Control4 Progress Scorecard

[CINERAMAX]

I am curious what the first batch of C4 dealers have to say so far.

[Nikojo]

The silence is deafening!

[jterry1]

Bump . . . I'm hoping someone has actually worked with C4 product outside of a trade show situation.

[CINERAMAX]

I am content in knowing what they are shipping to dealers, initially.

The media controller, dimmers,keypads and 10" wifi tablet being the logical choice imo.

[Stash]

I would like to know if anyone has used (in a real world setting) their lighting control system.

Has this product actually been shipped yet???

[avcobra]

its kind of funny that the C4 threads were on fire after CEDIA and now we have nothing. I hope this isnt a look into the future of this company

[02Rips]

I emailed Control4 yesterday and asked if they were actual shipping any product yet. And here is the reply I got:


We hope to begin shipping products by the end of February with a full
product roll out by the end of April.

Thanks,

Amy Wangsgaard | Inside Sales Coordinator
______________________________________
Control4
11734 South Election Road, Suite 200
Salt Lake City, Utah 84020-6432
United States
p. 801.523.3131
f. 801.523.3198
e. awangsgaard@control4.com

[Dean Roddey]

And what did I say was going to be the actual ship date back when they were saying November? I seem to remember saying April and was poo-poohed as being a sour graper.

[PabloReiter]

Dean

you are still being a sour graper!!! :-)

Pablo

[Dean Roddey]

Maybe so :-) But when it comes to these types of projects, sour grapes are very well proven to be far and away the better predictor than happy grapes.

[Max Spivak]

November, December, February, April....

Who cares? What project or product doesn't arrive late? Most do, because building things takes time, testing them takes time, fixing things so that the work or work better takes time.

In the grand scheme of things, a few months doesn't really matter.

In the case of C4, they're building a rather revolutionary product set. At least from a price/performance standpoint. And it works, at least to my satisfaction it does. It did when I used it at EHX.

(Oh, and guess what -- my home theater / home automation project is 'behind schedule' also. No biggie...)

Max

[Dean Roddey]

Well, you have to remember back to the kind of picture that was being painted at the time. If it hadn't been laid on so heavy, and if my utterly obvious observations about the likelihood of such a project being on time hadn't been treated like I was a jealous cry baby, then the current view wouldn't be quite so jaundiced, at least on my part.

As to who cares, one obvious group might be people who believed it would be November maybe. I dunno.

[Max Spivak]

The main point of the picture being painted was that the feature set and price point are very attractive.

Some people doubted that they can get it done by the promised date.

Truism of the shipping delay compared to initially-announced date does not preclude attractiveness of the product.

[Max Spivak]

Speaking of people using Control4 -- here's a link to a Wired article.
http://www.control4.com/company/inthenews/2005-1-wired.htm

[wiredhome]

From the above article:

I assume this is a typo -

Low-power ZigBee also has its own built-in security protocol (the 32-bit to 128-bit AES encryption with authentication found in IEEE 802.15.4). "So your neighbors can hack your light switch," says Gist.


I don't want ANYBODY hackin' my light switch! :o)

[fletch999]

As far as anyone can tell me, the Wired article is more of the same. HYPE. No one has been able to produce 1 shipped product. Regardless of the attractiveness of the products, almost every dealer I have spoken to has either lost or are losing faith.

We haven't heard anything from Brent, who was the biggest proponent on the forums. Anything from you Brent?

[David Richardson]

Spent Mon-Wed. of this week at Control 4 training in Salt Lake. They will as of this week start shipping some product at the end of February.

The only way to hack you neighbors light switch is to know the MAC address of that switch.

The only time that switch broadcasts that MAC address, for controller programming, is to tap the top of the switch 4 times.

Dave

[fletch999]

"They will as of this week start shipping some product at the end of February"

Wow. AFAIK this is the end of January. As of this week they aren't shipping anything. As of the end of February? Who knows? Why would that statement be any more legit than their October dates, November dates, January dates?

And some product? What does that mean? Which product? What will it do? This is turning into a big joke.

Was there any actual working product at the training session? Or was it a static demo like before? Please David, give us some detail form the training sessions. Oh wait, did you have any non-disclosure agreements to sign?

Throw us a bone if you can.

bob

[David Richardson]

I didn't sign a NDA.

A list of products was read of what is shipping at the end of February. No hard copy.

There were demo stations. Some worked better than others. The training should have been held when they had completed working GUI without lockup issues on the stations.

I really don't care to fill out a "Scorecard' on a public site.

Dave

[fletch999]

Thanks David. I'm not trying to be an a-hole here, so forgive my tone.

After what you saw, what is your opinion as to the future? Is this a product/system we as dealers canget behind? Did you see enough even to form an opinion? If you don't want to talk on a public site, please PM or e-mail me. I am truly interested in this, but I have been burned before, so after my initial exuberance, I have become less so.

Anyway, I hope you enjoyed Salt Lake City.

bob

[jgist]

Hey Guys,

Here is an update and sorry I've been out of touch.

We been very busy building in the features our first 50 dealers asked for.

First, to clarify Zigbee and security. Zigbee has 128 AES security so products can't be hacked. Most wireless systems can be hacked into with simple tools.

When we set out we started by bringing dealers in from day one.

The one statement that was said over and over was release it when it's ready followed by please put these features in too.

So we listened and built the featured into the products.

Through out the process we continued to test and ask our control group for input.

The product and software are in final stages with a few systems up and running in dealer installation.

We will also be conducting an on-line event to update dealers on new features in the coming month.

If you have any questions please contact me directly at jgist@control4.com

Thanks

Jim

[TGroom]

Anyone heard any update on this? We are getting ready to build an addition and would like to incorporate this system into our house. Any idea when this product start shipping in quantity?

Tim

[msteelefl]

I saw them at EXH here in Orlando last week, and asked about ship dates. I heard a lot of the 'we'll be shipping in April' talk, but I'm not holding my breath.

[TGroom]

That may be to late for us. :( We may just go with the Sonos system for music and not worry about the home integration aspect.

Tim

[2gdrummer]

what happened, did c4 go out ,no activity on this post, shipping yet? anybody?

[MoG]

latest i heard is shipping in april. guess we'll see next month.

[bhuskins]

Definitely shipping in April. Their dealer side of their website is very informative toward the release schedule. They've adjusted along the way, but the majority of the product line will be out for general release within the next 30 days. Control 4 had a beta home here in Fort Worth that was in our recent tour of homes. It worked out very well during the spring tour that just ended last week.

Brent Huskins
Media Design

[AJF]

That's good news, thanks Brent . Hope it works as hyped I mean advertised .