myself when I change out equipment. It does do feedback and it controls my lighting and audio and video in multiple zones.

John
 
Agreeing with Jim that I too was once a Crestron dealer, once a PHAST dealer (the owners of Control 4 sold PHAST to AMX, and Control 4 is basically an updated version of PHAST), still an AMX dealer, and also a Savant dealer. I too have moved on from some of the past products and probably share some of the same experiences as Jim.

As Jerry indicated it is more important to find a competent programmer/integrator than it is to select a platform. But since you indicate you wanted a DIY system neither Crestron nor Control 4 fits that bill. Savant doesn't either. I cannot recommend a DIY system since I have no experience in that area.

Feel free to PM me as well if you have any questions that I might be able to answer offline.
 
I should probably start by saying that I am a certified Crestron programmer, so my views may be biased. I think Crestron is a very good system, but the quality of the end user experience depends 100% on the quality of the programming.

I have seen Crestron systems that people will refuse to use as they are just to complicated, which then completely negates any benefits of having such a system and on the flip side I have seen systems that are doing the most complicated tasks but making it easy for the user to use.

I agree with the earlier post that Crestron is definitely not for the DIYer as, unless you have experience programming it, you can end up spending days trying to accomplish the most basic of tasks.

There is also the fact that there are very strict guidelines on who should have access to the Crestron programming suite (dealers, certified programmers and, I believe, certain government and educational partners). I'm not here to say whether this is right/wrong it's just the way it is. Just be sure that if you do get access to the software it's up to date as otherwise you could end up having problems relating to firmware/software compatibility.

I've not had a great amount of experience with Control4 so wouldn't like to comment on it, but if you would like any further information on the Crestron side of things then please feel free to PM me with any queries.
 
I'd probably still be using Crestron if they hadn't closed access to their development software. Anyone used to be able to get it. I don't know how many customers they gained with that choice, but they lost at least one relatively big one.


--Donnie
 
I had basically looked at this two as my primary choices a number of years back. Like yourself, I wanted to be able to DIY at will (my theory is: equipment and de-bricking is for dealers, but if I want to put the time & effort into learning how to do it, and wake up one day wanting to change the navigation pad to use flight-stick controls then there's no reason to be FORCED to use a dealer.) Crestron looked too locked-down and Prodigy didn't have the ability to scale-up well upon moving somewhere that would need more. Control4 has a fair amount of resources available for DIY, which range anywhere from dealers willing to assist such users to more grey options.

Other than needing to replace my controller earlier in the year when the NIC died after some-number of years, C4 has met my needs.
 
Had a demo yesterday from iRule. What an excellent demo. Looks like this is the system I've been searching for.

I'm currently installing the infrastructure to get this system up an running. I plan to let the installer do all the initial programming, as I learn how it works. Then as I continue to build and imporve my system with new componets, hopefully I can take over the programming.
 
I love iRule, but I just want to make sure people considering it know it has significant limitations compared to systems like Crestron or Control4.

The main one being that everything runs on your iOS device. And there's zero communication between iRule instances on different devices. So any "state" you might use only exists inside your iOS device and can't be communicated. So "dualing remotes" can be an issue depending on how you design your system (hint: keep it fairly simple and it's not much of a problem).

Also note that I've found *some* devices that have network control, like certain Marantz receivers and I'm sure others, will only allow one IP connection at a time, meaning the "dualing remotes" situation DOES cause problems. You can hide this by going back to straight one-way control using IR and a Global Cache box (which is how you do all IR) since the GC's don't mind multiple connections.

The other bigger thing is feedback. iRule has the concept, but it's still fairly young. At last check all you can really do is show feedback text within an iRule screen. Not terribly useful. Again, it may have been added by now, but when we were building our setup there was no way to do a volume bar on your iRule screen, for example. If your receiver provides text feedback via the network connection, you *could* have a text field on the iRule screen that showed you the volume number and that would change as you changed the volume, there was just no concept of a way to programmatically associate that with a graphic (or set of graphics or whatever).

And the Kscape has some cool advanced features available through it's network control. Things like a message is generated on the Kscape network port to let other devices know the credits are rolling in a movie so you can bring the lights up automatically. There is no way to do this with iRule, however.

Now, all that said, ALL of the above limitations could be worked around with the addition of an Indigo server. We run one on a Mac mini. If you look at Indigo, you might think "this has iOS remote capability just like iRule, why not ONLY use Indigo?" The answer is that the interface side of Indigo isn't nearly as good as iRule. It's also basically web based and as such is a little slower and more choppy.

What Indigo does do well though is be a middleman state server. Now, I'd never try to use it to completely solve the "dualing remote" state problem. You'll get in over your head and it isn't worth it. But moving down my list above, you can use it for the "one IP connection" problem. You simply make it a go-between to your iRule devices and your IP-limited source because Indigo can take multiple connections and track state.

Indigo also does feedback nicely. You can easily translate text numbers received from your receiver into a graphic that changes sizes, for example, to do volume bars. I don't do that, but it can be done. We do use it to track state in a room with a projector and three TVs that we want to control independently, however. Works fine.

The best use of Indigo, however, is in talking to the Kscape. For those unaware, the Kscape app is awesome. We do have a Kscape control screen in iRule, but we also have a button on that screen that will launch the Kscape app. The big limitation there is you have to go *back* to iRule to change the volume...unless....

K added a nice feature in that the app can be configured to turn on volume up/down buttons. Then it simply publishes the volume control messages on its IP stream of messages. So you setup Indigo to listen for those volume messages and change your volume if it sees them. And iOS actually has a facility for tracking when an app was launched directly from another app and let you return there, so the Kscape App has a button to let you do that if you launch it from iRule correctly. So it "feels" fairly integrated with iRule. (Sadly, the DirecTV app nor no other manufacturer provided apps seem to know about this iOS feature and provide support for it that I've seen. Yet, anyway.)

iRule has another nice feature...you can embed web pages. Either as small views inside a bigger iRule window or you can swipe to a full page browser view. That's handy if you have something like a Marantz receiver with a web server running it's config and you want to be able to make quick and dirty changes (and you can sorta hide stuff like this in iRule as an advanced mode if you want). This is also how we integrate iRule and Indigo's control since *sometimes* it's easier to have Indigo present the buttons and state (this is how you'd do an animated volume bar if you wanted one, too).

Anyway, that's probably more than anyone wanted right now, but I think it gives you a good idea of iRule's limitations as well as how to effectively get around them. For a simple system like a bedroom TV with surround sound, DTV/cablebox, Kscape player, and even an AppleTV, iRule by itself is more than adequate. For more advanced stuff, I really like adding the Indigo server to it.


--Donnie
 
Just a couple of additions to Donnie's comments.

1) You CAN now do "volumn bars" in iRule. I have the graphics for this for volume, treble, bass, LFE, surrounds and center channel. It will show it either in dB or %.

2) Network codes: I have never had a problem with using multiple handsets while using network codes with any of my equipment. I don't have any Marantz equipment but I have not seen anything about a problem with this on the forums. If a piece of equipment can be controlled through the network there is no other hardware required (no gateway needed).

3) The GC gateways have various version. Some will only allow one handset to connect at a time. Others will allow 8 handsets to connect simultaneosly. You need to make sure you are picking the right hardware to match your needs. For instance, my pre/pro is usde for both my home thearter and my family room. I needed to have an RS232 gateway to handle multiple handsets so that i could control in the home thearter while other family members were controling from the family room.

4) I agree with Donnie on his point about volume control using the K iPad app. I have not been able to use the volume contol on the app due to passing of commands (I don't have iRule up with I have the K app up). Donnie's idea on using Indigo to accomplish this seems like a good way to go if you really want this.

5) I haven't tried to automatically control the lights and AR from signals from the K system but I suspect this may be an issue.

6) iRule will run on both iOS and Android operating systems.

7) iRule keeps adding capability. For instance, they can now handle variables. I haven't gotten into this to see what it will do but want to when I get the time.

IRule won't do everything like Crestron and Control4 but if you want to be able to change things yourself on the fly it's great. When ever I get new equipment or a channel number changes on DirecTV is easy to fix.

John
 
Good to hear about the volume bar thing. I figured they were on their way on that, so that's good. I've got it on-screen everywhere that I care about it right now, so never looked back into it.

As for the network thing and multiple handsets, it surprised me to find equipment that had that limitation, but it's just something to be aware of and check for. I agree it should be rare.

Indigo will definitely help you with the listening to the Kscape and doing things based on it's messages. Even if iRule *had* the functionality to listen to the Kscape and do something, there would be no good way to implement it. The problem is that at least under iOS you aren't (at least not currently) going to be allowed to have iRule running in the background and listening to something and doing something based on that. So if you switched from iRule to K-app (or your web browser, email client, or any other app) and your movie ended, your lights wouldn't go back up because iRule isn't running to be able to do it.

So this kind of thing *has* to happen on a middleman kind of server.

But yes, iRule does keep adding new features and their support is actually pretty decent when you have a problem. The online community is pretty good, too.


--Donnie
 
Not sure how late I am to the party but I had a cresteon system and went to control 4 in our new home. I love the reduced cost and DIY capabilities of the c4 system and would choose it again over crestron in a heartbeat.
 
I know this comment is way late, but Crestron does it for me. I know they are expensive, but I have a great programmer that doesn't charge me for every little thing. This system controls everything in my home from Security to AV to Sprinklers to HVAC and lights. The biggest cost to me was the HW. So some items I bought from my programmer and others I bought on ebay brand new. 13 rooms with TVs, 16 inputs from Apple TV's to Roku's to my 5 Kscape players and my personal favorite (AirMedia - which allows anyone that comes to my home to go to an internal website and share their screen - wirelessly - on any TV in the house). All 16 AV sources are available on all TVs in the house; all I had to run to each room was a single CAT5. One last cool item is, my son plays Xbox in his room, the output of his room is fed back (via a second CAT5) back to the central rack where even that can be viewed on all TV's in the house. Again, yes is can be costly, but for me it does everything I could ever ask for. There are cheaper/easier systems, but you do get what you pay for.
 
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