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Remotes all stopped working at once...


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All five Control4 remotes now say "Waiting for Network" on them and will stay that way for a day or more until the batteries die. This problem occurred literally overnight. I've had the dealer at the house now a few times and they can't figure it out. They've switched to different Zigbee receivers with no luck, they've pushed the "4" quickly four times in a row with no luck, and they say they've spoken to Control4 support about this and no one has any idea what might have happened.

Any ideas for us to try? Anything I can try on my own without having to pay the $80/hour rate I do for the dealer to come out and poke around. I'm up to ~$300 on trying stuff with no results yet.

Ideas?

Thanks,

Darren

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anything else zigbee having a problem?..............or is it only remotes...........i would check to make sure your network is solid first..............if it is......and only your remotes are a problem..........i would put in new batteries..........then have them leave the mesh.......... Room Off, #, *, 1, 3, 4, 1, 3 for 250 remotes............then try to re-join them............will need your dealer for this but that can be done remotely.................not sure if they tried this.......based on your post

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All five Control4 remotes now say "Waiting for Network" on them and will stay that way for a day or more until the batteries die. This problem occurred literally overnight. I've had the dealer at the house now a few times and they can't figure it out. They've switched to different Zigbee receivers with no luck, they've pushed the "4" quickly four times in a row with no luck, and they say they've spoken to Control4 support about this and no one has any idea what might have happened.

Any ideas for us to try? Anything I can try on my own without having to pay the $80/hour rate I do for the dealer to come out and poke around. I'm up to ~$300 on trying stuff with no results yet.

Ideas?

Thanks,

Darren

Do you have any C4 Lighting or keypads? If so, are they working?

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I'm in Bend, Oregon.

Keypads are all working and I can use them to get music to play. I only have TV/Video/Music enabled on the system (no lights, security, etc). It's just the remotes that aren't working, plus there's apparently a wireless volume control on the master bedroom wall and that's not working either. Net-net, none of the remotes/wall switches are able to communicate with the zigbee receiver(s).

I have the dealer coming out again this Friday with a "sniffer" to try to see if there's something jamming / interfering with the remote frequencies. I've also forwarded them the other suggestions from this forum in terms of changing channels, as well as disconnecting from the mesh and trying to re capture it.

I'll share what I learn later this week...

Thanks for the ideas you've all sent, and any others you might have.

Darren

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  • 1 month later...

I finally got the problem fixed. After many hours of searching, the Control4 Technician brought a frequency scanner and saw a massive spike of interference exactly at the same frequency as the remotes. He thought at first it was a neighbor with a new wireless phone, or perhaps something installed recently in the community, but upon further investigation he found out that my house had a Control4 "repeater" installed in one of the rooms, presumably to amplify the signal. Turns out the repeater had gone bad so he unplugged the repeater and everything started working again. Only cost me about $600 of troubleshooting to figure out what I needed to do and 8 seconds of "fixing" (e.g., unplugging) to get everything back in order. Hopefully this helps save someone else from the same problem.

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Sorry to hear you had an issue.

There's no such thing as a ZigBee Repeater from Control4, although Control4 'Outlet Dimmer' and 'Outlet Switch' devices are sometimes used for that purpose, as well as a couple of the CardAccess devices.

Good luck with your project.

RyanE

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ZigBee is a *very* low-powered RF signal, and yes, it can be thrown off by something transmitting in it's channel, i.e. something like a 'stuck' transmitter.

Usually it's not a ZigBee device that's doing the damage, but it's not unheard of.

It'd have to be transmitting on the specific channel, since ZigBee channels don't overlap, and because of that, it's usually more likely something else trashing more of the 2.4GHz spectrum, like a baby monitor or a 'wireless video camera' (X10).

RyanE

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Oh, and the power level of some devices is controlled via software, to ensure it's within FCC limits, so the broken device isn't necessarily transmitting 'low power' if it's broken.

That's all hypothetical, though.

:)

RyanE

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