Apple Watch Support

[control4user007]

19 minutes ago, Dr. Venkman said:

Does anyone know if the watch app will work if the phone is not present? As in going for a run or a bike ride with the watch (but without the phone) and using it to open the garage upon return?

I just tried it - it works!  Powered off my phone and turned lights on and off.

[Dr. Venkman]

7 minutes ago, control4user007 said:

I just tried it - it works!  Powered off my phone and turned lights on and off.

Awesome! Thanks - I'm not home, so I can't really test it now (not without freaking my wife out, anyway).

That's terrific - I don't know how much I'll use it while sitting on the couch, but I'll definitely use it for this. Otherwise useful watch apps that don't work without the phone are a pet peeve of mine (I'm looking at you, Amazon Music).

[RAV]

8 minutes ago, Dr. Venkman said:

Awesome! Thanks - I'm not home, so I can't really test it now (not without freaking my wife out, anyway).

That's terrific - I don't know how much I'll use it while sitting on the couch, but I'll definitely use it for this. Otherwise useful watch apps that don't work without the phone are a pet peeve of mine (I'm looking at you, Amazon Music).

Works really quickly too I might add.

Confirmed with iPhone off.
And watch in both Wifi and Cellular modes on watch.
(HC800, OS3.24, 4Sight, Watch 4 Verizon)

[prabeau]

 

4 hours ago, ekohn00 said:

Just went into the newly downloaded app to turn on the Apple Watch feature and it shows this (attached) ....funny thing, the watch is working....

UPDATE:   If you get this, just for exit C4 App and go back in....all is good now.

 

same here

[zaphod]

I have this working, but it only seems to let you start watch, listen, turn on lights, etc.

Can you not use it for transport controls?  That was one of the best things with old watch app.  Being able to use the watch app for transport controls while in the pool or hot tub was very useful. At least if using Spotify you can use the Spotify watch app transport controls to skip songs, or pause.

[prabeau]

I wish I could do that much.

Cant turn on anything. Tried simplest room I have , the garage. All that's associate is lights. Watch shows garage light on or off. Press nothing .....

Have other rooms show up and only the buttons created show up, and they have no effect with the watch requested action.

Oh well a watch is to tell time right !

[dew1551]

18 hours ago, yagrbomb said:

Yes, I have 3 favorite rooms with each room having favorite categories.

how do you add favorite categories to the rooms?

 

[dew1551]

17 hours ago, THE L1ZARD KING said:

You are correct, I misread the blog, only individual devices that have been favorited appear. I didn’t put that together, thank you for the clarification. 

how do you favorite items within a room?

[msgreenf]

12 minutes ago, dew1551 said:

how do you favorite items within a room?

press and hold

[RAV]

10 hours ago, zaphod said:

I have this working, but it only seems to let you start watch, listen, turn on lights, etc.

Can you not use it for transport controls?  That was one of the best things with old watch app.  Being able to use the watch app for transport controls while in the pool or hot tub was very useful. At least if using Spotify you can use the Spotify watch app transport controls to skip songs, or pause.

Easy.

Use custom buttons and favorite to a room, theyll show as a 'folder'
Make a "Transport" folder set of custom buttons for play, pause, skip +, skip -

Do the same for "Volume", vol up, down, mute, room off, match etc.

[Elvis]

I only get one room on my watch. I favorited 4 rooms but I can't swipe between rooms on my watch. I can on my iPhone, but not the watch.

I killed all the apps (both on the phone and watch) and rebooted both. Same results. Only 1 dot at bottom of watch screen and one room showing. 

Any ideas appreciated. Director version 3.2.3.606460 (Sep 13) The apps are up to date as of this morning. I'll ask @chopedogg88 to update my system to the latest, maybe that will do it?

[RAV]

28 minutes ago, Elvis said:

I only get one room on my watch. I favorited 4 rooms but I can't swipe between rooms on my watch. I can on my iPhone, but not the watch.

I killed all the apps (both on the phone and watch) and rebooted both. Same results. Only 1 dot at bottom of watch screen and one room showing. 

Any ideas appreciated. Director version 3.2.3.606460 (Sep 13) The apps are up to date as of this morning. I'll ask @chopedogg88 to update my system to the latest, maybe that will do it?

If there's no devices favorited in a room, the room will not show on the swipe, even if the room itself is favorited.
Also those things favorited must be single executables.

 

[Elvis]

5 minutes ago, RAV said:

If there's no devices favorited in a room, the room will not show on the swipe, even if the room itself is favorited.

I can only "Arrange and Remove" favorites. The other rooms don't have "Listen" or "Watch" options in the navigator, just lights, comfort, etc. But nothing to watch or listen to in those rooms. Is that an issue?

No way to control lights with the watch?

[bnorman]

1 hour ago, Elvis said:

I can only "Arrange and Remove" favorites. The other rooms don't have "Listen" or "Watch" options in the navigator, just lights, comfort, etc. But nothing to watch or listen to in those rooms. Is that an issue?

No way to control lights with the watch?

I'm not sure I completely follow, so I apologize if this doesn't answer you're question.  In any favorited room you have on your phone, all you need to have is a single device or media streaming favorite.  This could be a specific light, lock, Apple TV, Roku, etc.  It could also be a playlist, album, or station you have favorited from a service like TuneIn, Deezer, etc.  So to answer your 2nd question, yes you can control lights with the watch.  You just won't be navigating into a whole list of lights in your room like you do on the phone.  It will be by way of favoriting specific lights to the front page of the room.

[Elvis]

3 minutes ago, bnorman said:

I'm not sure I completely follow, so I apologize if this doesn't answer you're question.  In any favorited room you have on your phone, all you need to have is a single device or media streaming favorite.  This could be a specific light, lock, Apple TV, Roku, etc.  It could also be a playlist, album, or station you have favorited from a service like TuneIn, Deezer, etc.  So to answer your 2nd question, yes you can control lights with the watch.  You just won't be navigating into a whole list of lights in your room like you do on the phone.  It will be by way of favoriting specific lights to the front page of the room.

No worries. @chopedogg88 got me fixed up. I had forgotten how to add something to favorites from the (4) menu in the app. I'm all set. This is a game changer for us.

[bnorman]

Just now, Elvis said:

No worries. @chopedogg88 got me fixed up. I had forgotten how to add something to favorites from the (4) menu in the app. I'm all set. This is a game changer for us.

Great, I'm glad to hear that!  We'd love to hear any feedback you might have on it as time goes on.  Which situations and kinds of devices you use the app for, and anything that would be useful in the future.

[Elvis]

14 minutes ago, bnorman said:

Great, I'm glad to hear that!  We'd love to hear any feedback you might have on it as time goes on.  Which situations and kinds of devices you use the app for, and anything that would be useful in the future.

So far it is nice to have access to scenes and to augment the remote (SR260) for calling up favorite TV stations or streaming services.

I was hoping Favorite "Listen" items would show up. They show up in the iOS app but not the watch. I might be doing something wrong. We often have someone in the family start streaming music, on the porch for example, but nobody else has control of volume or skip. If it showed up on our watch, we could change volume or skip a bad song.

Being able to do this on the C4 app is nice. Adding it to the watch would be nice.

[RAV]

1 hour ago, Elvis said:

So far it is nice to have access to scenes and to augment the remote (SR260) for calling up favorite TV stations or streaming services.

I was hoping Favorite "Listen" items would show up. They show up in the iOS app but not the watch. I might be doing something wrong. We often have someone in the family start streaming music, on the porch for example, but nobody else has control of volume or skip. If it showed up on our watch, we could change volume or skip a bad song.

Being able to do this on the C4 app is nice. Adding it to the watch would be nice.

There's too many things in Control4 named favorites, so it's easy to get confused.

With apple watch - you need to

1. favorite the room itself, so it'll show up in the watch app
2. favorite something from within the rooms navigation so it shows on the rooms main page outside of Watch Listen or Lights, and that item needs to be actionable when it's clicked, ie it does something without further selections.

Music favorites aren't the same thing. Just because you made Classic Rock a favorite music channel within Pandora, it doesn't mean it'll show up in the watch.
You have to then go into Pandora, press and hold the Classic Rock music channel, so that gets favorite all the way out to the room level.
Now it'll show up in Apple watch.

To get volume and or transport, use the less often used older Custom Buttons feature. Which used to put a text in the four corners and a drop down menu.
Now it makes a 'folder' in the GUI. That same folder will show up in Apple Watch once you favorite it to the room.
You get 6 items per custom button sub menu. So Vol +, Mute, Vol -, Off, Pause/Play, Skip gives you fairly simple control over music, once you've favorite a couple of music channels/playlists to the room level.

[zaphod]

5 minutes ago, RAV said:

To get volume and or transport, use the less often used older Custom Buttons feature. Which used to put a text in the four corners and a drop down menu.

Now it makes a 'folder' in the GUI. That same folder will show up in Apple Watch once you favorite it to the room.
You get 6 items per custom button sub menu. So Vol +, Mute, Vol -, Off, Pause/Play, Skip gives you fairly simple control over music, once you've favorite a couple of music channels/playlists to the room level.

Aren't we getting into a lot of complexity here?

Couldn't they just do it so that when you click on a Watch or Listen activity on the watch that it brings up transport controls on the Watch?  I think that is how it used to work on the OS2 watch app - or at least there was a way to get transport controls without having to do a lot of prior setup.

[ekohn00]

51 minutes ago, RAV said:

There's too many things in Control4 named favorites, so it's easy to get confused.
 

they need to create"watch favorites".....   different platform, different options 

[RAV]

58 minutes ago, zaphod said:

Aren't we getting into a lot of complexity here?

Couldn't they just do it so that when you click on a Watch or Listen activity on the watch that it brings up transport controls on the Watch?  I think that is how it used to work on the OS2 watch app - or at least there was a way to get transport controls without having to do a lot of prior setup.

 

I'm thankful that they bothered at all.
I'm sure there's a whole lot of applesauce to deal with to developing for the watch, and to try and plan for the future when Apple changes things.

For quickly turning on lights, and house modes, it's great.
And it's a clean interface on a postage stamp size display. Kudos.

As to music, I look at it as a bonus. My phones not going to be that far away.

 

[zaphod]

Agreed - as I said above the biggest advantage was the ability to use the Watch app in the pool or hot tub.

[Neo1738]

C4 don't forget about us Android watch users! That is all.

[Jeffrey]

Siri commands work?

[zaphod]

21 hours ago, bnorman said:

Great, I'm glad to hear that!  We'd love to hear any feedback you might have on it as time goes on.  Which situations and kinds of devices you use the app for, and anything that would be useful in the future.

I would love to have transport controls for Watch or Listen activities on the Watch. I wear my Apple Watch in the swimming pool and hot tub.  It would be nice to be able to be able to skip songs, skip commercials, change volume, etc.  If I am using Spotify for playback I can use the Spotify Watch app, but with other content I can't.

Of course Siri integration would also be useful without having to use third parties like HomeKit.