New Member

[CC_Guy]

Years ago, and not that many years ago, integrated control systems were not that prevalent. So, in some cases, converters needed to develop their own systems for some functions. One that was needed that comes to mind was a system for automatically starting the generator. Today, such a development would be a waste of time and not likely to be as robust as current off-the-shelf systems. Most modern inverter/chargers have add-on generator auto-start systems that are far superior to the ones developed by the converters. A standalone unit today that’s far superior to any of the converter developed system can be bought for barely $200. In most cases, a worthwhile upgrade to accomplish now unless you plan on upgrading to new inverter/chargers at some point.

Then there’s the integrated coach control systems used by many of the converters. At the time, these were probably pretty cool and helped market these million dollar plus coaches against the rest of the RV industry. Unfortunately, the approach taken was shortsighted, costly, and locked the owner into total reliance on their converter. Personally, I wouldn’t care if my coach had a Crestron or any other proprietary integrated control system if I knew I could operate the systems independent of the integrated control system if it were to fail. If they took the approach of the master remote controls available today, they would have been fine. Most did not take this approach.

A prospective buyer or owner should ask themselves what they would do if they lost their Crestron, AMX, Tech-Link, or whatever system they have. Maybe you couldn’t control the satellite receiver from a different room. Of course, that’s just an inconvenience. What if you couldn’t control your heat, air, lighting, water pump, or other systems that are critical to a good trip? For some conversions these systems are nearly impossible to control without the control system, regardless of the system used.

Support is another big deal. Who can service these systems? Keep in mind that in most cases the main system has been supplemented with custom designed subsystem controllers for our 12V systems and anything that wouldn’t typically be controlled by which ever system the converter selected. Worse yet, and already stated by David, how do you reprogram your system when you change out a TV or other piece of AV gear? In the case of Crestron, once the programming has been done it is compiled in its operational form. That means that if you don’t have the original programming any changes pretty much require a programmer to start from scratch which is time consuming and costly. Some converters are overly protective of their build data, to include Crestron source code. So, you are pretty much held hostage to the converter for any reprogramming and those cost too can be hard to understand. This probably explains why so many really nice coaches are still using ATSC (digital TV) converters rather than upgrading their antiquated TVs or dedicated monitors.

Not all converters went overboard on integrated control systems. Some kept lighting and non AV systems on their own control systems. Spyder Controls comes to mind as the system that is more than capable of controlling 12V switched systems. They even have a manual fall back in the event of a failure of their control system…Smart. AV control systems where limited to AV systems on the coach…again, Smart.

The RV industry could do well to look at the marine industry. For many years the marine industry has had a common protocol that if implemented in a vendor’s system could allow control, data exchange, and monitoring from other systems adhering to the same protocol. Their protocol has evolved and even made one major change from NMEA-183 to NMEA-2000. Even through the transition, devices where made available that could allow for interworking between the old and new protocols and changes in the electrical characteristics. In fairness to the RV industry, they did adopt a common interface protocol, RV-C. Unfortunately, it came about as the RV industry was struggling to stay alive. Today, RV-c is still alive and implemented in some products, even though it likely doesn’t get mentioned in many spec sheets. SilverLeaf was one of the drivers of this effort, it not the founder. If widely adopted, an integrated user interface (display or tablet) could easily be implemented while keeping all subsystem control systems alive and well and behind the door seldom opened.

At the end of the day, it’s your coach. How you feel about your Crestron, AMX, Tech-Link, or whatever processor based system your coach has is up to you. Many of these systems are very robust. My Windows based glass dash was still going strong after 12 years of service when I upgraded it. Even so, these systems will fail at some point. What’s your work around for critical systems?