Bought a house with Contol4

[Maxime]

Hi Everyone,

I bought a house with Control4 system, I spent a lot of time online trying to learn more about it. This is the setup I have inherited in term of equipments : Packaged router, Key Digital KD-MS4x4G, Audio Matrix 16x16, Amplifier PAMP8-100, EA-3 Controller. It is supposed to control lighting low voltage, sonos in-ceiling speakers (4x main floor + subwoofer I never heard working, 3x second floor, 3x third floor), Ecobees of all 4 floors, camera for alarm system (which is not working currently or I paid CA$175 for the guy to troubleshoot), 5 TVs (they only left 2 and I have 3 of those black box which I guess are converters) and a door bell that is currently not working for some reasons I can't find as it used to work before the guy handed over the system to me. I got the dealer to come and transfer ownership to me.

I like my DIY and can't stomach spending $175 each time I want to change something or even pay a yearly fee to have remote access to anything when I am not in my home. I am looking to get rid of it as I mainly want to be able to control my music (and the rack takes room and the wife definitely want it gone), I also don't like how the ecobee are managed under that system, and I would install a ring doorbell.

I am left with those questions that I hope you guys can help me with:

- I believe I will have to buy 3 sonos amp to control each floor of the house as it can only power 4 in-ceiling speaker. Can I / Should I still use the amplifier PAMP8-100.?

- There is 6 keys wireless switch keypad that control the outdoor light (3 groups of lights) and is linked to some control 4 switch located next to electric box (don't ask me why I have no idea how it has been done). Can I remove that particular wireless keypad and install a Lutron instead ? The timer and pre-progammed scenes do not work for me, if someone can otherwise help troubleshoot it at a reasonable cost I could keep using it for the time being. Or can I modify scenes with HE ?

I think the Control4 is good if you have a bigger house and a lot to control, I believe the people who had installed primary focused on audio / video and did't go full in with all lights managed by C4, nor the blinds that are still controlled by a separate remote... so the use of it is quite limited in my case. I also don't really care about having audio managed by it as I have a media room with a marantz amplifier and KEF system that I love, so not for me and I am not sure I need to pay someone to change each time I want the light to go off at a 8Pm instead of 7PM.

Thanks for your inputs and time!

Maxime

 

[RAV]

Think of it like firing the assistant manager. Control4 was collecting and displaying the information to you in a consolidated manner, and handling a lot of the little stuff. Firing them, means taking it on yourself, you save the overhead costs and accept the time required to manage.

You don't have to fire them all at once. You can scale back to control some parts. Your budget, timeframe and wants.

Pop the doorbell for a Ring, easy enough.
Reconfigure the music to all Sonos, probably a few Ports.
Eccobee already can run in it's own app.
Setup your TVs for local video sources rather than distributed.

That leaves the lighting, which may be cheaper to leave under Control4 depending on quantity. Get a copy of HE to tweak, as a couple of the guys here for remote support.
You would likely need to go with Lutron RA Select or RA2/3. But yes, it can be replaced without invasive work.

[Maxime]

Hi, I like the analogy with the assitant manager ! Thanks a lot. I ll try to see if I can scale everything one piece by one piece and wall mount the rest for lighting control if that will cost me too much to remove as I thought I could simply swap the keypad by another one from another brand. thanks for your time in responding ! I am a Mac user, can I use the HE on it or do I have to have access to windows ?

Are parts like the amp and the matrix audio go easy on ebay? 

thanks!

[wnpublic]

36 minutes ago, RAV said:

Pop the doorbell for a Ring, easy enough.
Reconfigure the music to all Sonos, probably a few Ports.
Eccobee already can run in it's own app.
Setup your TVs for local video sources rather than distributed.

That leaves the lighting, which may be cheaper to leave under Control4 depending on quantity. Get a copy of HE to tweak, as a couple of the guys here for remote support.
You would likely need to go with Lutron RA Select or RA2/3. But yes, it can be replaced without invasive work.

This is the way.  Probably easier just to leave C4 in charge of the lights.  Get the other stuff swapped out, and then see if it's worth it to you to pull the plug (literally) on the last piece.

[Maxime]

Yep sounds like a good plan to me. Will give a try to the HE, I just need to get my hand on a window PC or emulate it on my mac otherwise I won't be able to use it. Hopefully selling my C4 stuff will make the bill for the sonos amp less painful.

Thanks for your time !