Dean Roddey
Senior Member
We would certainly be happy to make that kind of deal with anyone who can get us hooked up with qualified installers.
What is wrong with CQC?
- Thread starter Dean Roddey
- Start date
samgreco
Active Member
I'll have a bit of time next week. If you like, we can take this off-line and I'll give you some ideas of how it works and what rep agreements are like, etc. And just so you don't worry too much, rep agreements are typically 30 day notice of termination. So if you decide someone isn't working out, or doesn't fit as well as you thought. You only have to give 30 days notice.
I still know lots of reps
I still know lots of reps
Dean Roddey
Senior Member
Sure, just e-mail me at support at our domain.
bbrendon
Active Member
Dean Roddey said:
I'm late to the party... Just some full disclosure for others. I use CQC quite heavily but at the same time, I'm actively looking for an alternative that fits my needs. I haven't found it yet. CQC is actually quite amazing and I've stuck with even with all of its faults.
Regarding what I think is severely wrong with CQC.
1. Responses from you like the last one. I've seen some of this on the CQC forums. It's fine, everyone is human. I feel your personality traits are getting in the way of some sanity sometimes. There are so many ways to hack a home automation system it's a joke. I just found a major security hole in the CQC UPB driver. If you want to speak like this, then I would have expected it to be pulled from CQC, a CVE posted, and a patch released. You can't play both sides. Pick one.
2. CQC reliability. I love the vote "you FEEL CQC isn't reliable". SERIOUSLY?? I KNOW its not reliable. I've found SO many bugs that crash it. I even changed my network two weeks ago it make it "CQC friendly". ... guess what, happened a week later? It crashed.
3. The GUI is a Windows GUI but it doesn't act like a Windows GUI. I feel like I'm in Sun's CDE interface sometimes.
4. Web-ish-ness. No web stuff. Everything is done using Win clients.
If you were to order the priority for me from above. Its #2, #3, #4, #1.
Dean himself is the lowest. He works hard and tries hard. Dean, you need a business coach and a partner to work with you on the Code.
I run a business with a partner. After doing it with him for 10 years, I would NEVER EVER do it myself. You need another person to kick your xyz into line and peer review what you think is good, but in reality is a dumb idea.
bbrendon
Active Member
Dean Roddey said:
I've thought about this. I could see doing commercial automation but definitely not homes. IT people know all to well when the user is in control it gets ugly. I've talked to some colleges about it too and we all agree it would take a special breed of person to want to do HA for homes.
Anyway, its possible, but very hard because most IT people run the other way.
Dean Roddey
Senior Member
bbrendon said:
Well A) You didn't tell me, so I wouldn't have know this. B) the UPB driver is not written by us, so it's at your own risk. I'd certainly be happy to indicate that it has a security flaw in the docs C) does this mean we shouldn't take security seriously and just ignore everything?
bbrendon said:
You have to understand that CQC has to exist in a vast variety of environments. You are apparently the only one having these issues. If you move to another product, you may well find that you are having problems that no one else is having, or seeing someone constantly posting about a problem that you (and no one else that you can see) is having. It's sort of the nature of the beast for complex systems not running on fixed, proprietary hardware. If you don't have it professionally installed, you may have to deal with such issues.
The same goes for the hardware you choose to use. Most folks have no problems with product X, some never get it happy. I see the same thing for pretty much every product our customers use. You see it on every forum related to these types of products. And those usually ARE proprietary hardware with a fraction of the challenges that a product like CQC has.
But, nonetheless, CQC is well known to be a very stable product, and users constantly back that up with their comments. I understand your frustrations, but if CQC was really unstable, don't you think there would have been more than 2 votes to that effect I this poll?
bbrendon said:
This will be dealt with. The early work has already begun.
bbrendon said:
This is also being dealt with. The web client will never be as nice as the Windows ones, since it's just not powerful enough a platform, but it'll get the job done.
bbrendon said:
That requires the revenues to pay the other person, sadly.
pete_c
Guru
Personally going to the commercial world of residential or small business automation can be a real PITA.
I did try this in the 1990's relating to POS sale stuff. It related to a friend who had an established legacy POS customer base and migration to computer based POS stuff.
IE: friend knew everything about legacy POS but nothing about computer based touch screen POS at the time; well it didn't exist.
The migration was easy, the money was good (up to 100k + (1990's using DOS / propietary client software) per location and it was only 3 of us). Did a set of Wendy's franchises (well and others at the time) before Wendy's came up with a computer based POS system. Also recall doing a high end establishment at the time. (dinner for two > $100 or more). It was interesting because worked with 2-3 Lettuce entertain you folks which were the base start up organizers of the establishment (they lived there for a bit - lots of energy). Networking was Novell and there was much serial stuff in place - IE the place was wired very well as the contractor did whatever we asked. Issues did crop up with the attempt to tie the POS sales consoles to the back end accounting servers relating to bean counting automation. Relating to the automotive and Bank industry though I was able to bridge that early MS stuff to the IBM stuff using an AS400, Rumba stuff, MS SQL screen scrapers et al in the 1990's. The financial / automotive industry had much larger money buckets to play with at the time.
The support was also easy but time consuming. We went immediately to monthly service support type of structure which worked fine.
Rewind to the 1980's and using an Amiga / Amiga toaster for a commercial TV station in Chicago. Intermixed in that stuff was dowloading television stuff from satellites back then for pennies comparing the cost to then utilized television station commercial equipment in Chicago. It was way better, faster and much cheaper at the time. Geez when I did a tour of the engineering stuff (TV stuff) they were using mostly equipment from the 1960's / 70's to get the job done; very antiquated stuff. Concurrently did a local TV cable cooking show pro bono using this old antiquated stuff (station or mobile) such that I learned all about this stuff in the 1980's.
Fast forward now to the recent 2000's. A automation peer did a pro bono commercial software automation configuration using residential automation software for an established business.
While he is one person doing this; he did install multiple wireless touchscreens and connected them to a base software set up. It worked and did look neato; but the support was too much for one person and the client knew a bit about computers but really not enough to support themselves.
In retrospect relating to support of software and stuff. I worked for a large bank in the 1990's. Some deal had been made at the higher ends of the to utilize some MS SQL software custom clients that talked to the back end of the bank. This software was primarily used for overdraft and the mortgage department. Tiny company with a small amount (1-2) individuals that knew the mechanics of the software (well and the owner) and a bunch of sales folks that had no IT knowledge base but could sell their mothers. I do remember having an issue with the mortgage pieces of the software (it was just one box with a spare) and calling the owner of the software company until some 2 AM in the morning. The bank and software had made him a millionaire (in the 90's). I did sort of tell him off at 2AM relating to the support structure and lack of documentation for his software. A similiar thing happened in the 2000's with a gas and oil company using a custom database piece of software (from the UK) that talked to a flat Oracle database. Gee it was like Crystal reports or BO on steroids. Only the company was tiny with lack of documentation and resources. This caused much grief as the company was made to send some 4 clueless individuals here from the UK to fix our issues. Well it was good in one way and bad in another way because the resources only occupied space and sat on the phone 24/7 with the folks in the UK never solving our issues. It was a small company with some great software and did make the owner a millionaire.
There now we have where you if you want to play in the big leagues you have to provide something that will compete with the new players of automation with unlimited money buckets and really not caring how much monies are lost in their endeavours.
Relating to making monies in DC; I have a relative that moved thousands of miles away from her hometown after graduating college that is today a millionaire at a tender age of 25 doing what she learned to do best since childhood; while on an opposite extreme her younger cousin (not knowing what he wanted to do with his life) today decided it was better to kill himself (sad news).
This is my best guesstimate relating to current topic of automation software which has changed a bit since OP.
I did try this in the 1990's relating to POS sale stuff. It related to a friend who had an established legacy POS customer base and migration to computer based POS stuff.
IE: friend knew everything about legacy POS but nothing about computer based touch screen POS at the time; well it didn't exist.
The migration was easy, the money was good (up to 100k + (1990's using DOS / propietary client software) per location and it was only 3 of us). Did a set of Wendy's franchises (well and others at the time) before Wendy's came up with a computer based POS system. Also recall doing a high end establishment at the time. (dinner for two > $100 or more). It was interesting because worked with 2-3 Lettuce entertain you folks which were the base start up organizers of the establishment (they lived there for a bit - lots of energy). Networking was Novell and there was much serial stuff in place - IE the place was wired very well as the contractor did whatever we asked. Issues did crop up with the attempt to tie the POS sales consoles to the back end accounting servers relating to bean counting automation. Relating to the automotive and Bank industry though I was able to bridge that early MS stuff to the IBM stuff using an AS400, Rumba stuff, MS SQL screen scrapers et al in the 1990's. The financial / automotive industry had much larger money buckets to play with at the time.
The support was also easy but time consuming. We went immediately to monthly service support type of structure which worked fine.
Rewind to the 1980's and using an Amiga / Amiga toaster for a commercial TV station in Chicago. Intermixed in that stuff was dowloading television stuff from satellites back then for pennies comparing the cost to then utilized television station commercial equipment in Chicago. It was way better, faster and much cheaper at the time. Geez when I did a tour of the engineering stuff (TV stuff) they were using mostly equipment from the 1960's / 70's to get the job done; very antiquated stuff. Concurrently did a local TV cable cooking show pro bono using this old antiquated stuff (station or mobile) such that I learned all about this stuff in the 1980's.
Fast forward now to the recent 2000's. A automation peer did a pro bono commercial software automation configuration using residential automation software for an established business.
While he is one person doing this; he did install multiple wireless touchscreens and connected them to a base software set up. It worked and did look neato; but the support was too much for one person and the client knew a bit about computers but really not enough to support themselves.
In retrospect relating to support of software and stuff. I worked for a large bank in the 1990's. Some deal had been made at the higher ends of the to utilize some MS SQL software custom clients that talked to the back end of the bank. This software was primarily used for overdraft and the mortgage department. Tiny company with a small amount (1-2) individuals that knew the mechanics of the software (well and the owner) and a bunch of sales folks that had no IT knowledge base but could sell their mothers. I do remember having an issue with the mortgage pieces of the software (it was just one box with a spare) and calling the owner of the software company until some 2 AM in the morning. The bank and software had made him a millionaire (in the 90's). I did sort of tell him off at 2AM relating to the support structure and lack of documentation for his software. A similiar thing happened in the 2000's with a gas and oil company using a custom database piece of software (from the UK) that talked to a flat Oracle database. Gee it was like Crystal reports or BO on steroids. Only the company was tiny with lack of documentation and resources. This caused much grief as the company was made to send some 4 clueless individuals here from the UK to fix our issues. Well it was good in one way and bad in another way because the resources only occupied space and sat on the phone 24/7 with the folks in the UK never solving our issues. It was a small company with some great software and did make the owner a millionaire.
There now we have where you if you want to play in the big leagues you have to provide something that will compete with the new players of automation with unlimited money buckets and really not caring how much monies are lost in their endeavours.
Relating to making monies in DC; I have a relative that moved thousands of miles away from her hometown after graduating college that is today a millionaire at a tender age of 25 doing what she learned to do best since childhood; while on an opposite extreme her younger cousin (not knowing what he wanted to do with his life) today decided it was better to kill himself (sad news).
This is my best guesstimate relating to current topic of automation software which has changed a bit since OP.
Dean Roddey
Senior Member
For folks doing residential, they are sort of likely to have two scenarios. One is, I'll sell you a prefab setup, that we know works and that uses hardware from this list of acceptable hardware, including routers and WAPS. We know this stuff works and is reliable, and we can sell you a setup based on this for price X and we'll give you a maintenance contract for a reasonable price. OR, if you want something fully customized that uses the hardware you choose, it's going to cost some multiples of X and all support is charged hourly, with a minimum charge no matter what.
In the former case they reuse a lot of stuff that they've long since worked out for that set of hardware, so that also helps keep costs down. It's the modular house sort of deal. In some cases, they may even have a completely turnkey option that is already effectively done, maybe with some very basic tweaking for each site.
And of course, just because you have a powerful, two way system like CQC, that doesn't necessarily mean you need to make use of it to start. You could always, for instance, get in the door with a simple, IR based, home theater solution for a low price. Once you are in the door, if they like the result, then you have a potential upsell over time to make more use of the product already in place.
Anyway, the folks who do it for a living, have worked out these sorts of things so that their support costs are limited (and compensated.) And they tend to work with gear they know because they've used it over and over again. So they aren't learning on the job every time. And they reuse screens and logic that they have refined over time, so that the issues have been worked out.
Bryan, our Dallas installers who is putting in all of the Pluckers sports bars and other commercial sites, clearly is happy with the reliability of the product in a vastly more challenging space than a residential setup would represent, controlling 50 or more TVs, music playback, multiple video sources and the scheduling thereof to various TVs, digital signage, and other stuff.
And the installer space seems to be growing quickly. With both the economy picking up and the ever increasing visibility of automation as something modern and cool, the future looks pretty good. According to CEPro it's been growing by double digit numbers yearly, and on places like RemoteCentral I don't see pro folks there complaining about lack of business or anything.
In the former case they reuse a lot of stuff that they've long since worked out for that set of hardware, so that also helps keep costs down. It's the modular house sort of deal. In some cases, they may even have a completely turnkey option that is already effectively done, maybe with some very basic tweaking for each site.
And of course, just because you have a powerful, two way system like CQC, that doesn't necessarily mean you need to make use of it to start. You could always, for instance, get in the door with a simple, IR based, home theater solution for a low price. Once you are in the door, if they like the result, then you have a potential upsell over time to make more use of the product already in place.
Anyway, the folks who do it for a living, have worked out these sorts of things so that their support costs are limited (and compensated.) And they tend to work with gear they know because they've used it over and over again. So they aren't learning on the job every time. And they reuse screens and logic that they have refined over time, so that the issues have been worked out.
Bryan, our Dallas installers who is putting in all of the Pluckers sports bars and other commercial sites, clearly is happy with the reliability of the product in a vastly more challenging space than a residential setup would represent, controlling 50 or more TVs, music playback, multiple video sources and the scheduling thereof to various TVs, digital signage, and other stuff.
And the installer space seems to be growing quickly. With both the economy picking up and the ever increasing visibility of automation as something modern and cool, the future looks pretty good. According to CEPro it's been growing by double digit numbers yearly, and on places like RemoteCentral I don't see pro folks there complaining about lack of business or anything.
pete_c
Guru
Yeah here just did a quickie google of some vendors on CT and put together a quickie snapshot of what they are selling / pushing today. Note that this was a quickie google and I do not work for any of these companies.
I have received emails relating to Zapato Security systems.
About Zipato (note that it has been mentioned here on the CT website).
Zipato is cloud based home security and automation system allowing customers to make their home safe, comfortable and energy efficient. Using both wired and wireless technology for connecting home devices, Zipato provides great flexibility for installers and complete peace of mind for homeowners.
Zipato has the strong and ambitious team of highly skilled electronics and software engineers with expertise in various areas of information technology. This way Zipato is differentiate itself by constantly innovating in home automation technology, helping customers in 50+ countries worldwide to make their homes smarter.
Looks to be a bunch of proprietary modular like connected ARM boxes (RPi's) using that KISS thing in simplicity and price.
I know their HQ is in the EU but couldn't find it this morning. I couldn't find any references to their HQ on their website.
Found it.
About Tri plus grupa
Tri plus grupa is a private limited company registered in Croatia. Tri plus grupa d.o.o. is a technology providing company and since the beginning of 2010 its focus is on development of Cloud based M2M platform. The company has an ambitious and experienced team which includes the co-founders with extensive experience in field of telecommunication services and core development team, which consists of highly skilled electronics and software system architects and programmers with different backgrounds. The team has expertise in various areas of information technology needed to create a multifunctional product that is extremely intelligent and user friendly at the same time. This combination of skills and experience creates a solid base and ideal team for developing a fully integrated complete intelligent building system.
About Zipato
Zipato is cloud based home security and automation system allowing customers to make their home safe, comfortable and energy efficient. Using both wired and wireless technology for connecting home devices, Zipato provides great flexibility for installers and complete peace of mind for homeowners.
A quote from someone checking out their stuff.
I have received emails relating to Zapato Security systems.
About Zipato (note that it has been mentioned here on the CT website).
Zipato is cloud based home security and automation system allowing customers to make their home safe, comfortable and energy efficient. Using both wired and wireless technology for connecting home devices, Zipato provides great flexibility for installers and complete peace of mind for homeowners.
Zipato has the strong and ambitious team of highly skilled electronics and software engineers with expertise in various areas of information technology. This way Zipato is differentiate itself by constantly innovating in home automation technology, helping customers in 50+ countries worldwide to make their homes smarter.
Looks to be a bunch of proprietary modular like connected ARM boxes (RPi's) using that KISS thing in simplicity and price.
I know their HQ is in the EU but couldn't find it this morning. I couldn't find any references to their HQ on their website.
Found it.
About Tri plus grupa
Tri plus grupa is a private limited company registered in Croatia. Tri plus grupa d.o.o. is a technology providing company and since the beginning of 2010 its focus is on development of Cloud based M2M platform. The company has an ambitious and experienced team which includes the co-founders with extensive experience in field of telecommunication services and core development team, which consists of highly skilled electronics and software system architects and programmers with different backgrounds. The team has expertise in various areas of information technology needed to create a multifunctional product that is extremely intelligent and user friendly at the same time. This combination of skills and experience creates a solid base and ideal team for developing a fully integrated complete intelligent building system.
About Zipato
Zipato is cloud based home security and automation system allowing customers to make their home safe, comfortable and energy efficient. Using both wired and wireless technology for connecting home devices, Zipato provides great flexibility for installers and complete peace of mind for homeowners.
A quote from someone checking out their stuff.
Dean Roddey
Senior Member
One thing I find interesting (in a bad way) is how people will shy off of a company like CQC because of our (current) size, despite the fact that we've been in business now for 14 years. Other companies can start and die off, abandoning their customers, but as long as they have a really nice web site (and hide their real situation behind marketing and bravado), people will just continue to jump on the next one of those, and ignore the company that's been here all along, making real sacrifices to bring a good product to market and keep it there. The company doesn't even have to have a real product out anymore, e.g. Kickstarter, and in all too many cases never will or it will never live up to what was promised.
But, hey, I'm not bitter or anything...
But, hey, I'm not bitter or anything...
