2.10.6 vs 3.1 AND touchscreen vs iPhone

[Ago]

We have inherited a simple setup in an apartment that we purchased: C4 operation of spotlights, Mitsubishi aircon units, in-ceiling speakers, and a Denon amp for the lounge area. We’re currently on 2.8.1 and have a single in-wall touchscreen of the old variety. It’s painfully slow. We use it extremely rarely and only for two functions:

1) Programming lighting scenes. (We can’t see any way of doing this from our current iPhone app). 
2) Activating Shairbridge. (Having bought the latest iPhone, we can’t now find any way of activating Shairbridge on our current app, and therefore can’t stream audio from our phones without first activating Shairbridge on the touchscreen). 
 

Other than these two functions, we have no need for the touchscreen. We prefer to do all operations from our iPhones or via Alexa. 
 

We are likely to move away from Control4 to a more simple Sonos/Hue setup in a few years, so we aren’t keen to spend much money. Therefore, we are not prepared to upgrade to 3.1, due to the hardware costs. We are instead considering upgrading to 2.10.6. I would be massively grateful for your advice on these questions:

1) If we upgrade to 2.10.6, will I notice a significant improvement in the response time when skipping tracks, or pausing/rewinding when playing music from Spotify on my iPhone? There’s such a long delay at present.

2) Would I be able to stream a WAV file from a MacBook to my speakers? I’m imagining something along the lines of the functionality of connecting to a Bluetooth speaker. 

3) I believe I would gain access to a more modern iPhone app with 2.10.6 - is that true?

4) If we upgrade to 2.10.6, we would need a new T3 touchscreen. A cheaper alternative we are considering is to remove the touchscreen altogether and only use our iPhones. We would only be comfortable doing so if we would have a failsafe way of activating music streaming from our iPhone app, and also a way of adjust lighting scenes from our iphone app OR an iPad app OR the C4 website via a MacBook. Would we?

 

[msgreenf]

13 minutes ago, Ago said:

1) If we upgrade to 2.10.6, will I notice a significant improvement in the response time when skipping tracks, or pausing/rewinding when playing music from Spotify on my iPhone? There’s such a long delay at present.

no, that actually points to a network problem, not control4 issues. tell us about your network.

13 minutes ago, Ago said:

2) Would I be able to stream a WAV file from a MacBook to my speakers? I’m imagining something along the lines of the functionality of connecting to a Bluetooth speaker. 

 

there are potentially ways, if you could run a cable from your mac to your amp for example.

13 minutes ago, Ago said:

 3) I believe I would gain access to a more modern iPhone app with 2.10.6 - is that true?

 

no, new app is for 3.x only

14 minutes ago, Ago said:

 4) If we upgrade to 2.10.6, we would need a new T3 touchscreen. A cheaper alternative we are considering is to remove the touchscreen altogether and only use our iPhones. We would only be comfortable doing so if we would have a failsafe way of activating music streaming from our iPhone app, and also a way of adjust lighting scenes from our iphone app OR an iPad app OR the C4 website via a MacBook. Would we?

 

yeah! you can do it all from the iOS app.  I would also recommend setting sharebridge to auto power on a zone.

Happy to help

[tdougray]

20 minutes ago, Ago said:

3) I believe I would gain access to a more modern iPhone app with 2.10.6 - is that true?

You will not get a new app but the old app does a very good job and there is a hell of a lot of people still running it without any problems and you can certainly control lighting from it without issue.

Also like Mitch has said it sounds like a network issue and i think you would be pleasantly surprised how everything speeds up once this can be resolved.

[Cyknight]

2 hours ago, Ago said:

1) Programming lighting scenes. (We can’t see any way of doing this from our current iPhone app). 

Phones don't have enough real estate to do this, but I believe iPads do allow this. Someone else will have to confirm though, I don't own one anymore.

Can also be done using onscreen.

2 hours ago, Ago said:

Activating Shairbridge. (Having bought the latest iPhone, we can’t now find any way of activating Shairbridge on our current app, and therefore can’t stream audio from our phones without first activating Shairbridge on the touchscreen). 

? Shairbridge should show up under the phone app the same it would from a touchscreen. If something is preventing this right now, that needs to be looked at, upgrading as such won't fix this.

 

[msgreenf]

Correct. You can edit lighting scenes on iPad

[Ago]

13 hours ago, Cyknight said:

? Shairbridge should show up under the phone app the same it would from a touchscreen. If something is preventing this right now, that needs to be looked at, upgrading as such won't fix this.

 

Thanks! This made me realise I was being a moron. I had a hallway zone selected at the top of the app, which didn’t have any Shairbridge options associated. Fixed now. 

[Ago]

16 hours ago, msgreenf said:

no, that actually points to a network problem, not control4 issues. tell us about your network.

there are potentially ways, if you could run a cable from your mac to your amp for example.

no, new app is for 3.x only

yeah! you can do it all from the iOS app.  I would also recommend setting sharebridge to auto power on a zone.

Happy to help

Thank you for your help! We’re using hyperoptic broadband. But it’s feeding into an slower router, because that was the only way we could get our C4 network to work with our new broadband provider without having to pay for the dealer to come out. We’ll get him to look into this if we go ahead with an upgrade. 
 

r.e. Streaming a WAV file from a MAC, this would only be of use to me if I could do it wirelessly, so I’m guessing that’s not an easy thing to achieve. 
 

Good tip r.e. Shairbridge auto-on. I’ll suggest to dealer. 
 

Quick question: Dealer told us we’d need a new touchscreen to upgrade from 2.8.1 to 2.10.6. C4 customer advocacy mentioned months ago that we’d only need the touchscreen driver updating. Does anyone know which is true?

[msgreenf]

1 minute ago, Ago said:

Thank you for your help! We’re using hyperoptic broadband. But it’s feeding into an slower router, because that was the only way we could get our C4 network to work with our new broadband provider without having to pay for the dealer to come out. We’ll get him to look into this if we go ahead with an upgrade. 
 

r.e. Streaming a WAV file from a MAC, this would only be of use to me if I could do it wirelessly, so I’m guessing that’s not an easy thing to achieve. 
 

Good tip r.e. Shairbridge auto-on. I’ll suggest to dealer. 
 

Quick question: Dealer told us we’d need a new touchscreen to upgrade from 2.8.1 to 2.10.6. C4 customer advocacy mentioned months ago that we’d only need the touchscreen driver updating. Does anyone know which is true?

do you know what model touchscreen you have?

[Ago]

27 minutes ago, msgreenf said:

do you know what model touchscreen you have?

Will try to find out tonight. By the way, when you imply that there shouldn’t be a delay in 2.8.1, how much of a delay would you expect? For example, if I have the Spotify app open on my phone and skip back to the beginning of the track, the music continues for a couple of seconds before it responds. Should it be instantaneous as it would be with a Bluetooth speaker? The lights respond immediately - it’s only Shairbridge that has the delay. 

[msgreenf]

1 minute ago, Ago said:

Will try to find out tonight. By the way, when you imply that there shouldn’t be a delay in 2.8.1, how much of a delay would you expect? For example, if I have the Spotify app open on my phone and skip back to the beginning of the track, the music continues for a couple of seconds before it responds. Should it be instantaneous as it would be with a Bluetooth speaker? The lights respond immediately - it’s only Shairbridge that has the delay. 

it should be pretty instant - within a second.  That is not likely to be a control4 issue, but really sounds like a network issue.

[lippavisual]

Definitely sounds like network issues.

For your Mac, can you not Airplay to a zone using Shairbridge??  That would be your wireless connection to stream music anywhere.

[South Africa C4 user]

43 minutes ago, lippavisual said:

Definitely sounds like network issues.

For your Mac, can you not Airplay to a zone using Shairbridge??  That would be your wireless connection to stream music anywhere.

This... I used this method for a couple of years and it was rock solid.  If you stay on OS2, the iTunes driver can also be fairly useful

[Ago]

8 hours ago, msgreenf said:

do you know what model touchscreen you have?

Fraid not - I couldn’t see a number anywhere on it. 

[Ago]

6 hours ago, South Africa C4 user said:

This... I used this method for a couple of years and it was rock solid.  If you stay on OS2, the iTunes driver can also be fairly useful

Thanks. I’ll double-check this again when I’m home next week. AirPlaying to Control4 has been extremely temperamental in general and I don’t remember ever getting it to work from my MacBook. Perhaps this is all part of the same network issue, in which case I guess my dealer will be best placed to check it out.