Control4 Releases Home-Automation OS2

By Joseph Palenchar -- TWICE, 6/30/2010

Salt Lake City - Control4's second-generation operating system, promised at last year's CEDIA to ship by the end of 2009, has become available with multiple upgrades, including the ability to support user-downloadable Flash-based third-party apps.

Control4 markets IP-based home-control systems that use Ethernet, Wi-Fi and wireless ZigBee networks to integrate the control of multiple home systems and create multi-room-audio systems.

Control4's OS 2 also supports wireless ZigBee Pro hardware, features a new user interface, and lets customers mark favorite pages for display on their touchscreen controllers or TV display. Another new feature, DLNA compatibility, enables Control4's multi-room-audio systems to stream music, cover art, photos and video from networked Windows PCs. Other enhancements include the addition of WMA, AAC and FLAC music playback to MP3 playback. The OS also enables third-party suppliers of Control4-compatible products to write their own user interfaces, which would appear on Control4 touchscreens and connected TVs.

A Control4 app store will let consumers download applications to their Control4 system directly through the Internet. The apps would appear on Control4's touchscreens or connected TV. During the CEDIA Expo, the company demonstrated 20 apps, including Picasa, Facebook, Twitter, sports and news.