Ultimate C4 “Driver” or backend

[Jmugoose30]

I have been reading some of these posts and wanted to throw my solution in the ring. I have set up home assistant as the ultimate do all “driver” for c4. I use chowmain’s tcp driver and some virtual outputs on my elk security system to send info back and forth between the 2 systems. 
I have had c4 for over a decade (probably closer sto 15 yrs at this point). All my a/v, lights, security is c4 and touching it would not have any wife approval factor. So why do I use home assistant?  Well the wife and kids still use all the controls they are comfortable with: remotes, phones, switches, etc.  Home assistant can do more backend things that don’t need interaction such as;

1). People tracking. It works with phones to know where people are

2) Alexa AND Apple HomeKit integration 

3) use of better cheaper sensors. I love aqara sensors. I have their tiny motion sensors and mmWave sensors all over my house. But any zigbee 3.0 sensors work

4) Tesla integration 

5) sleep number bed integration 

6) I have a bunch more that are sort of there but 3 kids they are waiting to be done, including ESPN fav team notification and the big one 2 way notifications.  Be able to interact with the system through push notification.  Ex.  Left your house and lights are on?  Get a push notification and it asks if you want to cut them off  (Done through Home Assistant but can control c4 through a simple tcp command sent to chowmains driver)  

pretty much any thing you can think of that has a home assistant integration can be added for FREE. I run my HA in a virtual machine so the cost to set up was a zigbee dongle and cost of sensors which is 10-20 bucks each off Amazon

i do some programming in node red on Home Assistant side because I like it more for complex programming. For example I have 2 mmWave sensors and 3 ir motion sensors in my kitchen and Florida room. They form a motion group. If motion is not detected in the group for 5 mins. It stores the current scene and turns out the lights. If you enter the rooms within 2 hours the saved scene comes back on. After 2 hours it defaults to a scene based on time of day.  If you manually turn off a light it disable motion for a few mins to prevent turning lights back on.  Home assistant has a driver for control4 lights so it can all easily be done in node red. Also the flow makes it much easier to group all these steps in one visual pane. 

Edited February 12, 2023 by Jmugoose30
Changed some wording

[wnpublic]

Sooner or later you may get to the point where you're wondering why you have C4 at all, apart from the sunk investment in light switches etc.

[Jmugoose30]

I understand what you mean, but the answer is ui and remotes. My 3and 5 yo even know how to use the remotes to get to their apps to watch shows, use the sliders on a device to changes lights. I’ve had C4 for a long time and it has been rock solid. I love the system and it has great acceptance for daily use. That being said I love to tinker and have “wasted” thousands over the years on drivers. Extra Vegetables, Plex, IFTTT etc. chowmain has excellent drivers and I would recommend anything he puts out and still rely on the tcp driver. Plex has died since they changed the api, ifttt has become pointless with local control, and many of the drivers I bought are now included. Home assistant let’s me play with ideas without purchasing drivers. As a business I can’t see home assistant being a viable solution due to the frequent updates and breaking changes, but as a techy homeowner it is amazing. 

[Amr]

1 hour ago, Jmugoose30 said:

I understand what you mean, but the answer is ui and remotes. My 3and 5 yo even know how to use the remotes to get to their apps to watch shows, use the sliders on a device to changes lights. I’ve had C4 for a long time and it has been rock solid. I love the system and it has great acceptance for daily use. That being said I love to tinker and have “wasted” thousands over the years on drivers. Extra Vegetables, Plex, IFTTT etc. chowmain has excellent drivers and I would recommend anything he puts out and still rely on the tcp driver. Plex has died since they changed the api, ifttt has become pointless with local control, and many of the drivers I bought are now included. Home assistant let’s me play with ideas without purchasing drivers. As a business I can’t see home assistant being a viable solution due to the frequent updates and breaking changes, but as a techy homeowner it is amazing. 

Yep, I like the idea of having HA as the integration layer to C4 but I had abandoned it 3 yrs ago, I basically didn’t have the time to waste on it, I understand it matured without a lot of yaml stuff, but still I have a lot to re-learn it.

On the other hand I spent like $40k on C4 in the past 10 yrs and it’s the “to go” system for full automation, I integrated everything to it, like you:

- Lots of ZB3 sensors (ZB2MQTT)

- Apple HomeKit (Geofencing)

- BLE devices mainly Flic

- RF devices

[Control4Savant]

1 hour ago, Jmugoose30 said:

I understand what you mean, but the answer is ui and remotes. My 3and 5 yo even know how to use the remotes to get to their apps to watch shows, use the sliders on a device to changes lights. I’ve had C4 for a long time and it has been rock solid. I love the system and it has great acceptance for daily use. That being said I love to tinker and have “wasted” thousands over the years on drivers. Extra Vegetables, Plex, IFTTT etc. chowmain has excellent drivers and I would recommend anything he puts out and still rely on the tcp driver. Plex has died since they changed the api, ifttt has become pointless with local control, and many of the drivers I bought are now included. Home assistant let’s me play with ideas without purchasing drivers. As a business I can’t see home assistant being a viable solution due to the frequent updates and breaking changes, but as a techy homeowner it is amazing. 

So, I am doing HA systems as well. The best advice I can give is to create them based on a lot of the core devices that I know and vet. With that said, the biggest advantage to HA as a pro is that most parts have their own separate control and app so when full system integrations break down, you dont lose the ability to control that individual device while a solution is updated/made etc. 

[RyanE]

I think HomeAssistant is a pretty capable automation platform at this point, but as others have mentioned, it has a 'diy' UI.  You can make your UI do anything you want, but it's going to still look like a webpage with components.  That's not a cut on them, but that's what it is.  It's not a native UI.

The other weakness compared to Control4 is that HA doesn't have much AV support, and doesn't have any 'native' remote control options.  If you want to do automation plus a home theater or multi-room audio, and want a nice remote, HA doesn't really cover it.

Open source handling sensors with graphs and DIY, it's pretty nice.

RyanE

[DanITman]

I think smarter push notifications is something c4 should work on. The ability to link back to the device that sent you the message. Easy win would be snapshots going to cameras. Lots of opportunity on custom buttons or commands sent with push notifications. C4 could also offer high priority push notifications that can be delivered through DND mode (alarm going off). Lots of room to grow. 

[South Africa C4 user]

19 hours ago, DanITman said:

I think smarter push notifications is something c4 should work on. The ability to link back to the device that sent you the message. Easy win would be snapshots going to cameras. Lots of opportunity on custom buttons or commands sent with push notifications. C4 could also offer high priority push notifications that can be delivered through DND mode (alarm going off). Lots of room to grow. 

Camera Snapshots can already be attached to push notifications using the relevant driver. And you can set up your phone (iOS anyway) to let relevant Control4 push notifications through during DND.  Maybe I am misinterpreting your suggestions?

Edited February 14, 2023 by South Africa C4 user

[DanITman]

28 minutes ago, South Africa C4 user said:

Camera Snapshots can already be attached to push notifications using the relevant driver. And you can set up your phone (iOS anyway) to let relevant Control4 push notifications through during DND.  Maybe I am misinterpreting your suggestions?

Yes, but what happens when you click on the notification in Control4.  It doesn't bring you to the live feed of the camera.  Things like home assistant give you options that you can click on in the notification.  "View live feed" or something like that.  You have no action options. 

You cannot receive Control4 notifications in iOS when your phone is on DND.  You can allow high priority push notifications to get through the DND but the app developer has to support it. Control4 doesn't support that. 

[South Africa C4 user]

4 minutes ago, DanITman said:

Yes, but what happens when you click on the notification in Control4.  It doesn't bring you to the live feed of the camera.  Things like home assistant give you options that you can click on in the notification.  "View live feed" or something like that.  You have no action options. 

You cannot receive Control4 notifications in iOS when your phone is on DND.  You can allow high priority push notifications to get through the DND but the app developer has to support it. Control4 doesn't support that. 

I see your point on push notifications… that would be cool. 

In terms of getting push notifications when in DND on iOS, my iPad is set up to get them and my iPhone is set up to not get C4 messages during DND.  That works.  It would be nice if you could also choose which category of message goes through / does not go through.

[DanITman]

8 minutes ago, South Africa C4 user said:

I see your point on push notifications… that would be cool. 

In terms of getting push notifications when in DND on iOS, my iPad is set up to get them and my iPhone is set up to not get C4 messages during DND.  That works.  It would be nice if you could also choose which category of message goes through / does not go through.

I'm wrong on the ios notifications.  I just checked.  I swear this was a problem before.  Maybe I'm getting it confused with Android.  Looks like you can whitelist specific applications to make sure they get through.  It would be nice to categorize them though.  Like just the alarm notifications. 

[DanITman]

Found this example online of critical alerts.  Would be cool to have for alarm notifications.  No matter if your phone is on DND or on silent it will make a noise.  Similar to amber alert. 

[Amr]

On 2/14/2023 at 10:58 PM, DanITman said:

Found this example online of critical alerts.  Would be cool to have for alarm notifications.  No matter if your phone is on DND or on silent it will make a noise.  Similar to amber alert. 

I have Pushover and its quiet pushy as well, you can program it to send u any critical alert any time of day with a specific tone, I like it as its customizable, out of C4 echo system which is a kind of HA (Highly Available) of alerts, I also have WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger and Telegram Alerts!