movietimepro wrote:Sorry for the slow reply as I’ve been pretty busy. You partially answered your own question actually. A hobbyist would enjoy marketing their talents and abilities to potential companies. That’s exactly what many Crestron dealers do not want and they have a very large influence as they bring crestron the business. They have to invest a large amount of money in product and training to become a dealer. In return they want assurance they aren’t undersold online or have competition from anyone but other dealers that made the same investment. I can’t say I agree with the sentiment which is why I’m here and glad to help within what I’m allowed. There is zero restriction on sharing knowledge and providing assistance... just a line that can’t be crossed into protected software.
Also consider that as a hobbyist, even if one were to have software access, the resources needed to purchase current gen hardware without dealer pricing and the lab space necessary to setup and train with it is prohibitive to most. If the goal is to reach a competence level on your own to be able to market oneself to companies, and compete against established dealers in any realm besides price... one would be hard pressed to get very far before hitting a wall. One would need a wide variety of their most common products to practice with which quickly becomes price prohibitive for current gen hardware. One could simply find work for a dealer and get free training, free access to hardware, and the opportunity to work on systems without buying it all themselves. A hobbyist would be hard pressed to compete with an established company for anything but very small projects, which is why I see no reason at all to block hobbyists out or prevent them from access. I’d much rather have a larger pool of potential programmers to hire because of software availability. As it is crestron programmers are few and far between, and very good ones even more rare. And the ones that are truly great rightfully charge a lot for their time. I code most of our projects myself for that reason.
With all due respect to Extron which is a fantastic company that we also deal with, Crestron is a different beast as it not only requires knowledge of the hardware but also a very significant time investment on the programming side if covering their vast amount of SKUs. While Crestron makes their money mostly selling product, they are really a software company. The back end coding of their product is what differentiates them from competition and why they own the commercial automation market. Other companies make awesome hardware, but the Crestron software is what allows one to do virtually anything with it. It’s completely custom and allows you to write your own code. Crestron is what will allow an extron, Lutron, polycom, biamp, etc to all talk to each other over a unified interface and then flush your toilet automatically when you leave the room. Supporting that is also a challenge so I can imagine how their support staff would have to grow were they to open up support beyond dealers. That can be monetized of course by charging for support, but I get the feeling they’d prefer not to even open that can of worms.
If there are questions I can help answer in regard to their product specifics or even programming, that’s something I’m happy to do on these forums as time permits. My response was a lot more long winded than I intended... sorry about that.
Thanks for the answer, it wasn't especially long winded.
I get that the extra support is not something they want, personally (as I can't speak for everyone) I'd just prefer to have a little more access to using the older equipment I have (I'm not interested in selling my expertise, much less undercutting dealers). The programming (so far) has been fairly straightforward, but this is coming from an engineering background. My issue is that I can't get the "latest" software when relating to discontinued products.
As an example, I have some TPMC-4XG WiFi touchpanels that I can't use because the version of VT-Pro I have is from 2008/9. It only has support for the TPMC-4X, which uses an older WiFi encryption standard and try as I might I cannot get it to connect to my network(even with era-appropriate APs). I've worked around this by using an MT-1000C, which is only a 1-way panel so I have to work around a lack of any feedback from the controller. It feels like a needless limitation compared to say...AMX, who gives their latest programming environment without any kind of login for their site (this was the comparison I was referring to, Extron I don't really see as quite the same type of manufacturer). AMX isn't without its faults I'm sure, but it's more accessible right from the start.
I am happy with my setup, as any hardware limitations I can work around with serial control to external micro-controllers, talking to other Extron devices or even just slaving extra processors (I have a PRO2 and an AV2). The research I did to get this far was worthwhile, if slightly disappointing on the software side. Configuration software of this nature is rarely difficult to work with, it's not super tricky compared to some.