When you see it at CEDIA 2017, the first thing you’ll notice about URC’s Total Control 2.0 home-automation system is the refined user interface that makes rooms, scenes and devices much easier to access and control than ever before. Picture the “kitchen” as an image of the user’s own culinary space, overlaid with shortcut controls and status for the room.

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Users can view the status of lights, see what media is playing, mute the audio or drill into the room to view and control other devices.

Of course, URC isn’t the first major smart-home company to offer this type of experience … but it could be the first with URC-like price points. Not to mention, URC offers a wider range of remote controls than most of its competitors.

But the brand new UI, described in more detail below, is just one (very important) aspect of Total Control 2.0.

It couldn’t happen without the new Accelerator 2.0 programming environment and a complete rewrite of the underlying code.

Total Control 2.0: Under the Hood

Until we dive into it, let’s take for granted that the new graphics and application-oriented improvements in 2.0 are quite powerful – at the very least, vastly improved over 1.0, which hasn’t seen a major upgrade since Total Control launched about five years ago.

You might think the new platform would require new URC processors, as 1.0 already seems to overwhelm URC’s existing hardware. But you would be wrong. In fact, URC took such great care in coding the new software that it is more efficient than ever, allowing the system to run even faster than 1.0 on the exact same Total Control processors.

“One of the goals of the new software was not to force people to have to get another processor to enjoy all the benefits of 2.0,” says Russ Hoffman, URC director of training. “They can run all of the rich new features on old processors, going all the way back, even some discontinued products.” (Not all features may be available on older processors.)

Faster for integrator

The faster speeds are reflected on both the customer-facing app as well as the back end. For integrators, it used to take 10 or more minutes to load new programming into a customer’s processor – not bad for a one-off software dump, but when you consider multiple “re-downloads” to test a new feature, for example, those 10-minute transfers can add up.

With 2.0, the transfer time shrinks to about four minutes, Hoffman says.

Faster for user

For the user, the new URC system “is more reactive than ever, even with the new graphics,” Hoffman says. “It takes up less room than 1.0, freeing up memory to let everything run faster. I didn’t think speed was an issue until I got a faster system.”

Instead of a one- or two-second delay from button-press to response, the system “reacts right away,” Hoffman says. We saw this quick response time in a demo with URC reps in Southern Calif., Krista Haughey and Jason Gibson.

Improved stability, troubleshooting

Another thing URC did in its coding is isolate various services within one application framework (TCL, or Tool Command Language).

Previously, all applications were thrown into one big pot, so if one of them soured, the whole system could be compromised.

That’s the peril of home-automation systems like URC’s, which must integrate multiple devices from a wide range of vendors.

“We have to worry about third-party protocols,” Hoffman says. “If they change, we don’t always know. … One bad module [driver] could slow down every module.”

Compartmentalizing the two-way modules means they now run independently of each other, increasing the overall speed and stability of the system, according to Hoffman: “If a Philips Hue Bridge goes offline, Lutron and Nest are not affected.”

Furthermore, any such issues are simpler to diagnose with the new software scheme. On top of that, URC has implemented a new troubleshooting tool that provides more detailed logs of activity system-wide, including issues stemming from connected devices.

New User Interface, Customer Experience

We already know the new UI runs faster than 1.0, and we haven’t even touched on the enhancements to graphics and overall capabilities of the software.

Graphics can now be added for rooms, scenes and backgrounds. Additionally, while URC provides thousands of standard images for incorporating into the UI, dealers can customize each project with photos of their clients’ spaces, faces or other personal pics.

Room views

The biggest change to the UI is the addition of room views. As mentioned above, each room of the house can now be represented as an image – something generic like a bed or more personalized like a photo of an actual bedroom.

Previously, the room views were nothing more than text. In the new visuals, the images are overlaid with icons representing the technology in any given room. Without “drilling down,” users can quickly mute the music or turn on the lights by touching the device icons on the room graphic.

URC's Total Control 2.0: Images scale automatically for any usage on any device; users can personalize backgrounds.

Scene views

Tap on the room itself to reveal up to 100 customized scenes for that room. Each scene can have its own image – perhaps a Netflix icon for a macro that turns on the TV and gets the system straight to the movie app. Or a cup of coffee to represent a wake up scene.

These scene views could appear as URC’s main screen if the user desires – a design that could be “popular for commercial applications, where you don’t want to give access to everything in the system,” Hoffman suggests.

Background

Background images for any given view are now customizable, which can help users better understand where they are in the navigation.

For example, the background for a home-theater view might be red velvet curtains, so whenever someone is controlling that room from a remote location, they’ll recognize right away which room they’re controlling.

Effects & Interactivity

For the first time, URC allows dual-state images – one for on, one for off. An image of the kitchen with all lights on could be one state, which then switches to an image of a dark kitchen after the button is pressed.

URC incorporates other graphical effects in the new UI, for example, blurring the background when an icon is pressed, allowing the user to focus on the task at hand.

Programming with Accelerator 2.0

At the same time that URC is adding new features for the end user, the company is making it simpler for integrators to program these new capabilities in Accelerator 2.0.

The new programming environment offers several improvements over 1.0.

“Just make an image in one size and it auto-scales to any interface.”

Auto-scaling graphics

Images now can be imported in one size, and then scaled automatically for each application (room views, scenes, etc.) and each device (mobile phones, touchscreens, remote controls, etc.).

Previously, integrators had to import images in multiple sizes, drop them into multiple files and hope they worked for any given interface. Now, says Hoffman, “Just make an image in one size and it auto-scales to any interface.”

The auto-scaling feature works nicely for URC’s new screen-layout options. Users can select the view that’s ri

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