Re: Switching audio via an Ocelot and SECU's

["Robert Green" <ROBERT_GREEN1963@xxxxxxxxx>]

"Bill Kearney" <wkearney99@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote

> Any time you come across a website with a crappy search interface you can
> try using google.

[/flame on]

Yes, I know that trick.  But why should *I* have to compensate for their
programming problems or poor choice of forum software?

My greater struggle is that "any time you come across a website with a
crappy search interface" usually means there's something *crappy* somewhere
in the company.  The fact that they put up with their awkward interface for
so long without fixing it is not inspiring.  *They* could put a Google-based
search box using the method you suggest on *their* site to compensate for
their ridiculous "one forum at a time, please!" search engine but they
haven't.   Other sites do that, why can't they?  Instead of useful search
tools, we get to adorn our messages at ADI's forum with lots of nice smilies
and emoticons while the basic requirements of an easy-to-use web forum go
unaddressed.  It embodies almost all of the things I dislike about
non-Usenet forums.

I guess it really torques me that they are allegedly automation EXPERTS and
they can't get their web page automated worth a tinker's damn!!!!!  That's
*not* that kind of company I want to buy automation SW, HW or firmware from.
"We know it's crappy, but we can't be bothered fixing it" is the attitude
such I read from poor website design.  From what I managed to glean from
Google and elsewhere, it wasn't until Bryan Karras, as a vendor, started his
own CPUXA forum that ADI got their act in gear to deploy one - they
apparently had nothing up until that point. A *vendor* had to do their job
for them.  No warm and fuzzy feeling there, either, I'm afraid.

It's really put me off investing any more money in the ADI line of
equipment.  Couple that with Dave's comment that they "lost" the BX24-AHT
that he sent them and a not-very-pretty paint-by-numbers image slowly
emerges.  No new products in 3 years, no RF input, no ASCII string matching
as well as a host of other little "niggles" worries me.  Dave Houston's
one-man shop launches more products more often then they do and he's
disabled!  What's *their* excuse?

Considering I can buy a Pentium class mini-ITX for roughly the cost of an
Ocelot I think I need to re-evaluate my system design.  I'll always be able
to find a replacement controller if I choose the PC-based strategy.  On the
other hand, things could get pretty hairy if ADI goes out of business.  I
keep thinking of the gentlemen from the UK who recently posted with his
burned-out control board who'll have to redo his entire system because the
specialized CPU board was no longer available.  I think I might seriously
look into the Elk line of products to see if they're hitting more of their
marks than ADI.  Although I can't find it with the forum search tool, I am
sure that one of ADI's key technical people left.  I'll bet he took a lot of
"institutional memory" with him.  That's a worrisome problem in a small
company.  It's caused more than one such shop to shutter their doors.

For the things I am trying to do, I'm becoming more and more convinced that
a mini-ITX PC is the proper way to do it instead of the Rube Goldberg-ish
method of converting RF to IR to X-10 and torturing myself with ladder logic
programming to work around the shortcomings of the Ocelot.  For a device
that's strongly oriented towards X-10 NOT to have some sort of X-10 RF
interface (especially when Dave even dumped on e in their laps!!!!) is just
bogus. There's no other word to describe it.  They've fallen asleep at the
wheel, I fear.  [/flames off]

--
Bobby G.