Whole house C4 switch replacement - Advice please!!

[SMHarman]

What is the failure rate of EA5's?  It's an absolutely critical component in your life, no one wants their house bricked, even temporarily as you frantically try to reach your dealer (after grabbing you flashlight to find your phone, you do know where the flashlight is and the batteries are fresh, right?).

 

 Back-up power generators are huge here, everyone has them post-Sandy, so this is not an issue folks don't think about.  Why is C4 not on top of this problem?

Remember I'm a newbie here, so please don't treat me harshly if I am being totally stupid, which is surely possible!

Control4 warranty repair costs run below budget (per their accounts). Historically the biggest problem seems to have been power supplies for controllers. They have specifically spoken about how they have improved these on the EA. The problem is really historic now as it is primary in the 300/500/1000 range which is now end of life as a director. But consider that they are still running homes and acting as secondary devices in many systems.

 

I think C4 is not 'on top of this problem' because it is not actually a problem. More a theoretical problem.

 

If your system has a EA3 on a second screen or location or even an HC800 this can bring you back on line quick enough.

 

If the controller is down and the light switch does nothing then you or your dealer missed a step. The lighting panel and wired rs485 keypads work in a controller failure. The load on a dimmer works during controller failure.

 

What won't work is anything requiring zigbee messaging. A wireless keypad,a remote, or anything needing WiFi, your phone app, a screen / tablet.

 

And finally if Sandy's brother or sister rolled through you are likely worrying a out more than. If your controller is working. To that extent whole home and controller electrical surge suppression is likely more important than a backup controller. As is checking the quality of the generator power. Frequency and voltage stability.

[Larry]

7 minutes ago, msgreenf said:

you don't have redundancy for the water line and power cable to your house and you don't have an SLA for being fixed....sorry disagree there.

But I do have redundancy! Bottled water aplenty for drinking and washing, and portable camping toilets stored in the garage.  Why wouldn't you?  And electric backup via batteries and a generator -- all standard around here.  My condo development won't allow the fabulous automatic devices like Generac, but there are many other solutions (the builder thought I was crazy but I had high capacity power lines pulled in the walls from my patio to the panel, so with a portable gas generator, always fueled + dry gas additive, and a suicide (male-male) heavy-duty AC cable I am all set.  I am adding natural gas to this set-up, and maybe upgrading my batteries to Tesla.

I have enough power generating capacity to power a small ceramic heater for the winter, and an nice fan for the summer, so that takes care HVAC failures.

I discussed internet and CATV failures in an earlier post.

My security system has battery backup. All locks can be opened/closed manually.  The garage door opener can be disengaged trivially and even at my age I can still lift the door (barely ,,, need to lift more weights!).

I really do think I have every essential service covered ... except Control4!

 

[msgreenf]

1 minute ago, Larry said:

But I do have redundancy! Bottled water aplenty for drinking and washing, and portable camping toilets stored in the garage.  Why wouldn't you?  And electric backup via batteries and a generator -- all standard around here.  My condo development won't allow the fabulous automatic devices like Generac, but there are many other solutions (the builder thought I was crazy but I had high capacity power lines pulled in the walls from my patio to the panel, so with a portable gas generator, always fueled + dry gas additive, and a suicide (male-male) heavy-duty AC cable I am all set.  I am adding natural gas to this set-up, and maybe upgrading my batteries to Tesla.

I have enough power generating capacity to power a small ceramic heater for the winter, and an nice fan for the summer, so that takes care HVAC failures.

I discussed internet and CATV failures in an earlier post.

My security system has battery backup. All locks can be opened/closed manually.  The garage door opener can be disengaged trivially and even at my age I can still lift the door (barely ,,, need to lift more weights!).

I really do think I have every essential service covered ... except Control4!

 

you my friend are an exception!  A very well thought out and planned one

[niall]

2 minutes ago, SMHarman said:

I think C4 is not 'on top of this problem' because it is not actually a problem. More a theoretical problem.

Wasn't theoretical for me when my controller died the other week.

I hope you were touching wood when you sent the reply, these things tend to come back to haunt you.

[Larry]

4 minutes ago, msgreenf said:

...well thought out ...

Thanks.  The ex-wife's "FIX THIS!  WHY DIDN'T YOU PLAN FOR THIS!" exclamations were typically worse than the failure events themselves, so I was highly motivated to get it all correct this time around.  If the power goes out while the washing machine is actually washing a load, with my new machine there is no way to drain the water.  There used to be a mechanical override on older machines, but now I would have to get behind it and disconnect the hose, and re-route to a bucket -- just not enough room in this tight new condo for me to do that (I hire only skinny plumbers), a wall is in the way, can't pull the machine forward enough.  After two days the smell would be terrible (I know from Sandy), and I don't have enough AC generator power to power the washer.  A DeWalt battery-operated wet-dry shop vac sounds like the answer (the tub is too deep for hand-bailing to really work for me).  Now we're really off-topic, so I'll stop here, although I could write about a lot of other failures after Sandy (like fallen trees blocking gutters leading to spill-over and then flooded basement, etc.)

[SMHarman]

 But emergencies need to be able to be handled by the homeowner personally without the dealer, especially if the homeowner is willing to fork over extra money for that right.

Emergency by default means you usually need emergency assistance. If you are willing to fork over extra money the you will be buying a maintainance plan for your home from your dealer. Your dealer will install ihiji or some similar monitoring on your system to detect problems before you do. Your plan will upgrade your main Controller as it reaches end of warranty and keep it on the latest OS.

 

A/V is a luxury, but lighting, HVAC, locks, and alarms are not.  There are many scenarios, all terrible but possible, where your life may depend on them working.  This means understanding and testing regularly manual overrides to everything that C4 operates, or at least enough of the lighting to get by.  Not that hard really, nothing to it but to do it ... still this is an awakening moment for me.

Lights with loads (not keypads) or a lighting panel cover lighting here.

Hvac is a luxury. Well the air part is. Most of the world does not have the ac of the USA. Heat less so, but with C4 you still retain a thermostat to control the system.

Locks. As others say. The codes are stored in the lock. You just lose remote activation and monitoring.

Alarms. No dealer would remove all direct alarm keypads. Control4 use of alarm sensors does not replace a monitoring contract.

 

I can't think of any life safety scenarios that an active Control4 system is needed for. I don't see any presented here.

[Larry]

20 minutes ago, SMHarman said:

If your system has a EA3 on a second screen or location or even an HC800 this can bring you back on line quick enough.

And finally if Sandy's brother or sister rolled through you are likely worrying a out more than. If your controller is working. To that extent whole home and controller electrical surge suppression is likely more important than a backup controller. As is checking the quality of the generator power. Frequency and voltage stability.

@SMHarman -- great points, thanks.  I will think harder about surge-suppression ... my old home had whole-home surge suppression, good idea.  And will check on the surge-suppressor the EA5 is plugged in to.

Can you elaborate on three points you made -- I just don't follow:

1. Or the homeowner installs teamviewer on their machine and the dealer does this remotely.

2. Or the client is that concerned that a PC to enable this without client interaction is installed in the rack.

3. If your system has a EA3 on a second screen or location or even an HC800 this can bring you back on line quick enough.

Re #1 ... isn't that always installed ... my dealer always says "I can configure remotely".  I haven't asked him to do that, since his tech is always here in the development.

Re #2 ... I have a laptop running Composer HE.  Dedicated to this.  What else do I need to do ... I don't grok this idea, so sorry!

Re #3 ... I am more than willing to get an EA3 or a second EA5 and use it somewhere ... I don't understand how two controllers work ... will read up on that.  But what does this mean when the primary EA5 goes down??

THANKS!

[SMHarman]

Wasn't theoretical for me when my controller died the other week.

I hope you were touching wood when you sent the reply, these things tend to come back to haunt you.

The mean time to failure and the impact of failure.

My controller fails. If this is super critical I rent a car drive to my dealer pick up a spare controller. Power it up and then the dealer can teamviewer this back up and running. As Vince highlighted. An hour should get it all online.

[SMHarman]

 

@SMHarman -- great points, thanks.  I will think harder about surge-suppression ... my old home had whole-home surge suppression, good idea.  And will check on the surge-suppressor the EA5 is plugged in to.

 

Can you elaborate on three points you made -- I just don't follow:

 

 

1. Or the homeowner installs teamviewer on their machine and the dealer does this remotely.

2. Or the client is that concerned that a PC to enable this without client interaction is installed in the rack.

3. If your system has a EA3 on a second screen or location or even an HC800 this can bring you back on line quick enough.

Re #1 ... isn't that always installed ... my dealer always says "I can configure remotely".  I haven't asked him to do that, since his tech is always here in the development.

Re #2 ... I have a laptop running Composer HE.  Dedicated to this.  What else do I need to do ... I don't grok this idea, so sorry!

Re #3 ... I am more than willing to get an EA3 or a second EA5 and use it somewhere ... I don't understand how two controllers work ... will read up on that.  But what does this mean when the primary EA5 goes down??

THANKS!

 

1. Your dealer can log into the controller remotely and look at everything you can see on Composer HE and the additional they get on their Composer (pro).

 

 

From that they can also write code, bind system connections, etc.

 

 

As someone in IT you can figure out what that means they cannot see.

 

 

2. Do you know teamviewer or Windows desktop sharing.

 

 

Give a dealer access to that and now they are inside your network. Can see all devices and are truly virtually on-site. Not just remotely attached to your controller.

 

 

The steps discussed above about enabling director and installing your project and the zigbee are all easier to do from a local pc.

 

 

Then with you on the phone, you would be helping rebuild the zigbee mesh.

 

 

3. The second ea5 or an ea3 would be a slave device it would not direct. It would offer on screen gui to a second screen, provide additional audio streams, relays and contacts.

 

 

In the disaster it would be manually reconfigured to direct. Using teamviewer or similar on that PC you speak of

 

 

[Larry]

8 minutes ago, SMHarman said:

Lights.

Hvac

Locks

Alarms

I can't think of any life safety scenarios that an active Control4 system is needed for. I don't see any presented here.

So as I discussed in an earlier post, the light switches that would still work (turn on loads) after the EA5 failure are buried in closets.  I will add battery-backed lights to the key closets.

I take your point on HVAC, Locks, and Alarms ... the issue is not that they won't work, the issue is training the family that only knows how to operate them through C4 what to do in an emergency or even routine failure.  Testing that and drilling that.

The scenario you asked for: I am away, unreachable.  My wife hears noises outside, maybe an intruder, maybe a fantasy, but they wake her up, the house is dark, Alexa won't turn on the lights, it's pitch black in the house as I said (she likes it that way to sleep), she stumbles her way to the keypad on the bedroom wall that she uses every day, and nothing!  But the LEDs are on!  So it's not a power failure!  She is confused, scared, stumbles and falls.  Breaks her hip.

There you have life-threatening.  There was no noise, no intruder, but the EA5 died earlier that night. My goal is to be sure that is the only thing that died.

I do not think it unreasonable to hope C4 develops, and sells, a hot-backup auto-failover service for the new controllers..  A poster in this thread explained how easy that would be, and C4 gets an extra EA5 sale out of it, to the homeowners who care.  I would be the first to buy.

 

[Larry]

@SMHarman -- thanks for all the explanations.  I will proceed the way you suggest!

[SMHarman]

 

 

 

 

 

@SMHarman -- thanks for all the explanations.  I will proceed the way you suggest!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

So with a dealer maintainace plan your dealer may have been alerted that the controller has been leggy or rebooting frequently. Something to consider if these are concerns.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Also, that always on PC with C Home on it. You could install a ping driver on it to ping the controller and email you if it stops responding. You could install a IP wattbox 700 or similar to ping the controller and auto power cycle of it stops responding. First fix. Hard reboot.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A more sophisticated check, you could connect a relay or serial or contact from the pc to the controller. Have an scheduled event fire on the controller once an hour (periodically) (or on the Pc for the contact) and if the pc does not receive that event response fire off a message to you. That would ensure that not only is the controller up (responding to a ping) but director is running properly.

 

 

 

Also, I and I am sure many here have a notification event fire to them on controller reboot.

[Larry]

20 minutes ago, SMHarman said:

1. a dealer maintenance plan ...

2. on PC with C Home on it. You could install a ping driver on it to ping the controller and email you if it stops responding. You could install a IP wattbox 700 or similar to ping the controller and auto power cycle of it stops responding. First fix. Hard reboot.

Love these ideas, thanks!

[VINCELdUB]

 

Larry and SMHarman, I like the way you are going back and forth on this. I will begin to consider some options for those who are in need of "totaly redundant" systems. I see the merit almost daily.

 

 

What I will stress is that if the system is configured correctly and the network hardware is solid, there is very little chance of the control4 system failing.

 

 

 

The idea of a dealer maintenance plan is something I am starting to offer a few of my clients. I have setup a third party device on the network in their home that snoops the network for preconfigured devices. If any device shows issues, I get a notification that I respond to within a reasonable time. As outlined in agreement based on severity.

 

 

If I get a reboot or offline I get a high alert message and that I respond to within minutes. The response is relative to the severity of the event and is also outlined in the agreement on type of intervention/resolution without customer input. (Middle of the night) sort of thing.

 

 

 

Happy Automating!

 

[ILoveC4]

OK I understand there is no hot-backup possible. But following the ideas of@VINCELdUB and others, lets talk about having an exact duplicate EA5 on hand. Configured identically as the main EA5 while off-line, and then fired up and actually operating for a bit (with the other EA5 turned off) using the full mesh etc. as a test.  Same IP address so they can't both operate at the same time of course.  I understand it takes a dealer to do this, but is this not a one-time affair?  This is what the dealer would do if the first EA5 died for real, so obviously it is possible (although the one extra step here would be to force the same network address, which the dealer wouldn't worry about if this were a full replacement for a dead EA5).  

I know that when I unplug my EA5 and plug it back in, simulating a power failure, everything comes back on line perfectly, as you would expect.

So what would happen if I plugged back in the OTHER spare EA5?  Why can't we figure out a way that it just works at this point in time, with no additional dealer intervention necessary?  Is it that the MAC address of the spare is different?  Surely there is a way around that!  Why would it matter to the mesh?  Maybe C4 should sell backup controllers like this as a product!  Fully automating it is the great idea expressed by@drivertutorial a few posts ago.

What is the failure rate of EA5's?  It's an absolutely critical component in your life, no one wants their house bricked, even temporarily as you frantically try to reach your dealer (after grabbing you flashlight to find your phone, you do know where the flashlight is and the batteries are fresh, right?).  Back-up power generators are huge here, everyone has them post-Sandy, so this is not an issue folks don't think about.  Why is C4 not on top of this problem?

Remember I'm a newbie here, so please don't treat me harshly if I am being totally stupid, which is surely possible!

 

I agree that a backup controller is a good idea...and I have one. That said, in the 11 years I've had Control4 I've not had a controller die on me. As my primary controller I started with a media controller, then upgraded to an HC300, then an HC1000V3, then an HC800 which I still use today (about 4 years old I'd guess). I've upgraded for reasons other than failure. There aren't any moving parts, so other than a power supply (which the HC200 and HC300 did have problems with, fortunately I never did) there isn't really anything that's going to "go out".

 

 

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[SMHarman]

The EA have fans but a cool clean rack should keep them happy