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Remote Wattbox Control / OvrC Pro 100


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I currently can reboot my system with my Wattbox while I am at home and connected to the internet. Sometime ago I asked my dealer to allow me to do be able to do the same remotely. He said only he could reboot it remotely and if he gave me that ability It would also give me access to all of his remote clients which he could not allow. I understood his reasoning.

Now that we are finally coming to the end of the contractual and physical obligations that my dealer has made to us, I decided to call Snap in order to find out if I could put the Wattbox on my account only. Since my dealer and I could not both have remote control of my Wattbox I wanted to take away my dealers control and hopefully give me the control that he had to remotely reboot my system through my Wattbox.

The customer service girl at Snap said that she didn't think I could take control of my own wattbox, however they came out with a device / OvrC Pro 100 that would allow me to remotely reboot my Wattbox and possibly other individual devices in my system. I have been looking at the OvrC on the internet and it looks like it will work for me remotely but there was mention of some type of licensing. I would rather not pay for another annual license besides my 4sight license, but I will if that is my only option.

My questions are:

Does anybody know about OvrC and if it is problem free and will accomplish what I need it to?

Is an annual license required and how much is it?

Is it possible to switch my current Wattbox account over to me instead of my dealer and if so can I remotely reboot that way without the added expense of the OvrC?

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Unless your a dealer you can not get a standard OvrC account, you'll need ovrc pro.

OvrC Pro isn't cheap, though the initial purchase includes a 2 year subscription. After that there is a yearly fee.

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I have a standard OvrC account and it works fine.

You can create custom buttons in C4 to toggle those outlets, and if you have 4Site then you can control that from anywhere.

Lastly, I would just setup a VPN if I were you.

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5 hours ago, cdepaola said:

Unless your a dealer you can not get a standard OvrC account, you'll need ovrc pro.

OvrC Pro isn't cheap, though the initial purchase includes a 2 year subscription. After that there is a yearly fee.

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Haha everyone wants a recurring fee. The days of paying for something once are over. They all want to be your lifelong partner. Do you know what the fee is by any chance?

4 hours ago, ILoveC4 said:

I have a standard OvrC account and it works fine.

You can create custom buttons in C4 to toggle those outlets, and if you have 4Site then you can control that from anywhere.

Lastly, I would just setup a VPN if I were you.

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So I'm a little mixed up. On Snaps website all I could seen was a OvrC 100 pro. and I believe the MSRP is around &599. Do I not want the 100 pro? Is the standard OvrC account different than the pro? If so will the standard acct. allow me to reboot my system through 4Sight when I'm away from home?

What is a VPN? As you can tell I'm not very swift with PC set ups.

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So I'm a little mixed up. On Snaps website all I could seen was a OvrC 100 pro. and I believe the MSRP is around &599. Do I not want the 100 pro? Is the standard OvrC account different than the pro? If so will the standard acct. allow me to reboot my system through 4Sight when I'm away from home?

What is a VPN? As you can tell I'm not very swift with PC set ups.

You don't need either to reboot through 4Sight. You can set up custom buttons to run a macro as these switches show as relays in conooser, remember to toggle though and the controller when off will drop you from your home like a hot potato.

You can also set the ping driver in the wattbox to auto monitor your devices and if they drop offline it will reboot and finally set the wb to ping Google etc and of 8.8.8.8 stops responding reboot the modem, router, switch etc.

A VPN is a virtual private network, a secure tunnel into your home network. When connected by VPN your computer thinks it is inside your home.

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38 minutes ago, SMHarman said:

You don't need either to reboot through 4Sight. You can set up custom buttons to run a macro as these switches show as relays in conooser, remember to toggle though and the controller when off will drop you from your home like a hot potato.

You can also set the ping driver in the wattbox to auto monitor your devices and if they drop offline it will reboot and finally set the wb to ping Google etc and of 8.8.8.8 stops responding reboot the modem, router, switch etc.

A VPN is a virtual private network, a secure tunnel into your home network. When connected by VPN your computer thinks it is inside your home.

I agree with SMHarman, I don't think OVRC is needed either.  Here's why.  I'm repeating him on purpose because I've done all the same things and I think it is solid.

  1. Wattboxes have C4 drivers and if you have 4sight you can set up buttons and macros just as SMHarman said.
  2. I also have my Wattbox reboot my controller if it isn't reachable.  You can set it to only attempt it a couple times and you can also set the number of timeouts before it happens.  This stops you from rebooting continuously in case of a larger issue.
  3. if you really need, you can have VPN which would put you on your network and allow you to log into the watt boxes directly if the need comes up.

I'm guessing there are a few outside cases, but overall if you can't overcome your issue with this setup.  Its probably outside remote scenarios anyway.  You'll likely need to be on site to fix things.

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3 hours ago, ILoveC4 said:

I think my OvrC account is legacy.

I'd google what a VPN is. It's basically a way to get on your home network while away from home.

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So the older OvrC accounts did not have annual charges?

OK thxsI will google VPN sometime today or this evening and try to figure it out. Can it be set up remotely?

3 hours ago, SMHarman said:

You don't need either to reboot through 4Sight. You can set up custom buttons to run a macro as these switches show as relays in conooser, remember to toggle though and the controller when off will drop you from your home like a hot potato.

You can also set the ping driver in the wattbox to auto monitor your devices and if they drop offline it will reboot and finally set the wb to ping Google etc and of 8.8.8.8 stops responding reboot the modem, router, switch etc.

A VPN is a virtual private network, a secure tunnel into your home network. When connected by VPN your computer thinks it is inside your home.

The custom button and micros would be way way beyond my capabilities. We need simple in this household. If I sound bad my wife is much worse. She can have problems with the dimmers. 

I'm guessing in order to use the wattbox and ping devices etc I would have to have my dealer off of the wattbox and I would have to take his place. Customer service at Snap said that I could not use the wattbox but that was some gal in customer service not tech service.

2 hours ago, Adidaswood said:

I agree with SMHarman, I don't think OVRC is needed either.  Here's why.  I'm repeating him on purpose because I've done all the same things and I think it is solid.

  1. Wattboxes have C4 drivers and if you have 4sight you can set up buttons and macros just as SMHarman said.
  2. I also have my Wattbox reboot my controller if it isn't reachable.  You can set it to only attempt it a couple times and you can also set the number of timeouts before it happens.  This stops you from rebooting continuously in case of a larger issue.
  3. if you really need, you can have VPN which would put you on your network and allow you to log into the watt boxes directly if the need comes up.

I'm guessing there are a few outside cases, but overall if you can't overcome your issue with this setup.  Its probably outside remote scenarios anyway.  You'll likely need to be on site to fix things.

1. Can they be set up easily and remotely? Are they simple to use?

2. I really like the idea of being able to reboot the controller because 99% of the time that is the only thing that malfunctions. Being able to have the ability to decide what I want to reboot would be ideal.

3. VPN sounds pretty ideal because I already know how to reboot with my wattbox. I do that through my network when I am at home and connected to my network.

I'm wondering what the big deal is about OvrC when you guys say I can reboot when I'm away and probably get a read on my system through my wattbox. The selling point that OvrC was making on their website video was the ability to reboot.

Check out their video:

http://www.ovrc.com/projects/ovrc-home2.html

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As you found in your first post, the OVRC toolset is designed with dealers in mind to hopefully reduce rolling a truck to a jobsite to take care of simpler issues

The "big deal" about OVRC is that as a dealer, I have a single dashboard to look at my clients and see whats online/offline, what needs a firmware update, if im troubleshooting something I can reboot it, etc. With OVRC Pro, I could setup an app for the homeowner that allows them to do simple routines on supported devices like "reboot the wifi" for example.

In your particular case the best option will be using a VPN. You'll be able to login to the web interface of the wattbox from anywhere and be able to do anything you want as if you're in the house. If your dealer used an Araknis router, it has OpenVPN support and getting it configured is really straightforward. I use it all the time to connect remotely to the office.

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If your controller is malfunctioning and needing rebooting then you have a different issue. A bad device driver, a corrupt project, too much project for the controller, too advanced os for the controller, devices and project combined.

My controller reboots are entirely needed because I have been changing things up, not operational.

Dealer or Composer home programming (or a remote dealer here) can quickly create the custom buttons.

You can even make a new room called help and put the buttons there. That's what I have done. Reboot networking, roku, Tivoli and TA etc

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 If it isn't already, when is OvrC Home going to be available? .  I have access to my Wattbox and can't imagine calling my dealer every time I need a device rebooted.  I have the WB-700 and can power cycle any outlet whenever I need to.  Sometimes the device is online but still needs a power cycle.  I have a device that locks up occasionally and this is the perfect solution. 

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3 hours ago, ILoveC4 said:

Custom buttons is as simple as can be. I'd argue that it doesn't get any easier than a custom button. It's a labeled button that you press. Done.

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No but you can do it looking a lot nicer now using experience buttons ^_^

That's what I'd setup these days for any device that needs rebooting. Well, I'd try and make sure I'd fix and or replace the device that needs rebooting if possible of course. :P

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21 hours ago, FLA said:

I wanted to take away my dealers control

As mentioned a few

 

times already, you can always set up custom/experience buttons to do this for most things (obviously you cannot reboot your main controller if it's down).

Note that you can always reset the Wattbox and change the password if you wanted to block out your (old) dealer's control.

21 hours ago, FLA said:

I understood his reasoning.

I can too - except that the 'right' follow up would have been to set up a separate account for you on your request and move the device over - he could still retain potential control by simply knowing the log in...

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13 hours ago, thecodeman said:

As you found in your first post, the OVRC toolset is designed with dealers in mind to hopefully reduce rolling a truck to a jobsite to take care of simpler issues

 

The customer rep at Snap told me that OvrC is available for consumers now. This advertising video is geared to the consumer: http://www.ovrc.com/projects/ovrc-home2.html

13 hours ago, SMHarman said:

If your controller is malfunctioning and needing rebooting then you have a different issue. A bad device driver, a corrupt project, too much project for the controller, too advanced os for the controller, devices and project combined.

My controller reboots are entirely needed because I have been changing things up, not operational.

Dealer or Composer home programming (or a remote dealer here) can quickly create the custom buttons.

You can even make a new room called help and put the buttons there. That's what I have done. Reboot networking, roku, Tivoli and TA etc

Here comes the long story: I have had problems with my system since day  Several months ago my system needed to be rebooted fairly often (lets say once a week) I believe a few of the problems were due to drivers and possibly corrupt issues and possibly programming. Other than Spotify my system now is pretty perfect except for some ugly problems that I believe to be caused by an inferior pre wire job. The problems are: When watching any of 3 of our 8 TV's that are close to our 3 bathrooms and a panasonic exhaust fan is  turned on the TV goes black for several seconds (maybe about 5 seconds). As I said my system / controller doesn't need to be rebooted to often but I have narrowed down when it needs to be rebooted the most. That is when our cleaning lady comes. She comes approximately  once a week and the reboot is needed more often than not after she has been here. She doesn't use the system and does not go into the closed where the rack is. I believe the cause has to do with here plugging in the vacuum cleaner in some area of the house. It could be  the length of time it is plugged in or the actual electrical socket it was plugged into. Last of all is that several of or TV's will stop turning on or off with our SR 250's It is intermittent and hard to say when it will happen. I have to keep the OEM remote next to the SR 250's because the OEM remotes always work for turning the TV's on and off. The SR 250's ALWAYS turn on the source picked for the TV along with all other functions, they just don't always work for the on/of of the TV. Our dealer says all of this is caused by EMI and a poor wiring job by our electrician contractor on our remodel. Funny thing but my dealer  was partners with our electrician. I think it was a poor pre wire job by my dealer and his cutting corners and not using shielded CAT cabling. I also feel that some of the needed rebooting is due to the poor pre wiring. We did a massive remodel and are not interested in lawsuits and we certainly are not going to rip into walls to change the wiring. The interior walls are all board and batten and V Groove and have high quality paint.

We have decided that we can live with all of it and if we could fix any of the problems it would be the TV's not always responding the the SR 250's. Once the TV's on/off function stops responding to the SR 250's it seems to progressively start happening more often, My cure is to reboot the system and after doing so the TV's on / off function starts responding again to the  SR 250's. That is one of the reasons I want the ability to reboot when I am away from home.

I'm glad to hear that a remote dealer can do the buttons for me and I like the idea of calling it the "help" room but that will not allow me to reboot my main controller when it is down after my cleaning lady comes. PS I have never needed to reboot my Roku. 

I'm thinking even with custom buttons I will still have to create a VPN and sign up with a carrier. 

12 hours ago, ILoveC4 said:

Custom buttons is as simple as can be. I'd argue that it doesn't get any easier than a custom button. It's a labeled button that you press. Done.

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Sounds great but can't reboot my controller per my problems described above

11 hours ago, sally said:

 If it isn't already, when is OvrC Home going to be available? .  I have access to my Wattbox and can't imagine calling my dealer every time I need a device rebooted.  I have the WB-700 and can power cycle any outlet whenever I need to.  Sometimes the device is online but still needs a power cycle.  I have a device that locks up occasionally and this is the perfect solution. 

Snap told me it is available now. Check out the link above to the video targeting the consumer. I either have the WB 700 or 600. I definitely have IP capability. I would like to reconfigure the way my dealer wired my WB. He has every power line coming out of the controlled 2 socked and nothing connected to the Control one socket. Hard for me to isolate what I reboot that way.

9 hours ago, Cyknight said:

No clue when or if OvrC Home will come - but this is only for REMOTE access. OvrC power bars can still be controlled locally via a web-browser....just FYI

Cy, Snap told me it is here now. If I did OvrC  I would want to control it remotely. I already control my Wattbox locally and that works fine.

9 hours ago, Cyknight said:

Note that you can always reset the Wattbox and change the password if you wanted to block out your (old) dealer's control.

I can too - except that the 'right' follow up would have been to set up a separate account for you on your request and move the device over - he could still retain potential control by simply knowing the log in...

That's what I thought but the customer service girl at Snap said that I couldn't block out my dealer and take control of the Wattbox???

A separate account for me would be ideal. My dealer doesn't seem to want to do that option. I can't see why because he knows that I would have given him the log. Could it possibly be a price issue for him???

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Sounds like mayor electrical issues. I would be worried about fires, hidden junctions and killing all the electronics

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Without knowing more details, I think this level of alarm is unwarranted. Most of the time, these issues are due to electrical interference and/or electrical phase rather than something that would cause a fire.

I've attended many trainings, expos, webinars, etc. where similar war stories were shared along with solutions. Wish I had consolidated all those notes in one place. I'll post here if I can find them...

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electrical stuff

1. Can the fan be removes and the power wiring be put in a steel tube. NYC steel cased BX style. At least to where it meets with the cat for the av district.

2. Where are the HC250s or whatever device is turning on the TV. Can you instead of using IR on the baluns use a separate pair on a cat or other cable (even a coax core and shield) to run TV IR and get on and off reliable.

3. What video matrix or video distro is in place? Where are the baluns powered.

4. What TVs

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6 hours ago, msgreenf said:

Sounds like mayor electrical issues. I would be worried about fires, hidden junctions and killing all the electronics

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I'm not really worried about the electrical. None on the AC systems act one bit out of the ordinary. Besides the electrical was done to code and city inspected and permitted as all other required systems on our remodel. The low voltage does not require a permit or inspection, 

3 hours ago, cdepaola said:

OvrC Home still requires you to upgrade to Pro. So VPN and experience button is still best option

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Good to know. I totally agree with you about the VPN and experience button. Curious, why is it called an experience button. I did my homework and now understand VPN. I guess my first step will be to find a company that I can sign on to for as my VPN conduit. Do you have any ballpark idea what the customary monthly charges are?

1 hour ago, casperspooks said:

Without knowing more details, I think this level of alarm is unwarranted. Most of the time, these issues are due to electrical interference and/or electrical phase rather than something that would cause a fire.

I've attended many trainings, expos, webinars, etc. where similar war stories were shared along with solutions. Wish I had consolidated all those notes in one place. I'll post here if I can find them... emoji53.png

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I agree, I don't have any concern with fires etc. 

I wish you had consolidated those notes with the solutions.

1 hour ago, SMHarman said:

 

 

1. Can the fan be removes and the power wiring be put in a steel tube. NYC steel cased BX style. At least to where it meets with the cat for the av district.

 

2. Where are the HC250s or whatever device is turning on the TV. Can you instead of using IR on the baluns use a separate pair on a cat or other cable (even a coax core and shield) to run TV IR and get on and off reliable.

3. What video matrix or video distro is in place? Where are the baluns powered.

4. What TVs

1. No would have to rip out too much wall. We have decided we can live with the fan issue.

2. HC 800 and only one TV has a Wyerstorm HD BaseT balun and that TV actually experiences the On / Off problem much much less that the others that are Binary B-300 Matrix and connected to a B 300 switch except for one that is close to the rack and uses direct HDMI cabling. So the direct HDMI TV and all of the Binary B-300 baluns experience the on / off problem. Some more often than others. My equipment list is below:

1 Snap B-300 HDMatrix 8X8

1 Control4 HC800 System Controller 

1 Control4 IO Extender

1 Control4 16x16 audio matrix

1 Control4 - 4 zone amp

1 Control4 - 8 zone amp

1 Control4 Music bridge 

1 Apple TV

1 Roku

2 Sonos connect bridges

1 Marantz AV7005 surround sound pre/processor.

1 Sunfire Theater Grand Amp

12 Audio Zones (4 outdoor, 8 indoor including 1 home theater). indoor = 8” episode 700 ceiling speakers. Home Theater = 5 Episode HT 700 LCR in wall speakers. Outdoor Zones = Episode outdoor speakers

8 Video Zones with Samsung TV's

8- RC250's

1 - 7" Touch Screen

Wattbox IP enabled

Araknis networks AN-300-SW-R-24 Gigabit Switch

Araknis networks AN-300-SW-R-8-Poe 8 Port Managed Gigabit Switch

Wirepath Surveillance WPS-300-DVR-9CH

C4 Door Station 1st Generation

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I currently can reboot my system with my Wattbox while I am at home and connected to the internet. Sometime ago I asked my dealer to allow me to do be able to do the same remotely. He said only he could reboot it remotely and if he gave me that ability It would also give me access to all of his remote clients which he could not allow. I understood his reasoning.

Now that we are finally coming to the end of the contractual and physical obligations that my dealer has made to us, I decided to call Snap in order to find out if I could put the Wattbox on my account only. Since my dealer and I could not both have remote control of my Wattbox I wanted to take away my dealers control and hopefully give me the control that he had to remotely reboot my system through my Wattbox.

The customer service girl at Snap said that she didn't think I could take control of my own wattbox, however they came out with a device / OvrC Pro 100 that would allow me to remotely reboot my Wattbox and possibly other individual devices in my system. I have been looking at the OvrC on the internet and it looks like it will work for me remotely but there was mention of some type of licensing. I would rather not pay for another annual license besides my 4sight license, but I will if that is my only option.

My questions are:

Does anybody know about OvrC and if it is problem free and will accomplish what I need it to?

Is an annual license required and how much is it?

Is it possible to switch my current Wattbox account over to me instead of my dealer and if so can I remotely reboot that way without the added expense of the OvrC?

Why don't you just add the Wattbox drivers into your project and control it that way? Then you don't need OvrC.

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1 hour ago, ILoveC4 said:

No charge for a VPN. I use OpenVPN. It's all free.

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Sounds great. Does it just work with windows or can I access Open VPN from my IPhone and connect to my C4 system that way?

32 minutes ago, Axis24 said:

Why don't you just add the Wattbox drivers into your project and control it that way? Then you don't need OvrC.

Yes I agree. Currently my Wattbox is controlled by my dealer who did not want to give me control. The best suggestion that I have gotten was from Cyknight who suggested that my dealer moves over the registration for the Wattbox to me and then I can give him access which is what I plan on doing. I imagine I would then access though VPN. If my dealer refuses I will find someone on this sight to remotely sign the Wattbox over to me and I will block my dealer out on both the Wattbox and 4sight. 

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