Here is Act's reply to my message:
Dear Mr. Breeden,
Your email was routed to me. Let me see if I can at least "respond" to your email, even though I doubt that I will be able to adequately explain our situation to your satisfaction (and believe me, this is not a canned "cut and paste" reply).
First, allow me to say that the opinions of all our customers are important to us. It is because of input from users such as you, that we have been able to plan the development of our products, even though in this situation, it is clear that you feel that we did a poor job of it.
Second, let me also say that the decision was not made lightly. We have had discussions upon discussions, upon meeting after meeting. Here are some of the problems with which we had to contend:
1. When we first designed the firmware and command set for the ZTHx00, we knew that there would be future necessary upgrades since we knew that as new protocol additions became available, we would have to allow for those new command sets.
2. We also know that we were limited by what was available "at that time". This meant that your ZTH100 had to be built using the only IC chip-set available at that time and we knew that it would have limited memory.
3. When we first designed the ZTH100, we knew that we would eventually need to add the command class that would enable it to configure future devices, like the ZTW100, but at that time, the ZTW100 didn't exist, and neither did the command class to operate it.
Therefore, we had to do the best we could and build a hand-held controller that would initialize, configure and operate those Z-Wave devices which were in existence at that time. However, your statement that you would "need to buy a new controller if I wanted to control/learn the new transmitter." is not entirely correct. Your existing ZTH100 will still be able to "add" the ZTW100 transmitter to your existing network (even though it will not know what to do with it), and then your HomeSeer computer controller will (soon) be able send the necessary commands to "associate" that new transmitter to which ever receiver (or receivers) you wish to control.
While at the recent Electronic House Expo in Long Beach CA, I spend some time with Rich Helmke of HomeSeer, and he was able do the necessary associations with the HomeSeer system. However, I can not speak for Rich or HomeSeer, so please do not take my statement as proof that the HomeSeer system will do that "right now". I have worked with Rich for many years and I know that he will want to do all the necessary testing and documentation before releasing this software upgrade.
Your statement that we, "...have no upgrade plan for the controllers", is unfortunately true, but not for the reasons you may think. We are working with many other Z-Wave partners on many new products. In the next 12 months, we hope to release over 20 new products for use in North America and Europe. After that, we may begin other projects that we haven't even thought of yet.
Do you know what those new products will be?
Unfortunately, neither do we. They do not yet exist. Therefore it is clearly impossible for us to include them into any ZTH100 we are manufacturing now. Plus, as new products are developed, by us or other Z-Wave partners, the enormous number of new commands that will be needed will undoubtedly require hardware upgrades to the ZTH100 before we add any software/firmware additions.
We did consider offering some sort of upgrade "program". But again, we saw so many inherent potential pitfalls that it was simply not a viable option. We considered many different ways to try and handle this:
1. Offer a discount on a new ZTH100 so they could keep their old one as a spare.
Unfortunately, we would not be able to offer enough of a discount to make it desirable to the customer. Besides, how would we monitor it. It would have to be controlled by our distributors and neither we nor they would have any mechanism in place to make sure only those users with the next previous version would get the discount. Imagine the bureaucracy that would be needed to keep such a program running.
2. Offer a trade-in for their old ZTH100 so they get a new one, we get their old one.
Unfortunately, we would have no use for the old one. We explored this idea, but it was clear that there was no market for factory seconds.
3. They send in their old one, we upgrade it, and send it back to them.
Obviously, this one had the most appeal, but again, the obstacles were too great. What if the ZTH100 had dead batteries when it got to us, did the customer realize that the upgrade would cause his unit to forget everything and go back to its factory settings, did the customer know that he would be without his ZTH100 for an indeterminate amount of time, did he understand that he would have to completely reload all their receivers once they got it back? Unfortunately, we felt that the logistics were impossible to handle.
4. The distributor replaces customers old ZTH100's with new ZTH100's, then when the distributor has 5 or 10 of them, they send them in to be updated (as an non-warranty, chargeable price) all at once, we send them back to the distributor who can then re-sell them as refurbished units.
But I don't think any of our distributors wanted to sell the old ones as "factory refurbished".
5. We ship the customer direct, a new ZTH100, he copies the data from his old one, to the new one, sends in his old one, we update it, then we send the old one back to him and he sends the new one back to us.
That sounded like a good idea, but you cannot make a copy of a copy, so once he got back his old one (which was now updated but also back to factory defaults), he would have no way of copying the data from the loaner unit back to his own unit (protocol limitation). Also, we would have no way to be sure we would get the loaner back and even when we did, we could never sell it as "new" and as I said before, no one wants to buy old ones "slightly used".
As you can see, all of these proposals had complications and problems.
Here are some facts that will help you understand the situation:
1. This is not a "bug-fix" it is an upgrade. None of us would think of going to our local electronics story and demanding that our old VCR's be "upgraded" so it would play DVD's. Although that is an obvious exaggeration, we felt that it is similar in nature.
2. Any ZTH100 that has its firmware upgraded, will lose all the node information, schedules, scenes, etc., so no matter what we do, the customer will have to reload everything into his ZTH100, regardless of if it is a new one or an upgraded one.
3. Some people would surely be reluctant to send us their ZTH100 because they have the misunderstanding that their receivers will "stop working" if they do. Their receiver units will still work manually, it is just that they will not have any schedules (timers), scenes, and the like.
4. We calculated the cost of doing the upgrade, shipping both ways, time involved, the possibility of new batteries, then need to include an entirely new instruction booklet, and it was clear that the cost was nearly the same as simply buying a new one.
Therefore, after a lot of thought, we decided that no matter how unpleasant it may seem, we just could not offer any sort of upgrade -- free or not. It is not just for this situation, but for the future. At some point down the road, we will have to make changes (undoubtedly many changes) to the hardware in order for it to accept the new software/firmware changes.
I know this has probably not done much to change your mind, but I do hope that now you understand why we did what we did, and that it was not done lightly. It was only done after a lot of thought, research and consideration.
Good luck with which ever Z-Wave products you decide to buy.
Thank You,
Phil K.
Phillip E. Kingery,
http://www.act-solutions.com
Export & OEM Project Support, for:
- Powerline Control Components (PCC)
- Radio Frequency (RF) Z-Wave
Advanced Control Technologies, Inc. Indianapolis, IN 46278
Ph: 317.337.0100 Ext. 236, Fax: 317.337.0200
Email:
[email protected]