iPhone Interface is Old News for Savant

“He said the company is tempted to invite dealers to Savant’s CEDIA booth “and if they have an iPhone, let me take it for two minutes and configure it to control the whole house. How long will it take the others [exhibitors] to do that?”

I’m sorry, but most “others” could accomplish this very thing. It’s not like they will be developing the entire platform from the ground up in two minutes. The exhibitor could have something set up to accomplish the same thing.

Brent’s point about set up time is something that I have scratched my head about with companies offering Crestron Iphone interface applications as traditionally a CAIP or dealer installer has to map all the buttons and logic to the specific control device and more importantly the size of the display.

If Savant can do this button assignment and adjustment natively based on their being based on the same core technologies which have built in automatically smaller display scalability due to the Itouch, Ipod as well as the IPhone it would be a significant advantage .

Andrew

Bring your TPMC8X to my shop and I’ll have it working my system in less than two minutes.

Automatic assignments of devices to GUIs only works when every device in your system has been meticulously entered into the database prior to the time you need to do the install.  In my experience no company has an all-inclusive database.  This means I must spec equipment into a system based on whether it is in the database or not.  Not very custom.  Savant told me it takes 8 hours to add a device to the database.  Someone has to pay for that labor time.

Lastly, am I the only one that doesn’t want my remote control ringing while I’m watching TV?

“By the way, are you recommending iPhones/Touch as home-control interfaces?”

The simple answer: Hell no we’re not. To begin with there is zero dollars in an iPhone interface. Unless you’re an Apple retailer you can’t provide the phone. That’s only the most obvious.

Second, now you’re relying on a product not designed for home automation to control the home. Not ideal. This is also a product the client is going to take with them everywhere? To their home in Aspen? Their home in Beverly Hills? Their home in Idaho? The client is then going to have a new phone in each house!

And then the client wants the new iPhone 3G. Now you have to have the client come in so you can load new software on their new phone.

There’s no way in hell we’re ever going to offer this to our clients.

If you want to make a $6 profit selling an iTouch to a customer instead of selling a quality interface then close your doors and go work for a quality integrator.

The idea of control from a iTouch or iPhone while in the home is absurb and defeats the purpose of being a custom integrator.  It has some legs outside of the home for control, however that should not be what is selling the system but instead an extra conveinence to offer to your customer.

I am glad that you pointed out that Savant is the first company to build a control system around Apple.  It further proves the point that harddrive based control systems are not viable in our industry.  Yes, this means Lifeware also.  In a way the changes in the economy is a blessing.  The quality brands and integrators will rise to the top and the rest will go away.  Good buy Savant!

I don’t think anyone’s suggesting iPhones as their main system interface, just that it can be a handy tool, and a nice selling point for all their popularity.

Interfaces for cell phones, pdas, Nokia 8000, etc. are all being touted as nice adjuncts to a profesionally installed system.

If it is just a nice little selling point and is not being suggested as their main system interface then the Savant story is realy not very relavent to anything.  It is native to their platform, but that realy provides no benefit to anybody.  As previously mentioned anyone can load a project to any company’s panel in a short amount of time and has nothing to do with the development time to create that program.

The frustrating thing is you guys publish these stories like they are industry changing and are nothing more than an advertisment for their brand.

By the way, you guys published a interview with Jeremy at Speakercraft about his iPhone interface where he said that keypads would not be sold anymore.  Maybe Jeremy has a great way to make iPhones profitable for his dealers who need to sell 6-24 of them for a project.  Again, another story that has no merit to helping integrators grow their business.

Julie, I think you’re wrong. Speakercraft is definitely suggesting the iPhone replaces the traditional keypad.

“I hate to say it, but this is the beginning of the end for keypads,” says SpeakerCraft president Jeremy Burkhardt. “Soon any keypad that isn’t emulated on a device like the iPhone will be obsolete.”

http://www.cepro.com/article/speakercraft_launches_iphone_interface_for_mode_multiroom_a_v/

Savant touting this as “native” to their platform is ridiculous. It’s a browser application that runs in Safari, or a widget at best. This doesn’t care what the OS is on the product.

The fact that Savant lays their system on top of a fully-features operating system is silly. It’s less secure to outside intruders, and uses up a lot of system resources. System-on-chip is the way to go for reliability and security.

Ah, yes, Steven—forgot about that Jeremy quote. good catch. What I meant is that no one in the discussions here thinks iPhone will replace keypads.

Gary, if you think THIS story isn’t industry-changing, try these on for size:

http://www.cepro.com/article/jacobs_and_his_amazing_fish_counter/

http://www.cepro.com/article/circuit_city_firedog_employees_defy_cargo_pants_rule/

and these….

Gary, if you think THIS story isn’t industry-changing, try these on for size:

http://www.cepro.com/article/the_ce_pro_complaint_choir/

http://www.cepro.com/article/shrinking_male_population_spells_doom_for_ce_industry/

(I guess they only let you post 2 links in a single comment)

Julie,

Those articles make you human.  I love the research put into the cargo pants story.

I am a little worried about shrinking males, however.  We are already way too self conscious.  Ohhh it means less number of men in the CE industry!  And that’s a bad thing how?

Seriously though,

Don’t be so sure that Jeremy is wrong.  We have to keep an open mind to what is possible now vs. will be invented. Forgetting the phone feature for a minute, the form and function (and price) of an iPhone is better than any handheld touch screen available today.  If you add the ability to dock it where a keypad would normally go, it would be pretty cool.  For $200 bucks, it would never even have to be removed and would be in fact a viable keypad replacement. We are not even touching, pardon the pun, on voice command technology and gesture recognition.  These could eliminate the need for any physical input interface altogether.
Lastly, I have heard Crestron integrators complain about control systems that do it cheaper and faster for literally twenty plus years.  There are many reasons to not fear this, but the first and foremost is the fact that no company EVER has created a system that can be programmed faster, costs less, and is as flexible and robust as Crestron or AMX…period!  I have tried many… Julie, do remember talking to us down in Palm Desert, CA about Premise several years ago?  You can add an unhappy ending to that story.

Ah yes, I spoke about Premise on many occasions—innovative as the first IP-based control system, but doomed to failure for many reasons.

See Why HA Companies Fail