ControlThink Forums

Hi Everyone,

There have been some recent changes here at ControlThink HQ.  Attached below is a message from our Director, Ian Hendler _______________________________________________________________________________________________________________

 

I wanted to take this opportunity to introduce myself, Ian Hendler, as the new director of the ControlThink division.  We are sad to tell you that Chris Walker has left ControlThink, but are glad to say that he is exploring many other exciting opportunities, and I and the entire ControlThink team wish him well in his endeavors.  

Here at ControlThink we have always prided ourselves on being an innovative team that is passionate and knowledgeable about Home Automation and Control Technologies and Z-Wave in particular.  That will not change, and will in fact be even more apparent in the software updates, new products and activities you will see coming from the entire ControlThink team.  As an example of this new focus, in the last 1 ½ months we have dramatically increased the pace of our developments and have produced 5 Betas and a new Release, and this is just the start of some exciting things to come. 

Going forward, ControlThink will be working even more closely with our "parent company", Leviton Manufacturing, Co., Inc and our Z-Wave ecosystem partners.  Leviton has been a leader in the Home Automation Space since we launched our DHC (X10 protocol based) product line in the early 1980's and created the Intellisense http://www.hometech.com/learn/intellisense.html  in the 1990's.  Today, that tradition continues with our Z-Wave protocol-based Vizia RF+ and ControlThink Z-Wave technologies and platforms www.leviton.com/viziarf .  In short, there are many synergies between Leviton's tradition of leadership in the Residential Automation space and ControlThink innovation's that we will leverage going forward.  One of these areas includes online training in ControlThink products as part of Leviton's award winning online EZLearn training Leviton EZ Courses (Vizia RF+ training under products section-Note Registration Required) .  Please note that the ControlThink training is currently under development, but the existing Vizia RF+ training will give you a flavor for what's coming here.   

Furthermore, ControlThink will also be working closely with our partners in the Z-Wave ecosystem.  As many of you know, one of the industry's premier trade shows,  EHX (Electronic House Expo) is coming up this week in Orlando, FL http://www.ehxweb.com/.  We will be working with many of our partners including ADI, Worthington, DDG, Universal Electronics Inc.,  Somfy, and others at the show.  I expect that some of you may be attending this event, if you are please come to the Leviton sponsored trainings and visit our partners at the show.  I would enjoy meeting some of you "face to face" at this event.

Home Automation and computers have always been a passion of mine, and I have been privileged enough to participate in a variety of industry organizations and standards bodies that help to drive the Consumer Electronics (CE) industry such as CEA (Consumer Electronics Association).    Many of you are also very passionate about Home Automation and driving the developments in the space.  You have provided excellent feedback and feature requests which will assist ControlThink and Leviton in continuing to create the high quality, feature rich products that the market is demanding.  In fact, the valuable feedback and feature requests that you make will enable ControlThink, Leviton, and our partner's products to be even better.   In order to further these goals and promote this collaboration, we be holding regular "open" webinars (times and dates tbd) and I encourage you all to attend, I will also be inviting many of our Z-Wave ecosystem partners to also participate. I would invite you to check out the TechHome Division of CEA, there are some exciting resources.  Full disclosure, I am the Vice Chair of this CEA TechHome division http://www.techhome.com/  http://www.ce.org/Membership/Divisions/103.asp  and believe our Divisional activities may interest many of you. 

As to our product roadmap, I also wanted to share that we will have an exciting product release on April 1^st (no kidding).  This free ControlThink Professional edition update (for 2.x users) will feature integration with Leviton's handheld primary controllers http://www.leviton.com/OA_HTML/ibeCCtpSctDspRte.jsp?section=25505&minisite=10024 and permit users to easily and quickly exchange data between these devices and ControlThink Professional edition software. 

In closing, I want to thank you all for your support and I look forward to your feedback and assistance in driving the innovation and technology that we all enjoy.  

Sincerely,
Ian Hendler

 _______________________________________________________________________________________________________________

 To this end, I will now be administrating these forums.  Please address any questions or concerns to me, and continue to provide your feedback so that we can continue to produce the high quality products that ControlThink is known for.

 

 

Is their a drive for the usb stick to connect it into windows CE device or plans to come up with one?

I would be interested to talk to anyone that is working on in now or would be interested in it as a project.

 Regards

Steve  

 

I would really like to see a product roadmap for the SDK and the ThinkStick. These two products have sat in limbo for MONTHS!! We have been promised new features since June of 2008 and none of them have appeared. Please, I beg you, focus some energy on these products so that those of us who are developing custom automation products (or projects) can benefit.

Thanks

I'm hopeful - Any change would be an improvement.  I'm deeply disapointed by the support and documentation for the SDK.  We need documentation, samples, a stable product and better support.

Doug

I thought Chris Walker was ControlThink.   Hey Chris whats up?  I have not posted in a while but I was there in the beginning .. Good Luck.

 

Tom

I also thought Chris was the glue that held ControlThink together. I'm sad to see him leave as he was a smart guy with a awesome personality. Hopefully he will keep us in mind and stay in touch to let us know what he moves onto next.

I also thought that Chris was a great employee, he was very active on the forums and I've seen several "tech support won't respond to me!" posts that he resolved. I hope that the ControlThink sees the benefit of these forums and continues to keep an employee monitoring them!

 Link provided doesn't give any info on specifics for integration w/ leviton handheld or link to download site for 2.xxx upgrade. Where do we go after 4/1 for specific info and download info.

 

 

 

As to our product roadmap, I also wanted to share that we will have an exciting product release on April 1^st (no kidding).  This free ControlThink Professional edition update (for 2.x users) will feature integration with Leviton's handheld primary controllers http://www.leviton.com/OA_HTML/ibeCCtpSctDspRte.jsp?section=25505&minisite=10024 and

Swallenberg,

Future ThinkEssentials releases will be made available to the public as they have in the past: through an announcement in our ThinkEssentials subforum.  I will also be sending out emails when we generate a release, to keep everyone informed.  When the final feature is implemented, I will post a blurb about how the feature works, and what you can expect to do with it.  

nice 

ive tried upgrading to v2.4 (just purchased 2.1 pro in past 2 weeks), terrible user experience and no upgrade instructions or troubleshooting on the web site. i ran the 2.4 .exe file, appears to upgrade fine, but how do launch the 2.4 version? if i click the original icon from the CD install (v2.1), nothing is different and 2.1 still run. there are no new icons for 2.4. this is amazingly frustrating! myles mmendelsohn1@yahoo.com

The EXE included in the upgrades does not actually upgrade your software, it's just a new full copy of the software. To install the upgrade, locate the installed version, and copy the new files into that directory to overwrite them all. Then your shortcut will open the new version.

Is the ThinkStick SDK dead? I see ongoing updates to ThinkEssentials, but no updates or forum activates for issues to the SDK. I have hinged the ZWave functionally of my application on the ThinkStick and really need to know if I should be looking for another alternative.

TJ

It appears to be. I was asking the same direct question, but it was not answered on my previous thread. I also had a small hardware product working with the SDK, but I’ve now changed strategies. Also in the previous message is a URL for some open source stuff that is going on.

Robert

Dead may be a bit harsh. However, the "owners" of Z-wave are interested in keeping it out of the hands of the "average developer"...the guys who make innovation happen in the software world. The suppression is done in several ways: make the proprietary programming API expensive and very copyrighted, and second, make the proprietary programming API expensive and very copyrighted.

Yep, the "average developers"...the little guys...who will be demanding the Z-wave devices to do EVERYTHING, so they can develop applications for Z-Wave, are excluded. The developers are the ones with the vision to bridge the Z-wave product to the end users.

Z-Wave has been around for awhile. I've had my developer nose in it for a couple of years, on and off. I've watched it atrophy and begin its death moan. (Hey ZenSys...got an oxygen bottle?) And, look at the products available...boring...yuk. The one thing that seems to be missing that would at least spark developer interest is a Z-wave tiny black box...weatherproof and having a Z-Wave input pair (low voltage or just switch contact) and a Z-Wave output pair (low voltage or just switch). With such a device...with all the Z-Wave programming codes, parameters, etc. KNOWN instead of obfuscated...there would be developers "breadboarding" Z-Wave to existing products that would at least handle binary switch in/out operations of limited scope.

Boring. Z-Wave is breathing its last, for sure.

This past week marks yet another sticking my nose in Z-Wave to see if there is life. I went to Control Think and looked at the dates on the forums...yawn...dead. I started to search around for ANY Z-Wave development murmurs that were at all contemporary, and, the best glimmer of light I saw was found by Googling: z-wave linux aeon api

It seems the Aeon stick is a better fit than the near death ThinkStick. And the Linux folks are "tinkering" around with Z-Wave development in a full-steam sort of way. Indeed, there is an Open Source API for Linux that is open-ended and growing.

I'm a really ancient developer and I don't like the political bias of this platform being "better than" that platform. Everybody plagarized there platform "bricks" from someone else. Personally, I prefer Microsoft's platform because it's plentiful in end user software and fairly solid in it's "platform base". Computers and the Information Age are still rather infantile in their evolution. So, the man computer interfaces (software) should be fluid, transparent, user friendly and supportive and encouraging of innovation and using the computer as a "tool" whether artist, scientist, or...

So, I like MS. In fact, I really like the Microsoft .NET Framework, for developing desktop or web applications. It's very prolific. I happen to be zeroed in on the C# language these days and prefer it to most others. I think that's because it's a bit easier (to me) than C++ was, and, because I'm still getting my bearing on good solid OOPs (object oriented programming). The .NET Famework and all of Microsoft's stuff keeps a pretty good object tone about it.

 Z-Wave? Who knows...it really is up to Z-Wave gods and their crotchity attitudes, Scrooges one and all.

I'm going to get around some of the clunk in this exploration by using the standard door/window Z-wave module, with it's alternate wiring to a window hardware switch (or anything I want to hook to that capability that also communicates by "throwing a switch" electronically). The fact that that is the only in-expensive way for a Z-wave controlling software developer to do some research and pilot testing for applications development is both a state of the "Z-wave union", and where Z-Wave is at from a very practical, down-to-earth, viewpoint.

Good Luck to all the Z-Wave developers who have picked up Z-Wave to play with and checkout in terms of application development, only to be met with...C-L-U-N-K!