IP Protocol

[chirstius]

Hello all, new user here. I will be moving into a new home shortly and shortly after that installing a C4 MC to run automation dutes. I don't know if this is "pushing the envelope" or not but one of the first things I want to do is drop a network sniffer onto the MC port and try to reverse engineer the IP protocol being used.

For example, start a packet trace, then go to a wi-fi or wired keypad/touchscreen and start running through commands. Then go through the packet trace and try to mimic the packets from a standalone program (that I'll create) to see if I can control the MC. Ultimately I would try to build up a library of all commands sent from the keypads/touchscreens.

The end goal here is to allow control from any IP based device. The real end goal being to avoid having to buy the 10.5 touchscreen and instead get a cheap tablet PC ($250-$500) and then just run my software on top of it. This should also allow me to use/create any interface I desire similar to a crestron touchpanel where the interface is only limited by your artistic skills. I understand the goal of C4 is to have a common interface for usability sake, but I stil think many people would like to have a custom look - I'm one of them. It would also allow surfing the net from "my" touch panel as it's just a tablet PC running WinXP (or Linux) and also allows aggregation of web content into the interface such as weather, sports tickers, stock tickers, etc. Ideally the program could use that information to automatically trigger events on the MC - for example... If a sports score changes (detected via a web based ticker) send a channel change command to the MC to view that game (the channel listing info can also be gathered from the web). Or better yet, stream video to the tablet PC and if I touch the video window then change the channel to that game.

So my question is this - not being a dealer, and not seeing the software yet - is this protocol openly exposed within the software? And if not, has anyone else tried to do this yet?

[benum]

Hi Christius,

I like the idea of controlling the control4 system over IP but I'm not entirely certain that it's necessary. Since Control4's 1.3 update, you can use any programmable remote (can learn custom infrared codes) to control your system with far more customizability than the standard c4 remote. So using the IR output and an IR command utility on a palm pilot you should be able to achieve the same effect.

Ben

[chirstius]

You make an interesting point. Since I do not have my system yet I had no idea that you could do that. At the same time however I'd like to still do this, if for no other reason than I simply enjoy the challenge, but somehow the idea of being able to control (or have control over) any device on the network if I can make it speak "C4-eese" just seems ripe with possibility. Either way I'll have to try this out with my Palm, that would be a neat trick.