All my T4s reboot almost daily and just reset the room to the default settings until you change rooms back and forth

[416to305]

We had 5 brand new T4's installed about a year ago throughout the house.  They worked fine until maybe 3-4 months ago when we changed from an EA1 to Core3.  What would happen, is the one in the kitchen would at least once a week just randomly reboot, and it would then show the default room settings.  Wallpaper is gone, all customizations etc, just shows the Watch, Listen, History, Security, etc.  You have to switch to another room then switch back and they come back.  It was only the kitchen one that this would happen on, but slowly progressed to start happening on all 5 of the T4s and more frequently, to the point that it's an almost daily occurrence now on all of them.  If you just leave it, it never recovers, you must switch rooms in order to bring it back.  My wife is telling me to remove them all as she's sick of them not working and to be totally honest I'm pretty much at the same point.

So far working with 2 different dealers, we have:

- Removed all T4s from the project and readded them

- Removed them; factory reset them on the unit itself, and readded them

- Removed them; factory reset them; deleted the T4 driver from the controller entirely and forced it to download it again

- Physically moved them to different rooms in the house, swapping them

- Checked all logs including moments after one rebooted; there's zero mention of any issues or anything helpful they said

I forget what else we have done but I feel like literally everything.  Both dealers have basically put their hands in the air saying it shouldn't be doing that, but they don't know why it is and that there's only so much they can do if the logs don't mention any issues.  Of course it never happens when anyone comes on site and when they log in remotely they say everything seems fine, even if I tell them to log in when it has just rebooted.

Any other suggestions I can go back with as otherwise my weekend project is going to be patching drywall after I remove all of these as we are so frustrated that it has turned us off our entire Control4 system entirely.

[msgreenf]

Are the updated to the same versions director? Are they IDed by sddp? 

[Cyknight]

3 hours ago, msgreenf said:

Are they IDed by sddp?

This is my first thought

[Cyknight]

I can understand this can sour your feel of the system - it would be very frustrating indeed, but I can tell you that indeed, this SHOULD NOT be happening - indeed I've never even quite heard of this ever happening. Something is not right here, but in a forum setting like this it can be difficult to track a reason unless we've specifically seen it.
Do you know if either dealer involved C4 techsupport? They can trace a lot deeper into a system to see if there's a driver or controller error causing something weird (ie a stuck update running). If non of the above I'd be lloking at what is powering your screens, is it PoE, what switch?

[Andrew luecke]

What network gear are you running? Nobody is running composer HE at your place? 

[Andrew luecke]

Also, have they spoken to Control4?

[416to305]

They have been added via IP as well as SDDP it doesn't make any difference.  Usually they were added by IP but most recently via SDDP after factory resetting them.  Last week they deleted the drivers from the project and factory reset all T4s and now it's even worse, they do it 2x a day.  I just went down to the gym to work out and the T4 there is back to the default room.  I'm going to be honest, I literally have to leave the room because I just want to rip it off the wall and throw it straight in the garbage because it's so unbelievably frustrating.

We are using Cisco Meraki for all wireless and our router.

3 of the T4s are powered by PoE and 2 are powered by AC, so that doesn't seem to matter.  Some are on Wifi but most are on Ethernet.

Also, all of them now do it at the same time, as I had the issue with the gym one; I came upstairs and the kitchen and bedrooms are both now also back to the default room.

They are all on the same version and were just updated last week or so as there was some new version that was out, but it didn't do anything to help the issue.

There's no Composer HE.

I will check to see if they have spoken to Control4 yet about this as that was my next question for them.  Both dealers are over 2 hours away and keep wanting to do everything on site but then I have to pay a "distance travel fee" and it's getting hard to justify as I've done that 3 times now and no improvement.

Thought I'd post here in case any tips, otherwise they are being removed this weekend and I'm just going to replace their functionality with RA3 keypads and call it a day!

[lippavisual]

Have you had a remote dealer look at the system?  If the T4’s were ID’d by IP address, I wouldn’t be surprised if other items in your project are done the same (especially your controller running director) when they aren’t supposed to be ID’d like that.

Some other things that could cause problems:

- you could have some IP conflicts with devices.

- your network isn’t working efficiently.

- setting your T4’s to go back to the default room after screensaver. You can check this yourself on the T4 in its settings.

- paying your dealer anything without any resolve.  Unless they didn’t provide or install your equipment?  This should all be covered by that companies warranty.

 

I remember you posting of issues before, I’d suggest to start working with someone else who’s more knowledgeable.  It’s not the products fault (98% of the time), it’s the way it’s been installed and/or designed.

[Amr]

What you are experiencing is a bad install, period! Configuration issues, bad controller, bad POE switch can cause your POE devices to boot, WiFi settings, DHCP, etc.

You need some one who knows what to look for and get the job done!

[Andrew luecke]

IT could also be potentially you have 2 primary controllers (2 of them running director) potentially I'm guessing.. But extremely unlikely

 

[IzzyB]

I came on here looking for info on how to get rid of C4. We put in a very early system (should have been beta, but they took our money!). It’s been years of good money after bad, second dealer got out of the biz, and i just am sick of looking at this stuff. It is literally the only thing I hate about my house. I know C4 has changed, but I wish we had ditched it long ago. Don’t wait - for us it’s just been chronic aggravation and more more money.  

[msgreenf]

Unless you installed in the early 2000s it was not a beta system. When did you have your system installed?

[ajd123]

1 hour ago, IzzyB said:

I came on here looking for info on how to get rid of C4. We put in a very early system (should have been beta, but they took our money!). It’s been years of good money after bad, second dealer got out of the biz, and i just am sick of looking at this stuff. It is literally the only thing I hate about my house. I know C4 has changed, but I wish we had ditched it long ago. Don’t wait - for us it’s just been chronic aggravation and more more money.  

Sadly there are a lot of control4 integrators that are not very good.  They get their license to sell / program control4 and are just inexperienced. 

Most end users wont take the time to figure out the problems themself (via forums like this) and they should not have to.  

Luckily this forum has a bunch of dedicated users who know what they are doing and will often be able to help resolve your issues.

Out of curiosity, what hardware do you have installed in your system and what version firmware are you running (if you know)?

[IzzyB]

5 hours ago, msgreenf said:

Unless you installed in the early 2000s it was not a beta system. When did you have your system installed?

It was around 2005 for the initial install. It wasn’t beta, we paid. But it worked like beta is my point. The dealer/installer at the time was young and ambitious and had no idea what he was doing - a perfect match for Control4!  C4 put us in touch with another dealer when they realized our issues weren’t just “user error”. New dealer has kept us sort of running - we don’t trust the system for whole automation, so just use it for lights and tvs. But even that is failing, dealer retired, and now we just want it all out. So trying to figure out how to undo it all. 

[IzzyB]

5 hours ago, ajd123 said:

Sadly there are a lot of control4 integrators that are not very good.  They get their license to sell / program control4 and are just inexperienced. 

Most end users wont take the time to figure out the problems themself (via forums like this) and they should not have to.  

Luckily this forum has a bunch of dedicated users who know what they are doing and will often be able to help resolve your issues.

Out of curiosity, what hardware do you have installed in your system and what version firmware are you running (if you know)?

I’m not sure what version, although I’m sure it’s old. I’m not looking to update or fix, just want it out and figure out how to replace with something else (Lutron light switches & Apple TV is what we’re thinking). Pretty sure it will be more than we can diy though so trying to get a sense of how to start. Are there C4 dealers who do removals?

[Amr]

7 hours ago, IzzyB said:

I came on here looking for info on how to get rid of C4. We put in a very early system (should have been beta, but they took our money!). It’s been years of good money after bad, second dealer got out of the biz, and i just am sick of looking at this stuff. It is literally the only thing I hate about my house. I know C4 has changed, but I wish we had ditched it long ago. Don’t wait - for us it’s just been chronic aggravation and more more money.  

Will this is the wrong place then, we will help you get the best out of your system, but for something that old, what are you looking for? Can u provide any useful data we can use to point u to a direction?

Removal can be done by Lutron installer, if you have C4 Keypads this can be replaced while the new system is installed, Apple TV’s can be installed DIY.

[IzzyB]

2 minutes ago, Amr said:

Will this is the wrong place then, we will help you get the best out of your system, but for something that old, what are you looking for? Can u provide any useful data we can use to point u to a direction?

I realize that this is a forum for those who work with C4, but was hoping there might be some info here for a methodical way to remove a system without utterly wrecking my house. E.g., almost all of our light switches are C4, some wired some not. If we remove all of our controllers I’m afraid our lights won’t work. BTw, we’re not on the original c.2005 control equipment! We’ve done upgrading since then, but I know if we want to keep going we’d need to do a large upgrade and I’m done with automation. And I also know this is beyond DIY and we’ll have to pay someone to do this. But most good electricians around here won’t touch C4. 

Surely some systems get removed? Trying to figure best practices for that. 

[IzzyB]

Also, the original dealer did the low-voltage wiring on the house during a remodel but kept no records of how he did it. Second dealer kept things sort of going and added a second equipment rack during a basement remodel. Five different levels of the house, 5,000sq ft.,  and no road map of how it all works.

[Andrew luecke]

1 hour ago, IzzyB said:

It was around 2005 for the initial install. It wasn’t beta, we paid. But it worked like beta is my point. The dealer/installer at the time was young and ambitious and had no idea what he was doing - a perfect match for Control4!  C4 put us in touch with another dealer when they realized our issues weren’t just “user error”. New dealer has kept us sort of running - we don’t trust the system for whole automation, so just use it for lights and tvs. But even that is failing, dealer retired, and now we just want it all out. So trying to figure out how to undo it all. 

Control 4 was only founded in 2003. Things are completely different these days (it was early iPhone days back then). It's almost 20 years of additional experience since then.

Even from the driver development perspective at Chowmain, a lot of work has gone into resolving issues faster, avoiding problems and our processes are rapidly evolving. In many cases at this point, we're even resolving many more issues before they even get reported. We also get a lot more resources to work with (which means we can do more)

So, keep in mind, automation systems used today are nothing like 20 years ago

[Amr]

On 3/26/2023 at 12:38 AM, IzzyB said:

I realize that this is a forum for those who work with C4, but was hoping there might be some info here for a methodical way to remove a system without utterly wrecking my house. E.g., almost all of our light switches are C4, some wired some not. If we remove all of our controllers I’m afraid our lights won’t work. BTw, we’re not on the original c.2005 control equipment! We’ve done upgrading since then, but I know if we want to keep going we’d need to do a large upgrade and I’m done with automation. And I also know this is beyond DIY and we’ll have to pay someone to do this. But most good electricians around here won’t touch C4. 

Surely some systems get removed? Trying to figure best practices for that. 

Without getting detailed info on your setup nothing much can be offered, lighting can stay for sure, upgrade only controllers and am not even sure what else u have, but you said u need to get rid of it, so get a Lutron quote including removal of existing equipment am sure this can be done and will be cost effective @ least ur getting something u hate out!

[IzzyB]

Thanks for the replies. I don’t even know how to access detailed info on our setup since our dealer is out of the business now. 

[Cyknight]

I mean, simply put, you need to replace the lighting with either an alternate smart system to some degree, or if you're confident it was retro fitted, you can hire an electrician to rewire to 'standard' lighting. 

A/V is simple enough: just disconnect it. These days everything can be done over networking basically, hardwired if not wireless so you can just get local TVs with local sources setup without too much issue.

If you have speakers, assume you're abandoning them for TV watching.

Sonos, BluSound and many others, including failry cheap DYI options like Arylic can do a simple enough take over of speakers for music purposes if nothing else. Sonos in particular will give you some potential options of maybe even using some speakers for TVs - or combine Sonos or Blusound with their respecitve soundbars to get a more or less central audio system setup with better sound for tVs at least.

 

In the end, you're spending money either way: so consider if it's more worthwhile to try and get a good dealer, but at least contact one of the excellent ones on here that do remote service: they can at least make an assessment on the situation and what might be wrong or in desperate need of updating (if anything) - and likely give you a better idea on what it would take to take it all out as we currently have no clue on what is there, so we really can't just say what needs to be done to take it out.

 

@chopedogg88@AK1@neil12011 are a few I can recommend that may have availability, or the 'looking for integrator' section of these forums will give you other options.

[IzzyB]

On 3/25/2023 at 7:22 PM, Cyknight said:

I mean, simply put, you need to replace the lighting with either an alternate smart system to some degree, or if you're confident it was retro fitted, you can hire an electrician to rewire to 'standard' lighting. 

A/V is simple enough: just disconnect it. These days everything can be done over networking basically, hardwired if not wireless so you can just get local TVs with local sources setup without too much issue.

If you have speakers, assume you're abandoning them for TV watching.

Sonos, BluSound and many others, including failry cheap DYI options like Arylic can do a simple enough take over of speakers for music purposes if nothing else. Sonos in particular will give you some potential options of maybe even using some speakers for TVs - or combine Sonos or Blusound with their respecitve soundbars to get a more or less central audio system setup with better sound for tVs at least.

 

In the end, you're spending money either way: so consider if it's more worthwhile to try and get a good dealer, but at least contact one of the excellent ones on here that do remote service: they can at least make an assessment on the situation and what might be wrong or in desperate need of updating (if anything) - and likely give you a better idea on what it would take to take it all out as we currently have no clue on what is there, so we really can't just say what needs to be done to take it out.

 

@chopedogg88@AK1@neil12011 are a few I can recommend that may have availability, or the 'looking for integrator' section of these forums will give you other options.

Thanks for this. It did remind us that we do have speakers throughout the house that are linked - we use Sonos for music but I’m pretty sure the speakers all somehow connect through a C4 controller. So we’ll have to figure that out. And as much as I hate spending a nickel more on C4, you’re right that we’ll have to spend $ on something, so it’s possible it would more practical to upgrade a bit. Definitely more than we can diy so we’ll check out the folks who could look remotely. Thanks!

[Andrew luecke]

54 minutes ago, IzzyB said:

Thanks for this. It did remind us that we do have speakers throughout the house that are linked - we use Sonos for music but I’m pretty sure the speakers all somehow connect through a C4 controller. So we’ll have to figure that out. And as much as I hate spending a nickel more on C4, you’re right that we’ll have to spend $ on something, so it’s possible it would more practical to upgrade a bit. Definitely more than we can diy so we’ll check out the folks who could look remotely. Thanks!

Out of curiosity, what issues specifically were you having with c4. A lot of systems with sonos have a network loop caused by sonos. If it was stability, disconnect all sonos units from the network except for one. Or preferably, ensure rstp is enabled on all of your network switches (I assume you're using unmanaged switches though? If you're using unifi, the default is enabled)