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Re: Switching audio via an Ocelot and SECU's



"John W" <Don't_Spam_Me@xxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:jbGdnTq6gJgs73_enZ2dnUVZ_sWdnZ2d@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> I'm with you Jeff!  My Ocelot, SECU's, SpeakEasy etc. haven't missed a
beat
> in the 5+ years they've been in service!

No one's saying they're not more reliable than a PC.  Simple is always
likely to be more reliable than complex.  But the whole HA industry seems to
be leaving them in the dust.

> I look at ADI as a "cottage industry" company - small, but very good in
> their specialized niche market.

I look at them from a government and military critical item procurement
standpoint.  That analysis says they are a precariously small shop, they may
have "key man" problems, they are the sole source of their equipment, they
haven't made any improvements for 3 years, they apparently don't support any
of the newer HA protocols and the rest of the industry has grown to the
point where I can buy a whole Mini PC a little bigger than the Leopard for
the cost of a Leopard.  If I were buying these for the USMC, I'd have to
insist on a hell of spares program - maybe three levels deep.  These are the
kind of small shop problems that have led to such a serious shortage of
ceramic plates for body armor for US troops.

> Many companies have almost no support

And I won't buy products from them unless the web has comfortable level of
user-sponsored support.  That's where lots of people using the product in
lots of different environments may even be MORE useful than company tech
support coming from off-shore dweebs who can't even understand the questions
posed to them.

> and, while the ADI board is not perfect, it is a great tool for getting
> questions sorted out with the experts.

There's no doubt about that, but it seems, all in all, that a much smaller
percentage of overall HA experts read through that forum.  That's probably
because it's so bloody hard to
 search and appaers to be equally as hard to see if anyone's left a message
for you.  They would be selling a lot more Ocelots if people here in CHA
were to read of the interesting things that people are doing with them.
ADI, IMHO, is shooting their own feet off with crappy forum software, FAQ's
that aren't and no serious presence on Usenet.

> When required, ADI does jump in on a thread but quite frankly, I'd
> rather have them spend their resources on product development than on
> monitoring web boards!

That begs the question: what have they produced in the last three years of
operating in that mode?  There are people asking for RF, translators, more
memory, bidirectional serial Bobcats and more.  Apparently they've been
asking for years.  If ADI were truly as busy as beavers I can see them not
monitoring the web forum closely.  But that's not what I see.  It tells me,
as Dave suggested, that Ocelots and such are not their bread and butter but
a sideline.

> One could argue in any case, that the best experts
> for answering many users questions are those who are already using the
> products in a similar fashion?

Scan Google for Epia or Via or Mini-ITX.  There are thousands more active
discussions in Usenet, on mailing lists, at the VIA website, etc. then at
the ADI forum.  Which should I trust my house's central nervous system to?
A Mini-PC that I can program in languages that I am comfortable with, that
can replace a SpeakEasy, talk to RS-232, Ethernet, IR, IDE, floppy,
Firewire, VGA and USB without buying more modules and that can be replaced
even if Via goes bankrupt because there are so many units in play.  Or
should I use a controller from a cottage industry that can do only 1/50 of
the above, whose programs look like spaghetti code, whose memory is
miniscule and appears to be not upgradeable, and whose "keepers" seem to
have lost interest in the product?

> X10 is a huge company by comparison to ADI but have poor products and even
> poorer support (they appear to rely on public Newsgroups and FAQ's)?

Hot Button!  When I went looking for FAQs at ADI, I kept getting bounced
back into the forums.  Why do they announce they have a FAQ when they
don't?!!!!  This URL

http://www.appdig.com/adicon_new/leopard2_faqs.htm

which alleges to provide a LeopardII FAQ dumps me in the forum where I see a
list like this:

[new]  Icon 1  Cover for the Lep 2  gdm  3  February 01, 2006 01:54 PM
[new]  Icon 1  IR using LEP2 doesn't work  gdm  7  January 31, 2006 08:31 PM
[new]  Icon 5  Should I upgrade to Leo II?  Steve13  3  January 29, 2006
04:46 PM
[new]  Icon 9  HELP!!!SOS!! Leopard II  Albina  1  January 27, 2006 08:54 AM
[new]  Icon 1  HELP!!! SOS Leopard II  Albina  0  January 27, 2006 05:09 AM
[new]  Icon 1  bad news  Vaidas  4  January 24, 2006 04:07 PM
[new]  Icon 1  Leopard Master or Slave?  Todd R.  13  January 22, 2006 07:03
PM
[old]  Icon 1  PRESET DIM LEVELS  RM  3  January 19, 2006 03:18 PM

Oy Vey Ismir!!!!!  A reverse chronological listing of forum posts IS NOT A
FAQ! :-)

Not only do they PROGRAM in ladder logic, they do EVERYTHING in ladder
logic. They appear to expect users to scan every message in a giant read
loop and pluck out what they need that way.  If they know they've got a
lousy search engine, then can't they PLEASE put things in a FAQ in some sort
of logical sequence.

You've been very helpful to me John, and I feel badly going into such
gruesome detail but you've been at the ADI forum since the beginning and you
probably don't see the utter chaos a first-time user like me sees.  It's
very disheartening, especially since I know a couple of college students
that could produce an excellent FAQ from the data on the site and generally
overhaul it for very little money.  Hell, they'd probably do it for some ADI
equipment to play with.

--
Bobby G.





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