Loxone v9 Preview / Beta

[Liteworx AV]

Anyone here tried the Loxone v9 preview / beta yet ? 

[Pawel Pieczul]

I have it installed but I use the same configuration as with 8. It works the same way with no problems.
I have not tried any of the new features. You can see a few differences in the config gui, for example if you click on an input or output a menu appears that allows routing to another sheet.

[Liteworx AV]

I had a 15min preview session with Loxone via Teamviewer, seems they have focused a lot on the Auto Config side of things but from what I could see this relies quite heavily on using Loxone products for example 

auto config of heating looks for Loxone Actuators etc and links them to intelligent room controllers along with Loxone Tree switches for Room stats, I think if you use non Loxone products ie Digital Outputs for 3rd party Actuators etc 

then the Auto Config does not work so well. 

Other big changes are the User Interface, the previous interface that we are all used too has now been completely replaced with the new look interface which is basically a redesigned Room View look but 

now for the whole house. 

Personally I have never been a huge fan of the Room View Look as control is very limited in this view. You do have the option to control items in more detail but these options are now an extra two or three clicks away 

on separate full screen pages. For example heating: when you select Living Room Heating your taken to a separate rather empty looking full screen page with four small buttons: Comfort, Party, Economy or Override, if you want manual heating 

control you have to select the small more icon at the bottom of the screen which then takes you to another large empty looking full screen page with an oversized fader to control the temperature, so rather than seeing all your heating options 

on one page your now directed to various different empty looking pages which results in an extra two or three clicks to get to where you want to go. 

The same applies to lighting, if I select Living Room lighting i'm taken again to a empty looking full screen page with only my scenes displayed, if I want to manually select a colour or adjust the brightness of a certain light (edit a scene)

I have to click on the small more icon at the bottom of the page which then opens a side window showing the original controls from V8 so we have a mix of the new Room View Look and the Old interface on the screen which looks a bit messy. 

We do now have the option to be able to turn on more than one scene at a time (using V2 lighting controller) but I don't really see the point in this, I preferred selecting a scene like early eve and if i wanted to turn on a reading light I could easily do this

manually without having to create a new scene as such.   

I have spent many hours customising my config to get everything to appear nicely in my user interface using star ratings, favourites etc and creating pretend categories and rooms to access dedicated settings and status pages  

I've also used memory flags to display statuses/feedback for various items. I loaded my current config onto a spare miniserver to see how it would look in the new interface and I was really disappointed. It looks like i'm going to 

have to spend a LOT of time adjusting my config to make it appear nicely in the new user interface.

Unfortunately I've been told by Loxone that once you upgrade to V9 there is NO going back so I am forced to use the new interface and there is NO way of accessing the original interface. I appreciate things move on 

and we have to embrace these changes, normally for the better but personally I was a big fan of the previous interface and being forced to use this new interface and adjust my config to populate it fully is rather disappointing,

I was also shown the new V2 lighting controller which has the ability to allow users to select various colour points and then hit go/run to allow a colour cycle between the colour points selected, 

also with fade times selectable from a few secs to a few hours. Personally I think this is a bit tacky, but can appreciate some users would appreciate this function. 

What I was very surprised to learn is that this feature apparently only works with Loxone RGBW tree / air devices as the "colour chase command" as such is sent to the Loxone RGBW device to be carried out internally in that module

which means this "colour chase function" does not work with non Loxone RGBW products ie DMX devices. I was VERY surprised to learn this and questioned why this feature has been locked down to Loxone products only 

to which I was explained that the DMX protocol couldn't handle these long fade times.....????. this is not true, coming from a architectural and stage lighting background there are NO limitations with the DMX protocol being able to carry out

a function like this and its widely used specifically for this task everyday globally !!! 

One last thing that happened to me whilst trialling the V9 with my config, as mentioned I installed V9 config onto a spare Miniserver Go and then uploaded my Config from my house onto the Miniserver Go 

this way I could see how everything looks WITHOUT having any connection to my house and leaving my current Miniserver untouched.... However when I loaded my config on to the Miniserver Go

all of my Air devices in my house decided to switch from the house Miniserver to the Demo Miniserver Go !!!!!, I could no longer control my Air devices as for some reason they automatically jumped over to the 

Miniserver Go, I had to save a blank document into the Miniserver GO and reboot my house Minserver to regain control of my Air devices. 

Looking forward to seeing what everyone else thinks of V9.... :-)

 

 

   

  

[Luc]

I assume they want to limit the cpu load on the mini server, but I also would have preferred that they stick to standard DMX. Am in the final stages of wiring everything and have several DMX4ALL dimmers. Would be nice if they publish the specs for the extra commands a DMX dimmer must support, but this will cut in their revenue :( So I won't hold my breath...

[Simon Still]

On Thursday, 21 September 2017 10:04:54 UTC+1, Liteworx AV wrote:

Personally I have never been a huge fan of the Room View Look as control is very limited in this view.

I use it on a wall mounted iPad and it's pretty good for that.

 

You do have the option to control items in more detail but these options are now an extra two or three clicks away 

on separate full screen pages.

That's more worrying - my criticism of the current app over the original version is that extra clicks were required for many (common) functions

I was also shown the new V2 lighting controller which has the ability to allow users to select various colour points and then hit go/run to allow a colour cycle between the colour points selected, 

also with fade times selectable from a few secs to a few hours. Personally I think this is a bit tacky, but can appreciate some users would appreciate this function. 

All coloured lighting is tacky IMO :-) The only place ive used it is in the garden.  Maybe in a bar or club but at home?  not for me. 

Looking forward to seeing what everyone else thinks of V9.... :-)

What's the release date? 

[Brian]

What's the release date? 

It's out now. 

Would like to know if you could revert back to version 8 if its is not liked.

[Joakim Arfvidsson]

I use DMX for all lights and I suspect another reason is that Loxone's DMX extensions are pretty slow to update. Maybe 10-20 Hz. So fades don't look perfectly smooth (but still ok).

 And this is still while the extension is limited to 128 devices (out of DMX's max 512). With that limit in place, they should have been able to push updates at over 100 Hz given the speed of DMX. Maybe the limiting factor is the miniserver, not the DMX extension.

[bboydens]

Hi Brian, anyone,

Who has a version 8 still laying around ? You can only get to the latest version via Loxone Website.... or am I wrong ?

Bart

Op dinsdag 26 september 2017 18:18:00 UTC+2 schreef Brian:

[Andrew B]

Yeah, I don't like the 128 device limit or the relatively slow update rate. If v9 makes it worse this might push me to find an Ethernet based dmx controller and take another step away from Loxone. If their UI quality is getting worse then they're really going in the wrong direction.

[Brian]

It looks once you up/downgrade you are stuck with it.

[Mike Lambert]

I didn't consciously download the new app, and as a relatively non-technical end user, I am surprised Loxone think they can just spring this on people with no explanation/instructions.

My main issue is that many/most of the buttons are now desperately slow to respond.. maybe 30 seconds or up to a minute. 

[Simon Still]

On Thursday, 28 September 2017 18:51:26 UTC+1, Mike Lambert wrote:

My main issue is that many/most of the buttons are now desperately slow to respond.. maybe 30 seconds or up to a minute. 

Physical buttons?  lIke light switches?

I've not had any slow down or responsiveness issues at all.  Must be something odd about your config? 

[Andrew B]

Well I went ahead and took the plunge, and today I finally did the install.  I have disconnected the Loxone DMX Extension, and in its place I now have a DMXking LeDMX4 Pro.  This lets my Linux device directly generate DMX frames and send them via Ethernet (UDP) to the DMX controller.  Worked first try, and **wow** there is a huge difference.  The lights now dim and fade MUCH more smoothly, and the latency between the button press and the light changing is markedly reduced (largely due to taking the miniserver's SPS processing loop out of the picture, as well as eliminating the serial Loxone extension bus).  It also gives me much more detailed/intimate control over the DMX 512 channel control space (actually it supports many DMX Universes and the LeDMX4 Pro can directly drive 4 pixel addressable arrays... that might lead to some fun in the future).  Added bonus features are record/playback to an SDcard, and a "snapshot" capability to set the default state upon powering up.

I'll keep the DMX Extension around as a backup, just in case of a parts failure, but the DMXking product looks really well built.  Another step away from Loxone though.

[Duncan]

Andrew
can you drive the artnet device straight from the miniserver using udp artnet commands? or are you using something else?

im going to try messing with a h803wifi - its a esp8266 based art-net node with dmx output for $15

[Andrew Brownsword]

My code is running on a $50 ARM device running Linux.  I’m not sure if picoC could run the necessary code to calculate the channels — depends on how many channels, how fancy a calculation you want to do, and what update frequency you want.  Certainly you can build artnet udp packets in picoC.

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