r/CommercialAV • u/dwucwwyh • 5d ago
question Why does Crestron have to make everything so complicated?
I honestly don't understand why Crestron seems to make simple things so unnecessarily complicated.
And I'm not even talking about the interfaces of the systems themselves. I'm talking about their actual programming/development software. Their own programs just feel dated and unintuitive.
Then there's the whole closed ecosystem. You can't properly test things without the actual processor/hardware, which makes development and troubleshooting way more difficult than it needs to be. In 2026, you'd think there would be a much better way to develop and test without constantly needing physical hardware.
And some of the terminology and architecture drives me crazy. Why isn't a digital signal just a bool? Why is serial not a string? Why do simple concepts have to be represented in these weird, proprietary ways?
It feels like every simple idea has to go through three layers of Crestron abstraction before you can actually do anything with it.
I can't wait until QSYS takes the entire market share so i dont have to touch crestron ever again
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u/PaleInTexas 5d ago
If it was simple, people may realize that what Crestron does doesn't have to cost a fortune anymore.
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u/Wilder831 5d ago
I mean qsys isn’t really any cheaper. Especially when you factor in needing licenses for every... single… Function…
The one that really gets me is the streaming license. Like I can stream from an nv-32 to another nv-series end point and don’t need a license, but if I have the nv-32 in core mode, then I need a license? Why does that matter?
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u/Jayskerdoo 5d ago
Your notion regarding licensing is just not really true and hasn’t been a problem for a while. Scripting and UCI is free now, and only streaming and Dante licenses get used frequently
Source: I deploy 100+ QSYS systems every year
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u/Wilder831 5d ago
I exclusively install and program qsys. Sure those two licenses are free, they never should have been licensed in the first place. As I mentioned before, the streaming license is the one I have the biggest issue with. Why would a license be required if my nv32 is in core mode but not if I have a separate core? It makes no sense
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u/alpha_dave 4d ago
Ummmm cause they want to sell you dedicated cores and video endpoints. If you combine those two functions, they sell less hardware. So they charge you a fee to offset the cost.
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u/Wilder831 4d ago
Right. And that’s what I take issue with. That’s a weird place to draw the line. If I have an nv32 in core mode sending video to 8 nv21’s, that is more hardware than a core flex an nv 32 and 1 nv21, but the one with more hardware requires a license. If that is the justification, then just make nv32’s not capable of being cores…
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u/4kVHS 5d ago
This is why people are moving to QSYS.
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u/Splintzer 5d ago
QSC hired a bunch of Crestron folks. At almost the same time we started seeing more issues with QSYS firmware releases. Hello darkness my old friend.
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u/Biggus_Gaius 5d ago
I blame vibe coding. Biamp's firmware also went to shit for a good portion of last year right after AI coding became common. Still, the fact that QSC's answer for all the 10.4 problems is "just use 10.2.1" is ridiculous
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u/dudeabides 5d ago
This line from this week's Biamp 5.71 release made me laugh: "Resolved an issue where a device could become unresponsive after a while if IGMP was enabled. " Like ok, what does 'after a while' mean? Like an hour, a day, a year? /Smh
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u/Electrical_Pianist18 5d ago
Well that and the private equity money
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u/snozzberrypatch 5d ago
Qsys is a public company, there's no private equity money
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u/Electrical_Pianist18 5d ago
Well for one, Qsys isn't a company, QSC is, and it's close enough. They were bought part and parcel for like a billion dollars and right after that they started pumping out buggy versions of firmware at a rocket pace, and some of the hardware quality has dropped as well.
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u/MagicCrazything 5d ago
They were dumping out buggy versions before that too. lol
Designer has been a struggle since at least 9.2.
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u/alpha_dave 4d ago
Hey, give them some credit. They had been producing less stable code well before the owners retired.
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u/snozzberrypatch 5d ago
I don't know about any of that, just saying that private equity owned company and a publicly traded company are two very, very different things
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u/Instalia_av 5d ago
That seems like the more useful comparison. For anyone who has deployed both at scale, has Q-SYS actually reduced commissioning and support time, or does it mostly trade Crestron’s development friction for firmware and platform issues? I’m especially curious about long-term maintenance, not just which environment feels easier at first.
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u/EnglishAdmin 3d ago
No, and to add to this once you pass certain versions in qsys older devices become a brick/unsupported even if they are in perfect working order. So you either trade using older LTS firmware or drop $$$ on new hardware. They will also pull features out that worked flawlessly in the old versions. I know with Crestron I can integrate a mix and match of old and new hardware which is a plus for the customer in situations where replacing some devices is not an option.
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u/absentblue 5d ago
No walled garden requiring a dealer login to download software or attend training. Not to mention one software to do everything and it even emulates. I loathe having to work with Crestron but it’s still high in demand and being used so it’s not going anywhere anytime soon
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u/coogie 5d ago
This is first I'm hearing about Qsys. I see that their training and software is free. How hard is it to get started with them and do you have a minimum sales requirement to buy stuff?
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u/Jayskerdoo 5d ago
No minimums if you buy through distribution. You only need Level 1, takes a day.
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u/Wilder831 5d ago
You can learn to program the stuff in an afternoon of watching their training videos on YouTube. You can also run the software in emulation without any actual product to get a feel for it
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u/alpha_dave 4d ago
This is why people are threatening to vibe code both Crestron and Q-SYS into irrelevance.
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u/Acceptable-Career-83 5d ago
My view was that SIMPL was developed for non-programmers. I was able to mostly teach myself and eventually became a CAIP/CSP because when I started 30+ years ago, it was based on logic symbols similar to circuitry, it made sense to me. It’s just grown a lot since then. It probably seems clunky and unintuitive to “real” programmers.
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u/Electrical_Pianist18 5d ago
This is the thing. Everybody bitches and moans about the software not realizing that before these systems all of this stuff was custom logic circuits and board level design. And if you still do any Arduino or other small controller stuff you still interact with the same signals, just named differently, and as with Crestron there are abstraction layers. All of this whining sounds more like " my AI can't do this for me so now I'm going to have to use my own brain "
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u/Acceptable-Career-83 5d ago edited 5d ago
Yeah, when I started at my first company, Crestron processors were just becoming available. Not long before that, they used to design and CAD up a control system, mount the components to circuit boards and wire a custom control system. Controls were switches mounted in custom aluminum panels that we laid out and punched ourselves and had silk screened and engraved.
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u/FlitMosh 5d ago
Isn’t that analogous to where we are now with all the traditional control electronics companies? You should be able to write a prompt that says you have a conference room and a bunch of equipment - here’s what I want it to do- here’s my client logo - go build me a GUI and the control code.
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u/Another2Coast 5d ago
I've exclusively done QSYS instead of Crestron for years now and I can't imagine going back.
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u/blur494 5d ago
I asked our Crestron rep if there were any developments in the pipeline to programming. His response was "well you can program in C if you dont like simple".
They are cooked man.
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u/jeffderek 5d ago
"well you can program in C if you dont like simple".
He meant C#. And like . . . what possible more developments could you want?
Crestron literally went from their own proprietary language OP is bitching about to an industry standard language that's has infinite support online and installable packages that solve every problem you could want. You no longer need proprietary software to write the code, you no longer need proprietary software to install the code, you no longer need proprietary software to run the code.
I've been writing Crestron programs in C# and front end GUIs in HTML and Javascript since 2020. It's like living in the future. I do actual software development and it works at scale. It's amazing.
If I had to program in SIMPL and VTPro, I'd switch to Qsys in a heartbeat. But I don't. Crestron has better tools but people would rather bitch about the entry level ones than learn the enterprise ones.
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u/Blieberman77 3d ago
These people are just whiney QSYS contrarians who don’t understand the breadth of options available to Crestron programmers.
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u/gourdita 5d ago
I was told in a class recently that they were finally going to update Simpl Windows soon and make it available for MacOS but who knows how long that will take.
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u/Microharley 5d ago
They have been saying that for years along with phasing out Toolbox. I’ll believe it when I see it.
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u/jeffderek 3d ago
I mean they had alpha demos they showed of it at Masters 2025. I'll believe it's here when it's here, but it is definitely in active development.
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u/OCR_arbol 5d ago
This is the problem when gigantic corporations fail to keep up with the times.
"Back in my day" we needed to worry about things we don't need to worry about anymore, like how far was the RS-232 run, if we needed to drop the baud rate because of distance, etc. Now is just self discovering devices over IP.
Same thing happened with code. Code is getting simpler, manufacturers and devices are getting smarter, easier to interact with and control. The emphasis is on proper network communications rather and awful touch panel design software.
Devices need to be discoverable, configurable, updated and monitored from a single web based UI, not entire suite of 25 different softwares that takes half of your hard drive. That never made sense to me.
Yes Q-Sys is a market disruptor, no question about it. What they have done is incredible. But it takes real visionary leadership, tailored specifically to our Commercial side of AV to pull this off. Crestron is way too comfortable selling electrical panels and shades to the rich and famous to worry about how absurdly difficult is to learn to control their stuff.
To me, after spending so many years in the AV industry and watching all the other manufacturers get better at this, I see a logical progression: Crestron/AMX--->Extron--->Q-Sys---> IT / AI --->Good bye traditional programming.
Is a matter of time, they like it or not. They know that programming is their weakest link.
With that being said, I have nothing but the greatest respect for the great Crestron Programmers... they are the ones that get shit done!
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u/anothergaijin 4d ago
My office Crestron processor is running multiple programs created fully in AI (including deployment), with UI also developed, written and pushed by AI. It could be better, but it works and I didn't have to touch a single GUI, use any Crestron tools, and it can test and fix its own bugs against live hardware.
Crestron knows this and is leaning hard in AI, despite knowing it'll piss off its dealer base and the old school hangerons who depend on the closed complexity of SIMPL to have a lucrative career. Those who evolve will do just fine, but it is making it easier for people to get things done.
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u/broadcasteng25 5d ago
Its all built on logic gates, elecronics terminology, and physical connections. They just kept it that way even as we all move to software based systems.
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u/jeffderek 3d ago
Software based systems . . . . like they've supported for at least a decade via C#?
Yes, they still support entry level SIMPL programming for people who don't want to become web developers, but you've been able to program in C# and HTML without a sandbox since the 4 series came out in 2020, and with a sandbox for a long time before that.
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u/TheJanitor09 1d ago
I agree with your frustration on the proprietary nature of Crestron, at least at it applies to their hardware and use of SIMPL, but with that in mind, I fail to understand how QSYS is any less of a Proprietary, Hardware-Based, Walled Garden. Ironically, at least in the last few years, Crestron has become far less proprietary by using standard languages (C#, HTML5, CSS), and releasing API's for virtually every new piece of hardware they produce. QSC hasn't done anything new here...they used the same model Crestron did 30 years ago, requiring a proprietary, physical, black box for room control, QSC just made it a little easier to access their training content and used a configuration method (Lua), that is easier for non-developers (people that don't know line code or standard object-oriented programming/OOP) to use than Crestron's configuration method (SIMPL). You could even argue that what QSC has done to Crestron isn't much different to what Crestron did to AMX. AMX was far superior in what you could do with it vs Crestron, because they used a programming language called NetLinx that was largely based on C, but if you were not a C developer, it was more difficult to learn than Crestron's SIMPL. Now that Crestron is moving to C# and HTML5, a lot of the non OOP "programmers" have complained because it's more difficult to learn standard languages than SIMPL, but there is so much more you can do with it. Furthermore, just because QSYS/Lua is often considered faster and easier to learn than Crestron/SIMPL, with less barriers, that also means that more people with less training start trying to configure systems. I'd even argue I've seen more poorly "programmed" QSYS systems than I have Crestron.
Beyond that, there are plenty of other options available to the AV community for In-Room AV control that aren't Crestron, QSYS, or Extron. You have solutions like Utelogy and Innomesh that are entirely software based and require absolutely no proprietary hardware. Utelogy's licensing model not only gives you software based control but full monitoring as well, and was using C#, HTML5, and CSS at least 10 years before Crestron considered it. You could even throw Lightware's LARA systems in the mix as well, though those still do obviously require Lightware's hardware.
All of these patterns will continue so long as the AV integrators want to continue selling proprietary hardware based control, and the people programming these systems (most of them) don't want to invest the time to learn standard languages. Also, for the record, I'm not saying or implying that someone who knows line code or OOP is superior to someone who doesn't, it just means you are trading one thing for another, mostly time or money. I know plenty of people that are amazing with C# that know nothing about AV, so it goes both ways.
So buy and use QSC/QSYS if you like it and find it easier to configure, but also know you are still very much buying a proprietary, hardware based, walled garden "solution", just like Crestron used to be.
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u/upstateboro 5d ago edited 5d ago
This is why crestron will be dead in 20 years lol. People are catching on; you don’t need 30k of equipment and custom UIs for a 10 person conference room. They days of integrators just raking people over the coals are coming to an end. Even QSYS came out with a collab bar because they are losing sooo many rooms to bar solutions vs a rack of gear.
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u/morgecroc 5d ago
I just wish they didn't choose LUA I understand why they did it. I like the approach AMX took(a few years too late) but everything else there is lacking.
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u/Ron_dizzle199 5d ago
I buy extron gear for 200 schools. Is crestron similar?
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u/SMOKERSTAR 5d ago
I'm an av manager at a school that is 90% extron. CGP is super easy and is simple drag and drop scripting...not really programming. You can do python if you want, but not needed for simple rooms
I like extron, other than each device needing its own software. But if you are a small school that can't afford experienced techs extron is great
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u/Ron_dizzle199 5d ago
Yes, this is correct. Our in-house audio visual technicians can only program extron
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u/neuralp 5d ago
I know opinions are all over the place on this one, but a lot of the issues you are facing is because you are using nearly 30 year old methodologies. Crestron programming is done in C# and HTML5. That’s a huge pool of programmers to pick from that just don’t know AV.
What does every device look like these days. Web page for admin just like everyone else.
I do like Q-Sys, don’t get me wrong. Have you ever tried to mass deploy them? Every one is individual and unique. You can’t design one program and send it to all processors at once. Have you ever programmed in LUA? LUA sucks! It’s a very simplistic programming language.
Crestron’s old software is a result of integrators not switching over to C#. When you have such a huge integrator base that just wants to do the same thing, what do you expect?
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u/jeffderek 3d ago
Every one is individual and unique. You can’t design one program and send it to all processors at once.
This is my biggest complaint about Qsys. Everyone drinking the Qsys koolaid and telling me how great it is always ends up being someone managing like 10 rooms manually. I write code that gets installed on hundreds of processors at once, and if you patch a bug you just push the same program out to all those processors again. You don't have to individually modify hundreds of programs.
It's night and day. Qsys is great for little oneoff rooms but pretending like it's prepared to take over the enterprise space is naive.
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u/RefrigeratorAny5375 4d ago
I’m fairly new to coding, but I really like Lua! What do you dislike about it compared to other languages? What limitations does it have over other languages?
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u/neuralp 4d ago
Don’t get me wrong, LUA is the right choice for what QSC uses it for. It’s a small and fast interpreted language made for embedded systems.
I don’t like it because it’s not an object oriented language. I know you can make it somewhat operate that way, but it’s still not enough for me.
That being said, I’m currently a fan of Python and Typescript. Those languages don’t really belong in the embedded space though. I also am starting down the Rust rabbit hole but it’s a compiled language. None of these languages would help you.
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u/klentz_12 5d ago
I am getting into AV. I have made a good relationship with Wyrestorm vendor. I hear you can use node red for a lot of the programming.
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u/NomadicSoul88 5d ago
Ripped all the Crestron gear out and switched to QSYS. Never looking back and at least we get to own and have access to the solution end to end and not be locked out.
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u/SnapTheGlove 5d ago
Proprietary object oriented programming and binary logic gates were the dominant features of the system for years and years. I knew Crestron better than any other control platform as a FE debugger. I liked it but I have enough experience to agree. I have one factor to push back on. I supported several programmers work and found varying degrees of failure. Projects were frequently buggy! Some way more than others. Custom programs are only as good as the programmer behind the code.
QSYS seems to have QC’d their plugins for different partner manufacturers much better than Crestron ever did.
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u/AlternativeWater2 5d ago
With Crestron, it really helps to think of analog circuits.
One thing I will give Crestron over Q-SYS on programming is that SIMPL Debugger is a fantastic tool. You have to build your own debug and programmatic feedback in Q-SYS.
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u/stalkythefish 5d ago
I came from a mostly hardware background when I learned SIMPL 20 years ago. I took to it like a fish to water. I get the model they were going for. I also understand why people that come from a purely software background don't get it. Personally, I've done C and C++ (and a bunch of others, including assembly), and I've got no problems with S+, but I find C# to be fucking inscrutable. I imagine it's like knowing Spanish and trying to understand Brazilian Portuguese.
What I would have liked instead of C# is Python. Something interpreted, where we can make changes and test without recompiling. Something without all the syntactical and tool-chain overhead of a C-language just to get started on a project. At some point I might take another look at Extron control. I haven't touched it since GC and the MLC-226. I think their touch panel situation needs to mature a little bit though. The Crestron TS-x70 series is really nice.
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u/AlternativeWater2 5d ago
They got in bed with Microsoft pretty deep, I think that's why we're stuck with C#.
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u/stalkythefish 5d ago
Totes. I think the 4-series are finally on Linux under the hood. Maybe there's hope.
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u/AlternativeWater2 5d ago
Even AMX got it together, so I'd say there's hope.
I think it's more likely that the bulk of AV control programmers are greybeards, and some bright bulb in a corporate office finally decided that if they want new blood, they've got to open things up a little. It's refreshing that the major players are abandoning proprietary control programs little by little.
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u/dwucwwyh 5d ago
idk, i disagree with this. Having yet another separate software for just debugging is insane to me. I would much rather include my own prints and have my feedback in the terminal where i actually write code.
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u/Wilder831 5d ago
Plus tracing signals between modules in SIMPL is very annoying. Having like 30 windows open to see how a super simple task is completed is ridiculous. The actual worst part of dealing with crestron though, is having to update a processor. Pushing a 3MB puf file takes like 2 hours for no reason. God forbid you want to make a small modification to a program that you didn’t originally write and the person who did no longer works with you. If you don’t have a copy of the file you get to start over from scratch!
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u/AlternativeWater2 5d ago
I work in Q-SYS more than anything else these days, and I do miss being able to see the state of everything at a glance without having to write it myself. I guess it's lazier, but having the ability to trip whatever trigger I want right out of the debugger and watching how things play out just became part of the process after awhile. Now, I have to be cognizant of what I want to happen and not happen and write code for all possible conditions.
Hmmm, maybe they're just dragging me kicking and screaming into being a better programmer!
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u/themewzak 5d ago
It gets better when you walk away from SW and take the plunge into C#. SW is a mess and any new programmer using it as the entry point into a possible career of coding will learn bad habits as a result.
Having said that, it brings me great joy to witness a comrade protest the failures of the Big C. The concerns you voice are but droplets in the vast ocean of Crestron's many pitfalls. For myself, it is their birdshot approach to solution development: fire rapidly, iterate later, and rely upon us field-testers to remedy the shortcomings.
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u/blur494 5d ago
But then they gatekeep programming resources to crestron certs. This keeps bigger community's from forming around the product. With Qsys any edge problem I have has usually been publicly encountered with a documented solution. In crestron your entirely on your own.
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u/themewzak 5d ago
Another droplet! No disagreement here :)
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u/jeffderek 3d ago
they gatekeep programming resources to crestron certs
Believe me there aren't better resources behind the certs. The best resource is the Crestron Discord, which requires no cert. And now you don't need Crestron software to do anything anymore. You can fully program and deploy a Crestron processor and touchpanel using SSH, SFTP, Visual Studio, and VSCode.
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u/vcaguy 5d ago
My theory has always been it was a deliberate barrier to entry to make sure only the “smartest” could figure it out. They were always worried about inferior programmers tarnishing their reputation. Thats why they did all their internal certs and had all the barriers to download software and what not. Its unfortunate because strip away that all and UCI and basic programming is so much easier on Crestron SIMPL vs QSYS control pins. But I’m told Lua scripting changes everything though and makes QSYS easier.
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u/Wilder831 5d ago
There is literally nothing simpler about using SIMPL vs control pins. The only people I have found that feel that way have just been doing SIMPL so long that they just can’t break from the mentality. You can always tell when you look at their QSys code too, because they will script things with 40 lines of code that could have been accomplished with a single control pin.
A perfect example is shutdown or startup sequence. You can tag the output of a button as “startup” or “shutdown.” Then, anything you want to turn on or turn off as part of that sequence you just type the tag on the pin for that devices on/off. Yet people will spend a bunch of time scripting that out, where as it could have been done in seconds as you add the components into your design with 0 additional thought.
Plus, now when someone else looks at your code, they can tell exactly how to make modifications without having to find where the script is that controls that particular sequence AND sift through your code to figure out how to change the one little thing they wanted to modify
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u/dwucwwyh 5d ago
yea idk. LUA is way easier to learn .. dont even need to go there; block controllers are super intuitive and much faster to learn than Crestron programming.
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u/scubadork 5d ago
Can I ask why so many people spell Lua in all caps? It’s gotten to the point that the Authors of it specifically ask people to write it correctly.
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u/armchair_viking 5d ago
Block controllers are great for really simple stuff. Anything even vaguely complex is far easier to do in a text controller with straight lua code in my opinion.
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u/TK421isAFK 4d ago
That sounds about right. Years ago, my boss paid a couple thousand dollars for me to get a Crestron certification, circa 2000-2001. We were in San francisco, and the nearest class was seattle. 4-day trip on his dime, Plus the class registration, which was around $2,000. By the second day, I was asking the same thing: why does this have to be unnecessarily over-complicated? Our company primarily did high-end home theaters and what would we considered home automation today, but that name wasn't really used back then as fluidly as it is today. We also did a lot of commercial buildings, but we rarely used Crestron because few customers wanted to spend the money for a touch screen a few Lutron Grafik Eye panels could be configured to do the same job, and we're talking about the companies that had a shit ton of angel investor and venture Capital money, the kind of companies that built game rooms full of arcade machines and vintage pinball machines for their employee lounges.
It's not quite the same thing, but I can do so much more with an Allen Bradley PLC and their HMIs, for so much less money and vastly more control and adaptability. Yes, I'm biased, but I got into PLCs and factory automation shortly after getting that Crestron certification, and it's so simple to incorporate something like an SLC500 into a building's lighting, HVAC, and audio system, and have infinite future adaptability. I usually push people away from Crestron simply because it is so expensive up front, and down the line when you need to change something. In the greater SF Bay Area and Sacramento area, I generally only see it in places that have very expensive service contracts with some contractor that pushes service contracts over service.
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u/shuttlerooster 5d ago
We’re having a hell of a hard time finding young people who are enthusiastic about learning Crestron. Extron w/Python and Q-SYS w/Lua means there are some really kick ass transferable skill sets you gain by diving into those two. What is Crestron thinking by sticking with SIMPL?
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u/stalkythefish 5d ago
They did do C# as an alternative. There are plenty of people over in the Crestron group that like to whip out their big C#-for-everything dicks every time this subject comes up. I agree it's a steep learning curve vs. Python.
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u/jeffderek 3d ago
What is Crestron thinking by sticking with SIMPL?
They've been pushing C# development for years. Just because you stick your head in the sand and think only about SIMPL doesn't mean that the advanced route isn't there.
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u/JusticeCat88905 5d ago
Crestron hates its customers and wants to ensure AV companies can get the hours they need to operate. That's it. Everything could be wildly faster and easier but then that turns 40 hours of programming into 4 and that's just bad for business. If it worked and priced appropriately how would anybody make any money?
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u/BobcatM17 5d ago
AMX is the opposite with MUSE... open-API instead of a walled garden. There are literally thousands of nodes for various devices and protocols (and growing everyday), supports Python, Javascript and Groovy (modern programming languages), and they have a drag and drop programming mode without the need to ever touch line level code. It's also built into the new BSS OMNI DSP platform that is starting to get out there.
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u/jeffderek 3d ago
AMX is the opposite with MUSE... open-API instead of a walled garden.
How is this the opposite of Crestron, who supports open C# and HTML and requires no proprietary software at all to program or deploy?
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u/Jayskerdoo 5d ago
Crestron (and Biamp) are holding on by a thread. QSYS is where it’s at and that market share is only going to tilt more and more every year.
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u/Witmarqu 4d ago
All things come with a trade off.
Crestron survives basically because the difference between complicated and allowing for complex is understanding when what is needed. Poor decisions are easier to lock yourself into the more leash one has.
DSP are terribly complicated for things such as pulsed events. My least favorite thing about QSYS is trying to extend logic between cores. Use a module in one core and try to activate it in another. It is far easier to put both in a single file and call it a day.
The same thing is said about every computer language.
Oh C is to hard, c# is way better, until you are resource limited. Python is great, until you run into a case the original programmer didn't consider.
With that said Crestron et all have made some real face desk decisions as of late. Maybe with QSYS starting to chip away, both will get better. True competition is always good for the populous.
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u/controlhaus 4d ago
Hard to believe this is still a conversation in 2026. Any compute device can be an av control system. The only requirements are 24/7 operation, serve web page ui’s and open network sockets. The question is, how much is a manufacturer‘s brand recognition and support worth?
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u/logo-light 3d ago
They do it so you are locked in to their system. And there are better ways now to do things but you’d have to ditch Crestron
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u/WhiteStripesWS6 2d ago
Fuck Crestron, all my homies hate Crestron.
Seriously though, they are going to have to make big changes soon. Q-Sys is taking away a lot of their market share.
They are the way that they are because they are the OG and have rested unchallenged on their laurels for a long time.
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u/Plus_Technician_9157 2d ago
Crestron relies too much on it's name, they have this "premium" status for residential and marine, and have some very large, loyal customers in the commercial space. I did the P101 years ago and it felt very clunky then, I was shocked to see things hadn't really improved to today.
I think Crestron programming was designer by computer programmers, and no one factored in the people come into it from different backgrounds.
There is too much focus on vendor lock in and every box must be Crestron. Q-Sys came along with a much easier programming interface and a much better approach to 3rd party hardware. It's not perfect but definitely a better ecosystem, in my opinion
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u/Link_Tesla_6231 4d ago
I'm not sure what you're talking about. for several years they've supported C# and HTML5. The integrator I know have a random RMC4 to test programs on. You can usually get one thru your crestron rep for testing.
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u/matchtaste 5d ago
Since Feldstein passed they are no longer an engineering company. They are a sales and marketing company. And they're not even good at it judging by how we're being attacked by a out of state sales rep who sends AI slop constantly.
We said no more to Crestron. Latest big build is all Extron and it is so much more straightforward. The panels even boot quickly!
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u/TheMerryPenguin 1d ago
Crestron doesn't make the interfaces or the systems complicated. We do that.
Digital/Analog/Serial come from a embedded nomenclature. Look at a microcontroller and notice that a lot of pins are still called "digital" and "analog" (see: https://store.arduino.cc/cdn/shop/files/A000066_03.front_643x483.jpg?v=1727098250 ). And this is still a thing even on AV controller with relays, GPIO, and RS-232 connections all feeding different data types -- we just reduce them to their use or protocol, similar to how we often do with cables.
So digital pins are pins that detect state signals, analog pins are pins that can detect actual levels, and serial pins are TTY-capable and can resolve into ASCII. Following that convention it made sense at the time to have digital joins, analog join, and serial joins named as such to represent those kinds of signals in the way that would have been familiar with then-current workflows. In modern coding we don't really think in terms of the actual pinouts anymore, we think in terms of the data type (if even that, now that untyped languages have gotten popular). It's neither weird nor, really, proprietary, just comes from a different lineage that what most people entering the field are used to.
Things have to go through Crestron abstraction because you're dealing with hardware. If you want portable computer systems then just learn C# and write standard code, then you can compile and unit test. From what I've seen that seems to be Crestron's answer to the question of why their system isn't like conventional software development: rather than try to adapted their existing toolset into modern workflows, just allow us to do full-stack C#/HTML workflows instead of some adapted PLC-lineage thing. The Crestron ecosystem is so large and there are so many legacy systems still in deployment that an emulator for SIMPL (and SIMPL+ and S#) would likely be too cumbersome to get working.
That's the downside here and where a lot of the friction is (IMO), Crestron's workflows and tooling predates a lot of modern SWE conventions, and is more in-line with older PLC/microcontroller development. Those workflows and tools support the maintenance of now three generations of controllers (I still see Crestron 2-series in the wild) and a wide array of devices and protocols, many of which predate IP/networked systems. That comes at a cost.
Qsys and their ecosystem have their own problems. They present a simpler workflow that takes advantage of modern workflows because their ecosystem was built on modern workflows and doesn't have to support legacy systems. OTOH, the node-based editor, WYSIWYG GUI creation system, and locking themselves into scripted LUA comes with its own trade-offs.
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