Integrate Hunter Douglas Powerview (2nd Gen hub)

[pfissure]

Hello, 

We have just installed a house full of Hunter Douglas Powerview blinds with Gen 2 hubs.  Our dealer is coming in a week to integrate into our C4 (on 2.10) system.  As usual it would be nice to know in advance what is going to be done and how it works.  I was hoping the community could help clarify a few things.

1.  Does the C4 driver talk to the PowerView hub?  Does it have access to scenes that are programmed into the hub?  When new shades/scenes are added to the hub will the driver see them (without having the dealer get involved again)?

2.  In composer HE can I program actions like activating scenes, moving shades?

3. Is there feedback from the shades/hub to the C4 driver?  In particular will C4 tell me the current position of the shades?

Thank you and any other advice you can give would be very helpful.

[Bsmall423]

1.) The driver talks to the hub, you have to tell the driver the name of the scene. Yes the dealer would have to program new scenes.

2.) No

3.) No, c4 just executes the scene.

 

As someone who has a v2 hub and hunter Douglas PV shades, you made a big mistake. They are giant pieces of shit and almost daily don't execute a scene the same way the hub does. Very disappointed in the battery life of larger shades too... MAYBE 7-8 weeks just opening and closing vanes, not even rolling up or down. 

[flyingtoasters]

All,

I currently have Hunter Douglas Powerview shades and upgraded to the the Powerview Hub Gen2.  The older generation of the Powerview Hub has an rs232 port to connect the device to a Control4 system.  How does the new Gen2 connect to Control4.  

Here is the manual for API connection used in the gen1 of the Powerview Hub as well as the manual for the new Gen2 which does not have an rs232 port.

• Powerview Hub Serial API guide: http://cdn.hunterdouglas.com/static/product-operating-system-downloads/PowerView_Hub_Serial_API.pdf
• Powerview Hub Gen2 guide: https://cdn2.hunterdouglas.com/static/documents/PowerView-Hub-Instruction-Guide.pdf 

Based on this forum, it looks as individuals have already integrated Control4 with the the new Gen2 hub.

[thecodeman]

2 hours ago, flyingtoasters said:

All,

I currently have Hunter Douglas Powerview shades and upgraded to the the Powerview Hub Gen2.  The older generation of the Powerview Hub has an rs232 port to connect the device to a Control4 system.  How does the new Gen2 connect to Control4.  

Here is the manual for API connection used in the gen1 of the Powerview Hub as well as the manual for the new Gen2 which does not have an rs232 port.

• Powerview Hub Serial API guide: http://cdn.hunterdouglas.com/static/product-operating-system-downloads/PowerView_Hub_Serial_API.pdf
• Powerview Hub Gen2 guide: https://cdn2.hunterdouglas.com/static/documents/PowerView-Hub-Instruction-Guide.pdf 

Based on this forum, it looks as individuals have already integrated Control4 with the the new Gen2 hub.

A quick google search for the Powerview hub gen 2 returned this doc on the Powerview, and while gen 1 does have a serial port it also has ethernet like gen2.

https://my.hunterdouglas.com/content/PowerView/mobile/index.html#p=37

I downloaded the Powerview driver from the Control4 online database, and noticed that it's last modified date was in 2015, and only asks for an IP address and does not offer a serial connection for use with Control4.

I have a friend who recently joined the Hunter Douglas team, and we shared a sentiment that HD integration to control4 has been....less than stellar... and it's one of his priorities to improve. Hopefully, sometime in the near future, we'll see the fruits of his labor.

[johnpg]

I'm curious about this myself, as I'm trying to decide between paying more for Lutron or going with some cheaper alternative. So far the cheaper alternatives all seem to have gotchas that make them not worth it. 

Having said that though, there is a driver from Annex4 that is supposed to provide full integration and individual shade control. There is even an announcement thread on this forum about it, but it was mostly hijacked by people talking about older HD systems so it's not very informative unfortunately. 

Anyhow, here's the driver link. Perhaps someone with more knowledge or actual experience using it can chime in on whether this makes HD a reasonable choice or not.

https://annex4.link/drivers/hunterdouglas-powerview

Cheers,

John

 

[Destroyer of Worlds]

Cannot get C4 to work with shades since HD dealer replaced all of my shades.

 

Host: IP of Gen2 Hub:3000
Content-Type: application/json
Connection: close
[ Trace ] [04/28/21 10:16:52] [3681] [ String ]: Connection.connect: table: 0xa7871c0
[ Trace ] [04/28/21 10:16:52] [3682] [ String ]: Connection.connect: table: 0xa7871c0: Connecting
[ Trace ] [04/28/21 10:16:52] [3683] [ String ]: Annex4.ExecuteCommand[LUA_ACTION]
[ Debug ] [04/28/21 10:16:52] [3684] [ String ]: ACTION:RETRIEVE_SHADES
[ Trace ] [04/28/21 10:16:55] [3686] [ String ]: OnTimerExpired
[ Trace ] [04/28/21 10:16:55] [3687] [ String ]: Timer.OnTimerExpired: 741242
[ Trace ] [04/28/21 10:16:55] [3688] [ String ]: Connection.onConnectionTimeout: table: 0xa7871c0
[ Trace ] [04/28/21 10:16:58] [3689] [ String ]: OnTimerExpired
[ Trace ] [04/28/21 10:16:58] [3690] [ String ]: Timer.OnTimerExpired: 106
[ Trace ] [04/28/21 10:16:58] [3691] [ String ]: Connection.send: table: 0xa7871c0
[ Debug ] [04/28/21 10:16:58] [3692] [ String ]: GET /api/shades? HTTP/1.1
Host: IP of Gen2 Hub:3000
 

Driver version is 1.3.68

I see it's using Port 3000 for gen 2, but timing out.  Our hub is on wifi and it has the correct IP (which I obfuscated in yellow) as confirmed by Powerview app.

 

If I switch it to Gen 1 controller (as it used Port 80): 

 

[ Trace ] [04/28/21 10:30:54] [8280] [ String ]: Connection.OnConnectionStatusChanged[6001:80]: ONLINE
[ Trace ] [04/28/21 10:30:54] [8281] [ String ]: TCPConnection.online: table: 0xa7871c0
[ Trace ] [04/28/21 10:30:54] [8282] [ String ]: Connection.online: table: 0xa7871c0
[ Trace ] [04/28/21 10:30:54] [8283] [ String ]: TCPConnection.resume: table: 0xa7871c0
[ Trace ] [04/28/21 10:30:54] [8284] [ String ]: Connection.resume: table: 0xa7871c0
[ Trace ] [04/28/21 10:30:54] [8285] [ String ]: Connection.resume: Sending Request
[ Trace ] [04/28/21 10:30:54] [8286] [ String ]: ReceivedFromNetwork
[ Trace ] [04/28/21 10:30:54] [8287] [ String ]: Connection.ReceivedFromNetwork[6001:80]
[ Trace ] [04/28/21 10:30:54] [8288] [ String ]: TCPConnection.receive: table: 0xa7871c0
[ Trace ] [04/28/21 10:30:54] [8289] [ String ]: Connection.receive: table: 0xa7871c0
[ Trace ] [04/28/21 10:30:54] [8290] [ String ]: HTTPConnection.parse: table: 0xa7871c0
[ Trace ] [04/28/21 10:30:54] [8291] [ String ]: ReceivedFromNetwork
[ Trace ] [04/28/21 10:30:54] [8292] [ String ]: Connection.ReceivedFromNetwork[6001:80]
[ Trace ] [04/28/21 10:30:54] [8293] [ String ]: TCPConnection.receive: table: 0xa7871c0
[ Trace ] [04/28/21 10:30:54] [8294] [ String ]: Connection.receive: table: 0xa7871c0
[ Trace ] [04/28/21 10:30:54] [8295] [ String ]: HTTPConnection.parse: table: 0xa7871c0
[ Trace ] [04/28/21 10:30:54] [8296] [ String ]: ReceivedFromNetwork
[ Trace ] [04/28/21 10:30:54] [8297] [ String ]: Connection.ReceivedFromNetwork[6001:80]
[ Trace ] [04/28/21 10:30:54] [8298] [ String ]: TCPConnection.receive: table: 0xa7871c0
[ Trace ] [04/28/21 10:30:54] [8299] [ String ]: Connection.receive: table: 0xa7871c0
[ Trace ] [04/28/21 10:30:54] [8300] [ String ]: HTTPConnection.parse: table: 0xa7871c0
[ Trace ] [04/28/21 10:30:54] [8301] [ String ]: HTTPConnection.handle: table: 0xa7871c0
[ Trace ] [04/28/21 10:30:54] [8302] [ String ]: TCPConnection.handle: table: 0xa7871c0
[ Trace ] [04/28/21 10:30:54] [8303] [ String ]: PowerviewAdapter.pollPositions: Unable to get binding for shade: 34377
[ Trace ] [04/28/21 10:30:54] [8304] [ String ]: PowerviewAdapter.pollPositions: Unable to get binding for shade: 34166
[ Trace ] [04/28/21 10:30:54] [8305] [ String ]: PowerviewAdapter.pollPositions: Unable to get binding for shade: 38104
[ Trace ] [04/28/21 10:30:54] [8306] [ String ]: PowerviewAdapter.pollPositions: Unable to get binding for shade: 52104
[ Trace ] [04/28/21 10:30:54] [8307] [ String ]: PowerviewAdapter.pollPositions: Unable to get binding for shade: 215
[ Trace ] [04/28/21 10:30:54] [8308] [ String ]: PowerviewAdapter.pollPositions: Unable to get binding for shade: 8464
[ Trace ] [04/28/21 10:30:54] [8309] [ String ]: PowerviewAdapter.pollPositions: Unable to get binding for shade: 27715
[ Trace ] [04/28/21 10:30:54] [8310] [ String ]: PowerviewAdapter.pollPositions: Unable to get binding for shade: 57664
[ Trace ] [04/28/21 10:30:54] [8311] [ String ]: PowerviewAdapter.pollPositions: Unable to get binding for shade: 27678
[ Trace ] [04/28/21 10:30:54] [8312] [ String ]: TCPConnection.handle: Removing last sent item
[ Trace ] [04/28/21 10:30:54] [8313] [ String ]: Connection.disconnect: table: 0xa7871c0
[ Trace ] [04/28/21 10:30:54] [8314] [ String ]: OnConnectionStatusChanged
[ Trace ] [04/28/21 10:30:54] [8315] [ String ]: Connection.OnConnectionStatusChanged[6001:80]: OFFLINE

[Rexabyte]

The only difference between the Gen.1 and Gen.2 options are the port, so if it's communicating over port 80 you can leave it with that. The Shade ID's likely don't match up to the previous ones if they were all replaced. The binding logic works based on the shade ID that comes back from the JSON object, if the IDs are all different then it won't be able to find the appropriate binding, hence the following lines:

PowerviewAdapter.pollPositions: Unable to get binding for shade:

I would clear the shades (Clear Shades action in the driver) and retrieve them again, it will clear the mapping to the old ID's and create new ones.

If you're still having issues after the above suggestion, PM me and I'll take a further look.