On August 5, 2010 at 19:24, 39 Cent Stamp said...
Prodigy Composer is very easy to walk thru and configure but as i am sure you and everyone else here has already found.. your working inside a very small box. Look at the responses in this thread.. everyone here is a Prodigy dealer asking for help with System Builder. They have already outgrown the tiny box and now they are in a slightly larger box.
Composer does look like a small box. I suppose it has it's place though. "These are not guys who are going to deal Prodigy as Prodigy is meant to be dealt."
How do YOU think it is meant to be dealt? To stay in Composer? To dabble in Systembuilder? I'm curious as to how fast one outgrows Systembuilder. On the other Prodigy thread, Alan said "keep your geek gene in check". By that I figure he meant not to get too custom, just install a good and repeatable system.These are guys who will be doing full blown Crestron systems next year or maybe next month and i am offering up my opinion/advice/history to try and get them to head what i think is the right direction. I spent 5 years learning System Builder inside and out and now we don't use it because our average job is well beyond its capabilities. Before that i spent 2 years learning Application Builder. If i had spent those 5-7 years learning simpl i would have a valuable skill instead of a story to tell.
What you say here makes good sense. I don't think that I will be doing full blown Crestron in a year, but who knows?System Builder is like a WYSIWYG front end for multiple Crestron programs. This is a great idea and it works very well. As an installer i am able to program a crestron system myself. This is the appeal. (Exactly) Its easy to get started with a rock solid product. Your interfaces are autogenerated and then you go in page by page moving fixing changing adding things. If you were using VTPro-e and simpl you would create 1 TPMC-8X file (for example) that could be used for 10 TPMC-8X's. When your client changes from cable to DirecTV you just have to update one menu page on the VTPro file. Obviously its a more difficult program to learn but if your going to spend hours/days/weeks learning one then IMO you should start with simpl.
Changes are inevitable, which makes me wonder how hard those changes will be with Systembuilder and Prodigy. Even with the upgrades that are coming.I dont know the answer to this question because i am not familiar enough with simpl to know if todays current version can edit a 10 year old system. My lack of information is because i went down the wrong path when i reached the fork in the road many years ago. I do know that we took over a 5 year old simpl system and our current programmer was able to make changes to it with simpl. At another job where the client had 3 - 1 room systems that i programmed with Application Builder...i had to rewrite them all with System Builder when he got new DirecTV boxes. My other option was to uninstall all of my crestron software and reinstall Application Builder and have to go thru it all again the next time he makes a change. So i bit the bullet and rewrote the 3 rooms and now fingers are crossed that i can edit them with System Builder when i go there again.
My posts are not saying Prodigy is not for you. My posts are saying that if you are a Prodigy dealer and your now looking for ways to work outside of the box.. that your time is better spent learning simpl. If your not interested in being the programmer in 5 years.. dont try to be one now. Hire one. Handle the partof the business that your interested in handling and find a professional to outsource the other areas to.
I know your posts aren't trying to discourage anyone, you are trying to share your experience and what you learned the hard way. I appreciate that. That's why I asked the questions, I've been reading the threads trying to make the most informed decision I can. It's really hard to know until you do it, but like Hasbeen said on his thread, I've got limited resources, I don't want to pick something and hate it two months later. Or find out that I can't make it work without an enormous investment of time and energy.
My thought is that as an entry level automation system Prodigy is great. It looks good. It seems capable of anything the average user could want and more. At the point that I ever want to step up to full blown Crestron, the smart thing to do is hire a programmer or partner with a CAIP and spend my time selling the systems and letting them program. I just can't hire anyone right now. My plan is that Prodigy will be a tool to grow with. It is just so new that I don't know how that works just yet.
My experience has been that people are scared by automation. They think they won't be able to work anything. But I was describing Prodigy to someone the other day, talking about how the pmx3 could control the lights and tstats and get feedback as well, he thought it sounded cool. If I can get it to them at an attractive price, well........
Thanks Stamp, your input has given me a lot to think about. I'm still waiting on my demo system so I can't even play yet, but my direction is set much better.
G
