09.01.2007 — Control4 is coming out with its most powerful home-control processor by far. The company's new HC-1000, debuting at CEDIA, "is an extremely fast processor that will rival anything in the market in terms of overall system performance," claims CEO Will West. "In fact, it exceeds anything we know in the market in terms of raw processing power. … Processors in most of the embedded systems are typically less than 300 MHz. We're into the gigahertz range."

The product is less of a controller, and more of a supplement to Control4's suite of control systems and interfaces. There is no ZigBee wireless radio built in. The only connectors are a USB port and an Ethernet port. "Rather than a multitasking box, it is pure hard core," says West. "It runs Director [automation software] and that's it. It allows the rest of the house to do what it needs to do."

The product also includes on-board storage -- 250 GB in the first version, but expanding quickly after that. Integrators can add generic hard drives to increase capacity, as they can with all of Control4's controllers and media servers.

West envisions the unit sitting in a rack, powering a large Control4 system. At around $3,000 retail, The HC-1000 is overkill for homes that only have a few dozen Control4 nodes. "It only becomes relevant once you get into larger homes with more devices," West says.



Control4's other controllers max out after so many loads. The new product "sort of takes the lid off," West says.

He anticipates that many dealers will add the HC-1000 to existing installations to "supercharge their installs," West says. "It is truly for high-performance needs. … Our existing 1,000 dealers I think will eat this up."

Does this mean Control4 is going upscale? Not really. West says, "We continue to be focused on the broad market, but whether we're focusing there or not, our dealers are installing systems in high-end homes."


Click logo for more on Control4