Landmark Upgrades

Brent Simpson · December 2008

Hi Peoples, I could do with some advice please. I currently have four sizeable Landmark customers concerned about the now obsolete Landmark to NetLinx upgrade path (and when I say sizeable I mean large systems - 42 DMS keypads in one of the houses and 40 - 60 movement sensors in each!).

All four clients are technically literate meaning they like to manage their own systems to a large extent which Landmark is perfect for them.

NetLinx and associated equipment is marvelous but so far I not been able to find a GUI replacement solution that allows the client the same drag and drop control and flexibility without getting into text programming.

Any suggestions?

DHawthorne · December 2008

One by one, I've been replacing my old Landmark systems with NetLinx ... but I can't say I have any customers that want to be able to mess with the programming themselves. Just the opposite, in fact. I don't think AMX has a solution that fits that bill, not without you doing a ton of extra work just to make user modifications possible. One of the PC based integration systems might be a better choice, like Autonomic.

Brent Simpson · December 2008

Thanks Dave, I had a look at the Autonomic website. They appear to be based around AV stuff. My systems tend to be whole house automation (absolutely everything that can be controlled, managed and monitored) then clag the AV stuff on afterwards. Any other ideas?

NetLinx has really helped in this regard as it is just so flexible from a control point, but will need to put some serious work on the customer GUI. TPD4 is great in this regard but once again, clients can't just create a room/Area, whack in a keypad, light cicuit, relay and some parameters and they're done. Case in point, a client I've recently upgraded to NetLinx wanted to add another irriagtion area with a couple of relays, and was dissapointed he couldn't do it himself as he used to do with Landmark. Playing audio files is another hurdle - Landmark handled all that but NetLinx is very different - it can be done easily enough - just not by the client (yet).

I will ponder this and a great many other things over a whiskey or two whilst on holiday.

You have a great New Year!

RicardoSiqueira · December 2008

I've been trying to convince AMX to come up with a Landmark like platform for Netlinx for years, but instead they keep coming back with Wizard like applications (Design Express, Visual Architect), which are easy to start but hell to troubleshoot and customize. For serious large jobs, Netlinx Studio is the only option at the moment. I strongly believe that AMX could be way more successful in the residential market if they had a hybrid application: Drag and drog like landmark with Netlinx Studio back door for serious advanced programming. Your clients won't have the flexibility of making changes themselves with Netlinx, but they will have a more stable system than Landmark. A large Netlinx job requires an experienced programmer, specially if you have a lot of touch panels and keypads. In this case, you may need multiple masters, customized modules and well designed functions to handle feedback and multiple user interfaces. I did a lot of Landmark jobs and still maintain a few over the past 10 years and yes they are easier to make quick changes, but I do like the Netlinx stability over the Landmark. Eventually, depending on the change, Netlinx might be even easier for a programmer, but not to a end user client.

Landmark Upgrades

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