New Halo and Halo Touch Remotes

[ChzBurger]

1 hour ago, chopedogg88 said:

if you want to try a real AP.

Nice try. All product decisions involve trade-offs. A $700 enterprise AP should work pretty well. That doesn't mean it is anything close to needed for the vast majority of residential settings. That's why so many C4 customers happily use Unifi and probably even Omada even as they are not enterprise grade. The Halo engineering involved trade-offs too. My Apple Watch Ultra has about the same network traffic per day (~50MB) and lasts 2.5 days, not 0.75 days without screwing around with every WiFi setting possible. Why didn't C4 use whatever technology Apple uses? 

[jimbones]

@chopedogg88's comment was a little tongue-in-cheek. People can use whatever network gear they want, but at the end of the day, some will work better than others.  These users are simply suggesting to try another AP and see if that works to isolate the issue. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ 

59 minutes ago, ChzBurger said:

Why didn't C4 use whatever technology Apple uses?

As for why Control4, a ~1000 person company, didn't use the technology from Apple, a 165,000 person company? Well, it might have something to do with resources, thats a HUGE difference in the number of people working on problems. Apple probably has 1000+ people working on the Apple Watch Ultra alone. As part of that, they have the resources to develop proprietary chipsets, components, and the like, that yield incredible power management savings, outperforming their competitors by surprising margins. Other companies have to purchase chipsets and components "off-the-shelf" to build their gear and thus take a hit on things like power management, computational performance, etc in order to keep R&D costs down. Oh, and Apple SERIOUSLY protects their IP, so ain't nobody using what Apple uses

At least that's my best guess?

[Andrew luecke]

1 hour ago, ChzBurger said:

Nice try. All product decisions involve trade-offs. A $700 enterprise AP should work pretty well. That doesn't mean it is anything close to needed for the vast majority of residential settings. That's why so many C4 customers happily use Unifi and probably even Omada even as they are not enterprise grade. The Halo engineering involved trade-offs too. My Apple Watch Ultra has about the same network traffic per day (~50MB) and lasts 2.5 days, not 0.75 days without screwing around with every WiFi setting possible. Why didn't C4 use whatever technology Apple uses? 

Isn't it 1 wifi setting? And its a Unifi specific thing (and possibly just a firmware update or whatever). By the way, I use Unifi at home too (and actually used to sell it)

Also, there are lots of reports about Apple Watch and battery drain too: https://piunikaweb.com/2023/02/06/watchos-9-3-causes-horrendous-battery-drain-on-apple-watches/ . Such issues could be in part potentially related to wifi too.. We still also see major issues with Apple phones and such communicating with other devices on WIFI (Shelly as an example), so I'm not convinced Apple is a good example here.

It's also easy to optimise when you break a lot of local LAN support, and absolutely everyone is bending over for you and forcing everyone to redevelop products for your platform. Many wifi vendors also have workarounds and optimise for Apple devices specifically 

 

[Amr]

Which brings us to the same argument, WiFi is headache to optimize and maintain and with the current technology it just can’t be pushed or optimized further maybe better ones will emerge!

[msgreenf]

I think most people confuse working with working well.  Most systems work but don’t work well but there is enough bandwidth behind them to not notice. 

[Elvis]

22 hours ago, crash1977mtl said:

I can’t find any setting in my EAP660HD to turn on/off multicast enhancement. 
 

Is it possible my batch of remotes is bad ? I ordered 3 - one was DOA (battery doesn’t charge) and the other two die within 12 hours.

When you get one that is faulty, then yes, I'd say the potential for a bad batch is not only possible but likely. I can't believe C4 hasn't reached out to you directly. That's a foul. I'd sure want them back to test them.

Return them or make them replace them. You paid the BIG bucks, they need to pony up. I'd sure hope they could just send you 3 new batteries.

[Elvis]

On 2/17/2023 at 7:52 PM, cnicholson said:

Apple TV v50 and Bridge v53.  Latest tvOS.

Did you try turning Siri off and back on in Apple TV settings? @chopedogg88had me do this and it immediately started working and has been ever since.

[Double D]

25 minutes ago, Elvis said:

When you get one that is faulty, then yes, I'd say the potential for a bad batch is not only possible but likely. I can't believe C4 hasn't reached out to you directly. That's a foul. I'd sure want them back to test them.

Return them or make them replace them. You paid the BIG bucks, they need to pony up. I'd sure hope they could just send you 3 new batteries.

That would be a dealer issue, not C4. C4 wouldn’t even know this end user is having an issue.  Zero foul on their part.  The dealer would always handle this type of issue. Sounds like the dealer did his job and took the remotes back for a refund, which is probably the only fair thing to do once the client gets so disgruntled.  

And, yes, C4 will absolutely want them back for testing. 

[Acegadget]

Anyone worked out how to turn off the charging tone yet. Everytime I put mine on charge my dog barks 

[cdcllc]

19 minutes ago, Acegadget said:

Anyone worked out how to turn off the charging tone yet. Everytime I put mine on charge my dog barks 

I'd love to be that budget meeting:

Budget Mgr:  What's this $1000 in capital and $500 in operating for a "dog"?  I swear I just can't keep up with you techies.

Testing Mgr:  No mam, it's not a technical term.  We need a real, live dog.  The $1000 is acquisition cost and shots, etc. to get the dog ready to test.  Then the $500 is for feeding, vet bills, etc.

Budget Mgr:  WTF DOES A DOG TEST?!?!?!?!?!?!

[Elvis]

1 hour ago, Double D said:

That would be a dealer issue, not C4. C4 wouldn’t even know this end user is having an issue.  Zero foul on their part.

Maybe "foul" was too strong of a word. Regardless I've had two unsolicited calls from Control4 -- maybe a regional guy and not Utah -- but definitely not my dealer/integrator. It sure wasn't because of the amount of my C4 purchases.

[Andrew luecke]

3 hours ago, Elvis said:

When you get one that is faulty, then yes, I'd say the potential for a bad batch is not only possible but likely. I can't believe C4 hasn't reached out to you directly. That's a foul. I'd sure want them back to test them.

Return them or make them replace them. You paid the BIG bucks, they need to pony up. I'd sure hope they could just send you 3 new batteries.

Many RMA units  tend to be perfectly working products . They might have 1 faulty unit, but given nobody else is reporting battery trouble, 3 is statistically unlikely imho.

I used to work for a wholesaler, and in one companies case, probably 75% of returns weren't faulty. And at one point, probably 25% of home networks I was attending or more had major issues (and often the customer didn't realize).

The installer should definitely test them first on another temporary AP alongside a known working remote 

[cnicholson]

3 hours ago, Elvis said:

Did you try turning Siri off and back on in Apple TV settings? @chopedogg88had me do this and it immediately started working and has been ever since.

Yes.  No change.   I have a bunch of Apple TVs and voice randomly started working on one of them last night.   Every TV has a real Apple TV on the back and a connection to a shared Apple TV.  The shared Apple TV now seems to work with voice, but not the dedicated Apple TV.   Maybe one endpoint having a valid path to more than one Apple TV confuses it?   The Halo seems happy with this scenario in general since if you try to use voice for an unsupported source it pops up a dialog offering to switch to either of the Apple TVs connected to that TV.

And non-voice control works fine on both Apple TVs.

 

[Jack_Ckun]

Anyone know how to get the icon cache updated on the device?
we switched providers and its still showing the old cable icon ONLY on the halo.
the icon updated on the app/neeo & touch screens.

[GregCAMS]

another good video 

 

[penn65000]

On 2/22/2023 at 4:17 PM, ChzBurger said:

Nice try. All product decisions involve trade-offs. A $700 enterprise AP should work pretty well. That doesn't mean it is anything close to needed for the vast majority of residential settings. That's why so many C4 customers happily use Unifi and probably even Omada even as they are not enterprise grade. The Halo engineering involved trade-offs too. My Apple Watch Ultra has about the same network traffic per day (~50MB) and lasts 2.5 days, not 0.75 days without screwing around with every WiFi setting possible. Why didn't C4 use whatever technology Apple uses? 

I agree. I have probably 100+ Wi-Fi devices and none require Wi-Fi tweaking. The comments sympathetic  re neeo and halo make no sense. I’ve programmed and installed networks myself and this wifi finickiness means that someone at C4 has really blown it. Twice.  

[WhyPhy]

23 hours ago, gregheard said:

another good video 

 

In the video, he points out an IR blaster on top of the Halo remote. Is that correct? That would be a huge shift for Control4.
 

It seems more likely that it’s an ambient light sensor. 

[DaddyPops]

29 minutes ago, WhyPhy said:

In the video, he points out an IR blaster on top of the Halo remote. Is that correct? That would be a huge shift for Control4.
 

It seems more likely that it’s an ambient light sensor. 

Definitely not IR. That would be a step backwards.

[Amr]

On 2/23/2023 at 9:36 PM, cnicholson said:

Yes.  No change.   I have a bunch of Apple TVs and voice randomly started working on one of them last night.   Every TV has a real Apple TV on the back and a connection to a shared Apple TV.  The shared Apple TV now seems to work with voice, but not the dedicated Apple TV.   Maybe one endpoint having a valid path to more than one Apple TV confuses it?   The Halo seems happy with this scenario in general since if you try to use voice for an unsupported source it pops up a dialog offering to switch to either of the Apple TVs connected to that TV.

And non-voice control works fine on both Apple TVs.

 

Do u have different names between the directly attached ATV and the shared one? HB requires unique names so if u name Both Apple TV, it won’t work!

[cnicholson]

On 2/25/2023 at 10:25 PM, Amr said:

Do u have different names between the directly attached ATV and the shared one? HB requires unique names so if u name Both Apple TV, it won’t work!

Yes.  All have different names and all are assigned in the Apple TV driver.  And when I do the "Reinitialize" action in Voice Coordinator, is seems to detect and set up connections to each Apple TV.  And in Halo driver, it correctly populates the Voice URL path.  

Also, just to be clear, the Halo's work great as control remotes, just not for voice.

[Elvis]

My Halo Siri quit working yesterday. Turned Siri off and back on and that did nothing. It was working perfectly up until this point. Rebooted Halo and everything else.

[cnicholson]

On 3/1/2023 at 7:20 AM, Elvis said:

My Halo Siri quit working yesterday. Turned Siri off and back on and that did nothing. It was working perfectly up until this point. Rebooted Halo and everything else.

I feel your pain.  Siri voice has only worked very sporadically for me and, in general, doesn't work for me.  Please post updates if you find a root cause.

[House72]

First the positive is battery is not bad. Not as good as my SR260 but at par with Neeo.

I have a weird issue with my halo. I have left a message for my installer.

1. All my activities are not showing on Halo. 
2. If I start an activity on Halo, its not reflected on other remotes. I cannot control anything from Halo also at this point. I have to start the same activity on a different remote and now halo can control the same.
3. If I start the activity on a different remote, then its reflected in Halo.

 

[ChzBurger]

New firmware (1.1.1) auto updated somewhere in the last 24 hours. No obvious user interaction changes. BUT appears to make a significant battery life improvement. Yay!

[msgreenf]

6 minutes ago, ChzBurger said:

New firmware (1.1.1) auto updated somewhere in the last 24 hours. No obvious user interaction changes. BUT appears to make a significant battery life improvement. Yay!

It was at 3am local time