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New Driver Mates Crestron Lighting with Control4 Automation
Just in time for Valentine’s day: Control4 + Crestron = Love
Extra Vegetables, a U.K.-based Control4 solutions provider, has developed a driver enabling users to control their Crestron lighting system with Control4 touchscreens and other interfaces.
During Integrated Systems Europe (ISE) earlier this month, EV principal Simon Scotland told CE Pro, “A lot of dealers do like Crestron lighting. We’ve been getting a lot of requests for it [a driver], so we made it.”
He adds that the software is particularly useful for retrofit jobs in which Crestron lighting has already been installed.
EV marketing director Jane Scotland explains, “In the same way that Control4 dealers have been able to specify Lutron, Clipsal and Rako lighting alongside Control4’s own offerings, we have now extended this to include Crestron lighting as well.”
The EV software works like a keypad emulator for Crestron controls, so you won’t get the full functionality of an all-Crestron solution, according to Jane Scotland: “The driver is only designed for simple key-press communications from the Crestron environment to the Control4 one. This is enough for lighting and simple AV control.”
The driver also allows the recall of lighting scenes defined within the Crestron system and control over the vacation scheduler.
EV isn't the first company to pair Crestron (or AMX for that matter) with a third-party home automation system. For example, Germany-based Empure and the former Emulinx have both created integration software that enables Philips Pronto remotes (RIP) to operate those control systems.
Just in time for Valentine’s day, the Crestron driver from Extra Vegetables is available today.
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Article Topics
News · Product News · Home Automation and Control · Control Systems · Lighting · Events · ISE · Control4 · Crestron · Extra Vegetables · Ise 2011 ·About the Author
7 Comments (displayed in order by date/time)
They did not need or use crestron software in the driver, it is simply software that takes one systems commands, converts it to communicate with what the other system is expecting and vice versa. “Middleware”, if you will. I think this is FANTASTIC! Great Job, EV!
FYI - Crestron Lighting and keypads can operate as a completely standalone system with its own crestron controller. Control4 is the most user-and-programmer friendly system for the A/V side. Now the two can talk as one system!!!!!!
Why would a C4 dealer want to use Crestron lighting over C4?
Reminds me of the quote from Jurasic Park. “Yeah, but your scientists were so preoccupied with whether or not they could, they didn’t stop to think if they should.”
As for user friendly, No hard buttons on a C4 touchscreen means at least 3 steps to turn on a light, as opposed to a hard button on any Crestron TP can triggure a light scene, or a single light to go on or off.
Greg—I suppose if you’re a C4 dealer wandering into an original Crestron install?
Sure, it can be done. But what business owner in their right mind would position themselves so they get no support from either supplier? C4 isn’t going to support controlling a 3rd partly lighting system using another 3rd party (4th party?) “middleware” as Julie calls it… and God knows Crestron surely isn’t going to support that. Yea, hi, Crestron? I have your lighting system being controlled by Control4 through EV’s middleware, but the presets don’t really work right or only sometimes work. Can you take a look at it? Good luck with that!
All C4 touchscreens have 4 hard buttons on them…
I commend Extra Veggies-this solves a few problems that we have had-
-No Backlit keypads in Control4 land. Now, we can use either Crestron or Lutron.
-Jobs that we took over that were Crestron jobs, the lighting was fine, no need to replace it, but the touchpanels and remotes were needing to be replaced/fixed/reprogrammed
As far as the “middle ware” issue, lots of Drivers are middle ware and you have to figure it out. Until recently, the drivers weren’t certified anyways, and there are lots of solutions that people are creating-this is true in Crestron AND Control4.
I can hear the technical support call now. “sorry we can’t support you on this Non-Certified partner. I didn’t see them list that they were a certified partner with Crestron. If they are not I’ve been told that they could be open for legal action using Crestron software. We’re in France and a friend in the states warned me not to go near this if that isn’t cleared up. Updates would be very much welcome on this news.