Crestron touchpanels: RF vs. WiFi


I am in the process of installing an Crestron AV system with plans to eventually add lighting control, motorized drapes, and climate control.
The WiFi touchpanel is available at a considerable discount .I realize that there are advantages to a RF based touchpanel, but is a WiFi touchpanel so bad? I would hope that so of you 21st century Audiogoners could help this confused 20th century audiophile.
Ag insider logo xs@2xmartysafko
The TPMC-4X and 4XG touch panels had a hard time maintaining a heart beat connection to the processors and they would lock up. Also they had a hard time reconnecting when leaving the wifi area and then re-entering. Also on low battery they hae issues connecting to the network.

Crestron has come out with new firmware for the 4XG touch panel which is suppost to fix a lot of these issues.

Crestron also issued a firmware upgrade for the processors to handle the heart beat issue.

I assume this is the wifi panel you are talking about. Although the firmware helps they are still tricky remotes sometimes. If you don't mind the resetting the remote every now and then they aren't bad.

The new TPMC-3X wifi remotes are very very solid but a smaller screen than the 4XG. You can't change the faceplate engraving on these remotes but if you could replacing the transport controls with a number pad would make this remote great.

The new TPMC-6X is a great RF remote but the memory in the remote is very very small which means page flips must be handled via the processor rather than having the touch panel control them. This makes screen flips a little slow. All in all a very good RF remote.

Anyway I hope that helps