CQC information needed

For hardware, do you mean the server? A server doesn't require much to run at all. For the longest time, I used an AMD2500 with 512MB of RAM for my CQC Master Server, SageTV Server, and database server. No noticeable performance issues at all.

For viewer playback, I use a Fujitsu 3400 which is a P3-400MHz with 192MB of RAM, running XP. The graphics card is pretty awful so the only thing I can't do there is the sliding popout windows, but animation is something that I detest anyhow so no worries there either. Again, CQC doesn't require much at all if you don't do sliders.

For the "programming" of logic/screensbit, if you've seen the tutorials, you know that there's an action dialog box that's heavily point&click, so it's not like you sit and pound code.


For creating custom RS232 drivers, there's two languages:
1) PDL (Protocol Descriptor Language). This is a very simple metadata type language, takes very little time to learn. Here's an example of a 1way RS232 driver I wrote for my Polk XRt12 XM tuner which I did before the "official" one came out. From a complete standstill, it took me about 3 hours to do this which included learning PDL. If I were to have written another one immediately thereafter of similar (low) complexity, it would have taken perhaps 15mins. You can do 2way through PDL too, but that involved me learning more and I didn't feel like it since Dean was going to do a true 2way driver soon enough anyhow.

2) CML, CQC Macro Language. This is CQC's object oriented language. Much more powerful, but requires programming savvy. I can't help you here as I've never needed to use CML for anything I do. You can write macros in CML, but I haven't needed to given the power of the action system.

Finally, if you want to get a 1.5-2 hour overview of how to setup CQC to talk to your devices, create an interface, create scheduled and triggered events (aka rules engine), and link it to something like an Elk, you should attend one of the monthly "Intro to HA" webinars that I give. Here's the signup thread on the CQC forum. By the end of that session you'll know how to do everything but drivers. For that, we also have monthly User Group webexes, usually on the last Saturday of the month @8:30am PST, but given that this month it falls on Memorial Day Weekend, we're still working out when that should be. That's where we typically do advanced topics, such as setting up a 2way webserver, CML, drivers, etc.

The makeup of the attendees varies greatly from month to month, I do remember one month where 40% of the attendees were professional integrators, so you could have plenty of like-minded company (ie, ask questions/etc about how do do this for customers). I don't know if we could find enough pro's willing to commit to a given timeslot, but I have access to a GotoMeeting account if you want a pro-only webinar.

Hope this helps.

Well, definitely check out the CQC site (www.charmedquark.com) and post on their forums to get all the answers you want.

I own CQC however I am definitely a newbee. There are some very experienced users on this site as well as others.

Here is my impression of CQC vs Crestron. CQC hasn't been around as long as Crestron and therefore does not have as many device drivers written yet. However, I think the CQC system is just as programable as a Crestron (general feeling I get from all the research I've done - I don't have any first hand experience programming a Crestron). You can write your own drivers with CQC and many people do. The programming is robust but probaby not as rich as crestron. Again, I don't think you will have a problem with 99% of the things you want to do, but there might be a feature you want that isn't available yet. However, if that ever happens, you can ask the chief programmer, Dean, to make it available and he is usually pretty quick in getting requests in - especially comming from the professional integrators. He takes a little longer to get to some of the DIY user requests (and rightly so).

The other main difference IMHO is that Crestron is more hardware based (hardware controllers etc) while CQC is a software program. So while CQC is extremely stable, there are issues that might come up that Crestron doesn't have to worry about with it's dedicated hardware.

Again, be sure to visit the CQC site and post questions on their forum. I think you will be pleasantly surprised with both the capabilities of CQC and the active support you get from Dean and all the CQC users out there.

EDIT - a took about 45 minutes to write my post since I am at work and actually working today . To answer your question, the CQC programming is open. Meaning you can make it do what ever you want within the limitations of the system. While the actual programing is point and click in nature (you don't actually have to learn the command code and write it yourself) it is completely flexible. There are no preset modules or anything like that. You have to program it to do everything. So people might complain about that fact, but it gives you the greatest flexibility to create what you actually need.

Man, ain't that the truth.


It's absolutely *not* pre-written modules, matter of fact there aren't any at all. Whatever you want to do, you need to create. But there's many of us who share templates, so you can leverage other people's work (or your own, as you create a library of templates).


As they're PCs, you have to use either
1) a PCI Serial card; ie, I personally use the Moxa 8way Serial cards, but i've heard of manufacturers like SIIG that others like
2) An USB-Serial box like the Edgeports.

I prefer the PCI route as I want to have as few external boxes as possible. All my stuff is hidden away in closets & basements, but that doesn't mean I want it cluttered.

WRET AUDIO,

A couple of your comments lead me to believe you may think CQC is a piece of hardware. It is a software program ONLY that runs on a PC. You purchase your hardware separately (RS-232 ports, IR devices etc.).

Yes, you can do everything you want to do (we are also a Crestron shop).

I am not sure how you use the word module but in Crestron a "module" is the same as a "driver" in CQC. So CQC absolutely does come with modules/drivers. Also, CQC can absolutely use parts of code again and again as well as GUI templates. These are must have features for any profession programmer so it's important we are all on the same page.

Oh sorry, my bad, I thought module was a pre-written UI component, where all you could do is plug them in. Apologies for my mis-statements.


I'm glad to hear that it scares you, because it should. A user-centric OS and the infinite combinatorical hardware combo possibilities therein is *not* something to be taken lightly, especially by a professional integrator. You're right - you could easily be screwed by using a PC unless you're quite serious about your approach.

That said, and the real pro's can pitch in, here's where I think your path to happiness could be. I know there's pro's doing installs for CQC now, and they're not eager to embrace PITA instability, so this is a problem that has been solved for:

1) Find a specific server configuration that works, and never waver. This means picking a specific motherboard, specific memory, PCI cards (ie Serial and multizone audio cards), hell even the slots you'll put them into. Once it's done, you can easily image it so you can build future machines quite easily.
2) Strip out as many of the XP services as possible. Here's an example of what I mean. Especially important in that list is turning off automatic updates.
3) Disable/turnoff/lock down Internet Explorer and Outlook Express, so your customers aren't tempted to surf the web on that computer.

I'm sure there's more that i'll think of later, but as long as you follow the same approach that hardware manufacturers do when building controllers (research and create a design, test it out, don't change unless there's a compelling reason), then I think you'll be fine.

Do something like what DIY'ers like me are tempted to do (always upgrade or muck with your PC, never buy the same mobo twice) and you're DOA.

Why? Just buy a stable business PC that unlike consumer PC's doesn't constantly change. An example is the Dell Optiplex. I'm sure HP has an equivalent as well.

From the CQC "Buy it" webpage....



hmmmm...the 2partsfusion.com link doesnt work though

Honest question, I really don't know - does Dell change their motherboard or other internals? Just wondering how stable those really are.

It's actually not too hard to come up with a good, stable configuration if you want to put your own together. There are lots of people out there who have already done it, so the trick is 'by behind the curve', i.e. don't buy bleading edge components. You don't need them for this application, and you can be sure that you are buying stuff that is well vetted. There's lot of info out there about what components are good.

But, having said that, if you don't feel comfortable with that, then just buying off the shelf Dell machines will work just fine. These systems have been well tested and will not give you any troubles. You will though generally want to buy them without an OS and install a standard OS image of your own most likely, which has been stripped down to no more than what is needed. Dell and other companies of that sort do change components over time, but they re-test the new components, so they do that work for you.

Get a RAID1 based system, for drive redundancy and it will be quite stable. If you have a drive problem, just replace it and restart the machine and it'll be replicated in the background on the fly. RAID1 one is just two drives that are redundantly written to. There's a little performance hit on writes, but it doesn't matter in this kind of application.

This type of system will run for years without problems. You can periodically check in on it via remote desktop login without having to go to the customer site and make sure everything is happy, make changes to the user's automation solution and so forth.

In terms of configurabilty, there aren't many limits. CQC has two levels of programming language. One is the 'action' which is the point and click level. It supports simple If/Else type logic and you can do the bulk of what most people need to do at that level. But we also have a general purpose language, CML, which you can invoke from your actions. You can put common logic into CML macros and keep the system very flexible by just calling those pre-fab CML macros.

On the user interface side, it's highly configurable. It's really a sort of programmable GUI object system, where the 'widgets' (our name for the buttons, text, toolbars, etc...) can send each other (or the system) commands to do things. So you can actually do quite fancy interfaces and even implement things like login screens and so forth, purely using the programmable features in the user interface system.

"Business" PC's typically change parts much less often and used "tried and tested" parts. If you look at Dell's Optiplex line they might go through 8 major line changes in the Inspiron line for every 1 in the Optiplex line. That's a WAG, but that's the way it works. Business purchasers don't care about the latest and fastest processor, they want tried and true. That's the theory anyhow, whether they are really more stable I can't say with absolute certainty, but I do think they are.

I *personally* believe this is a really bad choice for an integrator (it might be a great choice for DIY). I would not want to be responsible for warrantying the machine nor do I want to become a PC builder. Not when I can go online and buy a good stable machine that will be more than adequate to run CQC for $800 or less.

You should maybe partner with a local Custom PC builder that has a good business rep.

Im not a fan of Dell, HP, Compaq or IBM PCs used in 24/7 mission critical apps. For the past 15 years I have seen those name brand so called business PCs fail all the time...Why? because the crap that is put in side

We use a local custom PC company that only deals with high end, high availability PCs. Seriously, we use PCs to run our new 10 million dollar mini-stacker system 24/7 so failure is not an option.

while I agree with what IVB and the others have said, I would also suggest that you pick a server that looks more like an appliance and less like a PC. Don't tell them it is a windows PC, because it really isn't, from an CI point of view, it is a Windows based application server. and lastly, if you don't give your customers the Crestron programing tools so that they can muck things up, then don't even give them the login to the server, lock it down, and lock down BIOS... after all it isn't really a PC anymore... if you want to give them some access, hook up a touch screen, and create a "maintenance" Template that lets them add and remove music/whatever you want to allow them to do/etc... and set CQC to run it in kiosk mode.

just some random thoughts... its late, so they probably aren't worth much...

If you are a customer installer then of course you can make it part of the deal that this machine you are putting in the closet as the controller is not to be touched, or the warranty is lost, and they will have to pay you by the hour to get it happy again. Of couse you don't have to tell them that you just ran Acronis on their system before you delivered it and made a copy of the whole drive, and that it only took you an hour to get it back up again :-)

Just a quick side note: My company uses Dell computers to control the equipment we sell and I do believe it is the Optiplex line. What's important to note however, is that the computer is warrantied by Dell, not us. So if there is a failure with computer hardware it's Dell who has to fix it, not us.

I don't know what kind of volume you sell but you may be able to setup a business account with them that includes an extended warranty on what you purchase then if anything goes wrong within the warranty period (for us it's 3 years) a call to Dell will have someone out to fix it.

Having said that, my business isn't A/V installation so this may or may not be a plus for you. Something you may want to keep in mind when weighing your decisions, though.

I figure this may be a good place to ask some questions about CQC as it seems to be accumulating a good amount of information.

I'm still a little confused on how a whole system is installed. You have a central server which connects to devices via IR, RS-232, etc. That server runs the CQC software which allows you to create and edit the user interfaces. This is where I get a little confused. What kind of panels are needed to display and interact with this interface? Can you have different interfaces for different panels (say, based on which room the panel is located in)?

Also, on a side note, how does everyone distribute rs-232 control to various places around a home?

I'm not trying to push you off, don't get me wrong. Can I ask you to scan this document first? It doesn't answer all your questions, but it does describe some of it plus my architecture. Once you read through that, I can talk to specific terminology which would make this conversation easier.

For RS232 control in remote locations, I just used CAT5 with the RJ45->DB9 adapters. I didn't need to do that too much as I used CQC to centralize almost all my stuff, so there's very little actual equipment in remote rooms.

Alright, I went ahead and read through that. I also found a link to the Kube RoomVue panels on the CQC website. The one thing that is still confusing me a little bit is whether or not you can have different interfaces for different panels.

I might post a new thread because I'm trying to figure out some specifics for a new place we're going to be building.

Depends on what you mean by panels. If you mean tablet PCs like the Fujistu 3400 where they each have their own OS instance and environment variables like I use, it's easy peasy. If you mean multiple monitors all run off a single PC using something like BeTwin, i dunno.

For me, using multiple 3400's or PCs, I just set an environment variable (CQC_USERNAME) to a different userid on each panel. Then, I assign a different default template to each userid. Each template calls the same overlays (sub-template for the bottom half of the screen), but has a different set of navigation at the top and a different default overlay sub-template for the bottom. That way I only code the sub-templates once.

Here's some examples. Finally at the end is the default template for my kids PC. They're 5 &3, so they don't get the same stuff we get.

Examples:
1) Kitchen "wrapper" template.
2) Family room wrapper
3) MBR Wrapper
4) Kids screen (no sub-templates used here)


Kitchen:




Family Room:




MBR:




Kids PC:

Yep that's exactly what I was wondering. I will be using probably 4 (at least) separate touch panels around the house to control everything. I'll start a new thread so that we can talk more specifics.

I use 3 viewsonic touchscreen airpanels (2 15" and a 10") and Im starting to get my templates created for my smaller 2 Ipaqs.

Essentially any portable device that runs windows (ie...XP, Windows Mobile 5.0) with network connectivity can run CQC templates.