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Alexa and C4

Chesterfield VA

Asked by Chesterfield VA,

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Chesterfield VA Newbie

Chesterfield VA

Posted
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I'm sorry and not a resident expert on my own C4 which I've had for 6 years, but it has operated flawlessly the entire time.  Now I want to connect my amazon echo to C4 and stream music over my speakers throughout the house.  Can Alexa connect to C4 without replacing all my hardware?  Thanks for the assistance....I have the narrow TV looking remote devices that are RF and work from anywhere in the house if that information is helpful.   I have Sonos connect if that is helpful to solve my problem

I'm hoping for good news : - )

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d1amund Rising Star

d1amund

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Yes, your system needs to be on at least 2.82 and have a valid 4sight subscription.

There is evidently a third party driver (from Epic?) that is available that does not require 4sight but a separate fee from that app developer. That is another option. If you go this route keep in mind your dealer will not receive support from C4 regarding that driver.

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Stuart England Enthusiast

Stuart England

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Plugging a dot into a sonos works... 

Pros

telling Alexa what to play rather than messing about with smart phone is great... the number of time I start something which involves dirty / wet hands then realise I want music on!

ability to use Spotify and set Alexa as a "player" was great too but the most recent sonos update now makes that moot

 

cons

bit of a delay while the sonos wakes up to the fact there is analogue input makes using Alexa for its other functions annoying as you miss most of the response 

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chopedogg88 Grand Master

chopedogg88

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Yes we are leveraging the out of the box Hue integration for Google Home. Works great...very similar to the way that our Echo driver works, with programming events for ON, OFF, UP, DOWN, and SET for each trigger phrase that you define. Home has much fewer reserved words so you can use words like shades, blinds, artist names, etc. It is also nicer in that there is no need to click the Send Discovery button in composer. Just add a trigger and within a second or so it gets auto-discovered by the Home! No cloud services are required, programming is super quick and easy.

Sent from my SM-N920V using Tapatalk

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ILoveC4 Grand Master

ILoveC4

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Yes we are leveraging the out of the box Hue integration for Google Home. Works great...very similar to the way that our Echo driver works, with programming events for ON, OFF, UP, DOWN, and SET for each trigger phrase that you define. Home has much fewer reserved words so you can use words like shades, blinds, artist names, etc. It is also nicer in that there is no need to click the Send Discovery button in composer. Just add a trigger and within a second or so it gets auto-discovered by the Home! No cloud services are required, programming is super quick and easy.

Sent from my SM-N920V using Tapatalk

Can you give any more detail as to how it's setup, what it integrates with, etc...

How is his solution better than the IFTTT driver that works with PushOver? Does this save programming time? Can it natively use Control4 music playing services?

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chopedogg88 Grand Master

chopedogg88

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It is almost identical to the way our Amazon Echo driver works.  Videos coming soon...but if you watch the videos on the www.epic-systems.com home page showing setup, it is very similar, except for a bit easier in fact, because the IP address of the Google Home is easily determined, and you don't need to click any buttons within composer in order to sync the devices with the Home...it happens automatically when you modify the triggers in composer.

Programming with our driver is much faster because for each trigger word/phrase that you define in the driver, we auto-generate 5 separate programming events (ON, OFF, UP, DOWN, and SET) that you can program against.  So for example, you define a trigger called "Living Room Music".  The driver then generates events that allow you to then tell the Home to "Turn on living room music", "Turn off living room music", "Raise (or increase or brighten) the living room music", "Lower (or decrease or dim) the living room music", or "Set the living room music to 40".  For each of those events, you simply use control4 programming to configure what you want to have happen (turn on one of your control4 Pandora stations, turn off the room, increase/lower the volume level by a certain percentage, set the current volume to the percent that was spoken, etc).

There is no reliance on any 3rd party cloud services (other than Google Home relies on for itself to operate...), so setup is much quicker and performance is generally faster and more reliable because the integration is taking place using IP communication directly within the local network.

hope that helps.

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ILoveC4 Grand Master

ILoveC4

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I don't have Alexa and am not familiar with that driver. I can tell you the integration via IFTTT works well, but needs to be programmed in essentially two places. I look forward to seeing more details on what the programming looks like. $150 is a lot for a driver...

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

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chopedogg88 Grand Master

chopedogg88

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like I said, watch the videos on the website and you don't have to look forward to seeing more details...

regarding the price - it has actually been lowered to $125. Sure, maybe it is slightly more than some more general purpose drivers (IFTTT for example), however I guess it depends on what your time/energy is worth.  In relation to many other paid drivers (for example the MyQ driver from Houselogix which goes for $199 MSRP, and all it does is let you open and close your garage door and view status within the C4 app instead of the MyQ app), the driver is a steal considering the functionality which it enables.

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ILoveC4 Grand Master

ILoveC4

Posted
Posted
like I said, watch the videos on the website and you don't have to look forward to seeing more details...

regarding the price - it has actually been lowered to $125. Sure, maybe it is slightly more than some more general purpose drivers (IFTTT for example), however I guess it depends on what your time/energy is worth.  In relation to many other paid drivers (for example the MyQ driver from Houselogix which goes for $199 MSRP, and all it does is let you open and close your garage door and view status within the C4 app instead of the MyQ app), the driver is a steal considering the functionality which it enables.

I'm not finding any videos on the website...not for Google Home.

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

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pwade Enthusiast

pwade

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Posted
17 hours ago, chopedogg88 said:

Great idea!  If you are an existing Echo driver customer, email support@epic-systems after your purchase of the Home driver and I will credit you back 20%!

what would be the point of having both in a C4 environment ?  Don't they both do the same thing?  I'm sure I'm missing something.

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pwade Enthusiast

pwade

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2 minutes ago, chopedogg88 said:

everything other than adding the driver to the project can be done using HE.  A dealer is required to add the driver to the project, that part only takes about 5 minutes.

Thank you.  Thats great.

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chopedogg88 Grand Master

chopedogg88

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Posted
4 minutes ago, cazmadic said:

Hey ChopeDogg88,

I purchased this Driver on Friday via paypal and was never directed to a download link or emailed a download link.  I've emailed support but no reply.

What is your order number?  We reply to all inquiries within the hour typically.

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