I know MJ Asay personally. He is a good guy and a prolific writer. He is also mr Open Road
over at CNET and was quick to point out what he believes is the fatal flaw in our approach, Control4.
I used to be involved with Control4 during my time as an Entrepreneur-in-Residence with Thomas Weisel Venture Partners, an investor in Control4. The company was doing fantastically well back then (2003/2004), and I'm betting it has easily cleared $100 million in sales by now, and has signed up every major distributor and OEM one can imagine. This is a very, very well-run company. Is there room for an open-source competitor? Perhaps. Remember, however, that Control4 is also based on open source. The company understands and leverages the cost and development advantages inherent in Linux. What, then, would OpenRemote bring to the table?
A slight difference from C4 is that we intend to be hardware agnostic. We are squarely focusing on the software, hence the current fascination with KNX as a protocol to draft on. I keep hearing things from the professionals about C4, some positive like their business model approach, some negative like their buggy reputation and slowness to fix said bugs, Maybe an Open Community approach can help? They don't care they have embraced the hardware model of HA which is tried and true. And they are successful at it. I believe we could even help on the software front. Who knows :)
After all WebMethods was one of the first companies to reach out to JBoss for technology adoption back in the days and their specialty was IT protocol mapping. The plethora of proprietary protocols begs for a standard implementation in the run time to map it all. The protocol is interesting in that it creates a common platform for everyone to map to and integrate at. On that platform you have panel vendors, security vendors, software vendors. I think you will see us in the business of Controller implementations (ideally with the likes of C4) and tooling, potentially via subscription for a token amount.
The fact that they use OSS is relevant to the extent they lower the cost of development and gain an open reputation as they do so. But they are just another proprietary protocol at the end of the day as far as we are concerned, one we can integrate to and will if someone steps up with I need this
.
We are a small community and there aren't too many serious projects one can undertake as hobbies. So we choose our battles. KNX, is an abstraction of a telegram over UDP/IP/RF. By integrating to it, we immediately connect to a live ecosystem of suppliers that populate the platform.
Back to C4. We should view them as a potential partner. If they have a stack of hardware and software and if there is any way we can do to help on the software side, we would love to, I don't know, controller maintenance. At a minimum we could offer a translator from C4 to KNX. That would open up the panel selection. That being said, I liked the C4 touch panel. I like the presentation. They are definitely a company to emulate. Feedback from knowledgeable people is definitely always appreciated.
Comparing OpenRemote to Control4? What a joke.
They are a good example of everything that is wrong with the HA industry, I mean seriously, they are about as open as a Cisco router.
You can't download their software, you can't even buy their hardware without going through one of their who will charge you an arm and a leg for it and require installation.
And that's not even mentioning their list of supported hardware is a joke -- unless you want to use all Control4 brand equipment of course.
BTW, I'm not 100% sure on any of this because guess what, it isn't published on their site.
I would guess that Control4 is saying the same thing as they have something and we don't (in comparison) but I do agree with the sentiment. While Control4 runs on an open source operating system I don't think they're open source.
Hmm, maybe we do have more than they do ...
Author: Linux Smart Homes For Dummies
Your very close. :)
I program products for an HA controller company... Atleast if the protocol is not available already within their set of software, i can build something using their tools but my code runs it, or code someone else has created to meet the need. Their software may not be available to the public... but atleast i can develope with their software... it isn't an open community, but it is a community none the less they have created. I can not say this for control4, or any other company that approaches HA with a COntrol4 type solution, lifeware... Russound... Elan... etc... . I program Crestron systems, of course and AMX has the ability too.
ORC could bridge the gap... Much different than Control4... The CNET article is clearly a promotion of Control4 and not a comparison. Poor article. Where's the beef.
cheers
Marc,
I wasn't quite sure how to reach you, especially giving that you are moving. If you recall, we met in Boston when I was with Unisys and you and I both did a presentation. I then went to EnterpriseDB and we last saw each other smoking at JBossWorld in February. I have since moved on to another company (not open source). Anyway, I would love to help with OpenRemote. In my spare time, I was doing home automation projects for myself and some local clients and though I am not really technical, this lets me marry two of my passions together: OSS and home automation. In fact, my wife and I just purchased a few acres in Chester Springs, PA and are getting ready to build our new dream home as well. Might try to be a guinea pig for your project. Let me know when you need some marketing help!
Have a safe trip to Spain and hope to hear from you.
Best regards, Derek Derek M. Rodner derek.rodner@comcast.net
Hey Dereck,
thanks for joining, that is exactly the kind of community we want to build. Please do participate as the missus and your time permits. I am myself a guinea pig as you know, so my casa automization is su casa automization. I am committed resources and time wise. Looking a lot at KNX, I like the AMX integration. I may even just do (say Vantage on lights) and just use KNX to tie it all. Legrand supports KNX so you always have fallback positions.
Why had you deleted my login (jayakumark) and my comment to your post.. i gave the links of HA that i just gathered for HA because i got interested in this project..
Is this how open community works ?
Jayakumark, I didn't delete your comment, someone else did, probably CB as he was doing a bit of lately. If I remember your entry, it was about a bunch of links to existing vendors. I think we maintain a list like that in the Domotics page. You may want to check it out and help complete it if you find we are missing something you like please do engage in discussion.
Also on the format, you don't need to default to plain text. The editing looks like pain at first but the help button is very good and helps you if you make formatting mistakes in the markup language.
Thanks for the clarification Marc, I am learning to use formatting.