alanchow

Unfortunately there seems to be a limit in Control4's announcement agent.  I am not sure if it is size related or time related though but you are correct it does cut out.

Not much we can do about it though.

If you have sonos however Extra Vegetables has a solution detailed in their installation guide that will work with our Advanced Announcements driver that does not utilise Control4's announcement agent.

If the app has a custom URL scheme then it should work.  The Pushover driver has the ability to open links on notification.

Alternatively you can use the pushover driver to get an image snapshot of your driveway camera.  That is what it does best.

Chowmain - Notification Suite

Chowmain's Notification Suite of drivers offers 4 drivers in one package which enhances the way Control4 informs you of events that happen within your home.

Pushover

Push Notifications are short, simple messages that can be sent to internet connected devices where the request is generated by a central server. Most people are familiar with receiving text messages on their phones. Push Notifications are very similar in appearance and behaviour. Since the request is generated by a server a phone or other device receives the message instantly and does not need to constantly "check-in" which saves battery life and money on other technology like SMS services.

The Chowmain Pushover driver for Control4 integrates the Pushover real time notification service into the Control4 home automation system. This provides near instantaneous notifications to your iOS or Android based devices with information about your Control4 enabled home.

Usage Scenarios

This driver can be used for several different scenarios. Some examples are as below but the limit is really your imagination.

• Notifying the owner upon door bell press. If you have a IP camera at the front door you can also send the camera snapshot if you know the URL.
• Notifying the owner upon security system alarm
• Notifying the owner when the garage door has been left open
• Reminding the owner of special events
• Advising the owner of the current temperature and power consumption/generation.
• Advise a owner when they have left the oven on
• Advising an owner of when a security system is armed or disarmed and by whom.
• Advising an owner on potential electrical faults when low or high consumption detected.

Features

• Ability to send a message with the following parameters.
  • Message – This is the message to be sent out from Control4
  • Device – your user's device name to send the message directly to that device, rather than all of the user's devices
  • Title – your message's title, otherwise your app's name is used
  • URL – a supplementary URL to show with your message
  • URL TITLE – a title for your supplementary URL, otherwise just the URL is shown
  • Priority - This changes the notification/alert sounds and on emergency notification keeps notifying until the user acknowledges by clicking a link
  • Sound – the name of one of the sounds supported by device clients to override the user's default sound choice
• Ability to insert Control4 variables into the message, title, url or url title.
• Ability to upload a local camera snapshot
• Ability to change the user key via the programming tab.
• Ability to change the application token via the programming tab.
• Ability to change the emergency priority retry interval and expiry time (in seconds) via the programming tab.
  • Used for emergency priority intervals / expiries
• Ability to see the last sent message via the properties page in Composer Pro.
• Ability to send Group Notifications to multiple users.
• Feedback (via properties page and variables)
  • Maximum Number of Messages per Month
  • Messages Remaining per Month
  • Message Reset Date / Time

SMTP

The SMTP driver enables you to utilise free SMTP services provided by internet service providers or other providers such as Google. The SMTP driver provides you with an email service that can be replied to, can be formatted with HTML and can attach files to without any ongoing yearly costs.

Usage Scenarios

• Notifying the owner when a door bell is pressed. If you have a IP camera at the front door you can also send the camera snapshot as an attachment.
• Uploading log files (requires Chowmain event logger driver).
• Notifying the owner when the garage door has been left open
• Reminding the owner of special events
• Advising the owner of the current temperature and power consumption/generation.
• Advise an owner when they have left the oven on
• Advising an owner if they have a gas or water leak.
• Advising an owner of when a security system is armed or disarmed and by whom.

Features

• No 4sight subscription necessary
• Use your own SMTP service.
• Definable Port
• Support SSL
• Supports SMTP Authentication
• Definable Senders Name
• Definable Senders Email
• Last Email Recipient Feedback
• Last Email Subject Feedback
• Last Email Body Feedback
• Server Status Feedback
• Ability to send a message with the following parameters.
  • To – This is the email address you want to send to
  • Subject – The subject of the email
  • Recipient Name (optional) – The name of the recipient
  • Attachment – The HTTP URL of a local file on the network. This option will auto download the camera snapshot and attach it to the email to be sent. Great for Camera Snapshots, Chowmain Logs or anything stored on a webserver that you might want to upload!
  • Body – The body of the email. Can support HTML tags as well so you can format your email nicely. Can also support variable insertion.

Deviantsart & Chunk.io

With the 4sight subscription service Control4 can send email notifications. It can’t however attach camera snapshots to these emails for viewing. Our Deviantsart & Chunk.io drivers for Control4 will download a snapshot from any IP camera with a built in webserver and upload it to the Deviantsart.com or Chunk.io image hosting service. It will then return a URL in a Control4 variable for insertion into your 4sight email or push notification

Usage Scenarios

• Doorbell press sends a image link via 4Sight email
• Doorbell press sends a image link via Push notification
• Security system alarm sends a image link via 4Sight email.
• Door open sends a photo of person at the door to an email.

Features

• Type in any URL (supports HTTPS, HTTP Auth, different port numbers)
• Gets the image and uploads it to deviantsart.com or chunk.io
• Returns the URL in the Driver’s properties page
• Returns the URL as a variable

Frequently Asked Questions

What makes your push notification driver different from the rest?

• It supports image uploads! With a single swipe you can see who rang your doorbell or what tripped an sensor in your home.
• It supports variable insertion. Get notified of the exact temperature of your home or if your security system supports it the name of the person who disarmed or armed your home.
• If there are any API changes we can easily update it and push it out using the Houselogix auto-update feature.

What is the deviantsart & chunk.io drivers for?
The drivers will upload an image and return a URL for that image. As such 4sight emails and 3rd party drivers can use the link in their programming. This is useful for new and upcoming notification drivers that have not been created yet or if you want to utilise the 4sight email service.

Why should i use the SMTP driver when i have 4sight emails?

• 4sight requires a subscription. This does not.
• 4sight does not support HTML tags and as such have no formatting
• 4sight emails cannot be replied to. With this you can.
• 4sight emails do not have image/file attachments. With this you can.
• 4sight emails do not let you define the senders name. With this you can.

Are there any other cool things we can do with these drivers?

The pushover notification service has a plug in for Android tasker. Tasker is a popular automation application for Android which allows you to control alot of the android functionality. So now you can get your home to control your phone. I can think of the following scenarios off the top of my head.

• Arming/Disarming home - Sets your phone to a different profile
• Goodnight button - Sets your phone to silent.
• Wakeup - Sets your phone to normal volume.

http://updates.pushover.net/post/83118216460/pushover-for-android-now-with-tasker-support

What hardware will this work on?
This will work on any Control4 controller running oS 2.5.3 or later.

How do I find out more information about the driver?
Please see the links below for more information about the driver.

Chowmain Website

Download Pushover Installation Guide

Download SMTP Installation Guide

Download Deviantsart Installation Guide

Download Chunk.io Installation Guide 

How do I buy the driver?
This driver is developed by Chowmain software & apps and is distributed and supported by Houselogix, Inc. 

Download Driver / Purchase Licence

Who do i contact for technical support?
This driver is developed by Chowmain software & apps and is distributed and supported by Houselogix, Inc. 

Support

Do you provide trial licences?
All Chowmain drivers for Control4 come with a 48 hour trial. This is activated once you add the driver to the project. No additional steps are necessary. 

This driver only works with the belkin wemo switch.

We are working with belkin New Zealand to get early access to their upcoming belkin wemo insight and secret wemo products to get them integrated as well

Update

Implemented UPnP Subscriptions.  This provides realtime feedback to the unit if using the WeMo ios or android application.

UPDATED

Installation guide documentation on how to use with our advanced announcement driver.

UPDATED

Installation guide documentation on how to use with our weather drivers.

Yes though your parameter is wrong. It should be in the format of PARAM{deviceID,varID}. See documentation for details.

Full stop. Sorry iphone auto corrected a spelling mistake.

Single line with a pull stop in the middle.

You can connect the audio output of a controller into the auz audio of a sonos unit. That will work.

The voice rss service has now been fixed. You will need to verify that the auto update has updated to version 7.0.1 and then restart director.

There is now a voice rss API key. Register for free for limited free usage per day. Should shot 99% or users.

I'm in a conference at the moment. Please lodge a ticket in the EV help desk. We're starting to clutter the thread.

I think you have set it up wrong. I tested this last night whilst I was in our auckland showroom. Please go through the installation guide again

Only the voice rss voices are broken. I have resolved the issues and have submitted to extra vegetables to update. They are at a trade show at the moment so will probably come through early next week.

The conversion of the audio should be placed in an event like a button or schedule.  The wav file created event should then execute the announcement you programmed.  This will automatically play the announcement upon the initial event fire (button press or schedule).

It looks like voice rss just changed their API to require a key.  This will limit you to 350 uses per day.  I will add in a key for this and get extra vegetables to push it out to all systems.  A reboot will be required once the update has been uploaded to your system.  You will see the version change to 7.0.1.  This may take a few days as i'm overseas at a conference.

ispeech is a premium service that requires registration and payment per message so it may not be a service for you.

Unfortunately we do not have RRP for these drivers. Please contact your control4 dealer for pricing.

Just extra vegetables auto update functionality and the ability to select all voice information in the one programming command.

Any upgrade path from your previous tts driver?

Unfortunately not.  That driver is owned by Recluse AV.  This one by Chowmain.  Two totally different companies with no relationship to each other apart from the fact that both software is written by the same guy.

Having said that though most of the old driver still works.  This one just has support and can be upgraded using the extra vegetables auto-update should anything break.

This one is also significantly cheaper.  Like 300% cheaper.

Polling every few minutes is fine.  Though the API's don't offer severe warnings but it does offer wind speeds which may help.  This is accessible as a variable which you can program against.

Chowmain - Advanced Announcements Driver

The Control4 Home Automation system has the ability to play audio announcements through the audio outputs on its controllers and speaker points. These announcements can play back any file encoded in a wav format. Traditionally these announcements have been used for doorbells and pre-recorded messages.

Chowmain’s Advanced Announcements driver expands the announcement agent by providing integration with web based text to speech engines. This gives you futuristic dynamically generated voice notifications over your Control4 system without any additional hardware.

We recently updated our driver to now support voice recording via a built in HTML5 web server.  You can now browse the page using your firefox or chrome browser on windows, linux, mac or android operating systems and record your voice and send it to Control4

Features

• Ability to record voice via a compatible web browser and playback through Control4 straight away.
• Dynamic text to speech generation
• Ability to speak the time
• Ability to speak the date
• Ability to inject variables
• Currently supports 3 text to speech engines with multiple languages, voices, speed and pitch
  • SpeechUtil.com
  • VoiceRSS.org
  • iSpeech.org
• Play Online File command.  This helps get around the 10mb Control4 announcement agent restriction by downloading files only on demand only and also allow integrators to implement online or local text to speech services not included in this driver.

Frequently Asked Questions

Can you give us some examples of how we could use this driver?

• Reading out the time and date to the blind eg “the time currently is 10:00am”.
• Notifying you about how many times your phone has rung whilst you were out. eg “Whilst you were out you received 3 phone calls”.
• Notifying you about how many times your doorbell has been pressed whilst you were out. eg “Whilst you were out your doorbell was pressed twice”.
• Notifying you about the weather forecast for the day eg “The weather forecast for today is late showers with a minimum of 5 and maximum of 13 degrees”.
• Notifying you about the current energy usage. eg “Your house is currently using 4.5 kilowatts hours”.
• Page a person throughout your home or office using the built in PA system functionality.

Are there any other cool things we can do with this driver?

• This driver has the ability to use any variable from within a Control4 system. That means any 3rd party driver variable can be spoken in your announcement. From energy consumption to weather information the uses are endless.
• This driver will be useful for the blind. Getting notifications on their environment will greatly assist with their daily lives.

What do the voices sound like?

There are so many voices that it is hard to post samples of them all.  We recommend you visit the engine websites to give it a try (SpeechUtil.com, VoiceRSS.org, iSpeech.org) prior to installation.  Here is one we geneated earlier.

Voice RSS Sample

What hardware will this work on?
This will work on any Control4 controller running oS 2.6 or later. Note that the audio output of the controller needs to be connected up to an amplification device such as a receiver.

What happens when the text to speech engine API changes?
The beautiful thing about the houselogix auto-update feature is that driver updates can be pushed out to systems. No dealer intervention needed. Rest assured that should any of these services change their API we will update the driver to match.

How do I find out more information about the driver?
Please see the links below for more information about the driver.

Download Product Slick

Download Installation Guide


How do I buy the driver?
This driver is developed by Chowmain software & apps and is distributed and supported by Houselogix, Inc. 

Download Driver / Purchase Licence

Who do i contact for technical support?

Do you provide trial licences?
All Chowmain drivers for Control4 come with a 48 hour trial.  This is activated once you add the driver to the project.  No additional steps are necessary.

Chowmain - Internet Weather Forecast Drivers

The Forecast.io service provides free (upto 1000 calls per day) weather data and forecast. Forecast.io is backed by a wide range of data sources, which are aggregated together statistically to provide the most accurate forecast possible for a given location.

The OpenWeatherMap service provides free weather data and forecast API suitable for any cartographic services like web and smartphones applications. Ideology is inspired by OpenStreetMap and Wikipedia that make information free and available for everybody. OpenWeatherMap provides wide range of weather data such as map with current weather, week forecast, precipitation, wind, clouds, data from weather Stations and many others. Weather data is received from global Meteorological broadcast services and more than 40 000 weather stations.

The Chowmain Forecast.io and OpenWeatherMap drivers brings all of this data into Control4 for use in the home automation system. This is useful for automating services within the home based upon the external environment.

Note that this is not a replacement for a personal weather station. We recommend utilising Extra Vegetables Cumulus Weather Stations or WeatherHawk weather station drivers/hardware if you require accurate readings as this provides accurate real time local weather information.


Features

• Ability to select the Unit type (metric, imperial or internal)
• Current Weather Conditions for:
  • Temperature (degrees)
  • Humidity (percentage)
  • Pressure (hPa)
  • Wind Speed (mps)
  • Wind Direction (degrees)
  • Clouds (percentage)
  • Precipitation Intensity
  • Precipitation Probability
  • Dew Point (degrees)
  • Ozone
  • Weather Conditions (string)
• Forecasted Weather Conditions (Today & Tomorrow) for:
  • Temperature Minimum
  • Temperature Maximum
  • Humidity (percentage)
  • Precipitation
  • Wind Speed (mps)
  • Wind Direction (degrees)
  • Pressure (hPa)
  • Clouds (percentage)
  • Moon Phase (percentage)
  • Dew Point (degrees)
  • Ozone
  • Weather Conditions (string)

Frequently Asked Questions

Can you give us some examples of how we could use this driver?

• Humidifiers can be turned on automatically if it is going to be a dry day,
• Towel rails can be turned on if its going to be a humid day
• If it is going to be a hot and sunny day, close the shutters to shut the heat out
• If it is hotter indoors than it is outdoors and the wind direction is facing the motorised windows then open the windows.
• If it is going to be a hot day turn on the AC
• If it is going to rain don’t automatically water the garden (I would also put in some additional logic to ensure that it will water the garden if it is extremely hot and if it hasn’t watered the garden in X amount of days).
• If it is going to be a cloudy day and the customer has solar then don’t turn on the smart appliances until tomorrow.

Are there any other cool things we can do with this driver?

• Combine with our Advanced Announcements driver to read the weather forecast out in the morning.

What hardware will this work on?
This will work on any Control4 controller running oS 2.2 or later.

Why have two internet weather drivers?
Why not? Not all internet weather information is built equally and we want to give you the option of getting one the is the most accurate for your location. One may work better in one country than the other. Two drivers for the price of one!

What happens when the API changes?
The beautiful thing about the extra vegetables auto-update feature is that driver updates can be pushed out to systems. No dealer intervention needed. Rest assured that should any of these services change their API we will update the driver to match.

How do I find out more information about the driver?
Please see the links below for more information about the driver.

Download Product Slick

Download Forecast.io Installation Guide

Download Open Weather Map Installation Guide


How do I buy the driver?
This driver is developed by Chowmain software & apps and is distributed and supported by Houselogix, Inc. 

Download Driver / Purchase Licence

Who do i contact for technical support?
This driver is developed by Chowmain software & apps and is distributed and supported by Houselogix, Inc. 

Support

Do you provide trial licences?
All Chowmain drivers for Control4 come with a 48 hour trial. This is activated once you add the driver to the project. No additional steps are necessary. 

From my understanding it will be unified under a singular app plus integration to siri. I see this as apple's attempt to take on technology such as UPnP (think Belkin's WeMo app and devices).  For most people this will be a great introduction to home automation.  Having said that though it'll be more like a universal remote for your home rather than a more automated experience. Either way i think this is a great step forward for mass market home automation especially in terms of a unified protocol for devices.  Home Kit actually falls inline with what apple does best.  Keeping it simple.  By elimating complexities of a always on hub and by making an app that talks to devices 1 to 1 they can ensure that it will always work with little to no tech experience required.  Basically this is a apple's expansion of what Belkin does with its WeMo app.

Hopefully this protocol will be available for integration with other non Apple systems such as Control4, Crestron, AMX, Savant, etc.  This will make integration to products extremely easily.  It will also mean alot more products that are more affordable.

Will it eliminate Control4 and other existing automation systems? Heck no.  Will it make people understand what home automation is so that i don't need to explain what i do for a living? YES!

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Curious if this work with the Wemo Insight Switch? We've not been able to get it to recognize an Insight Switch

Wemo insight is not available in this part of the world yet. We had a meeting with belkin on Tuesday to discuss integration possibilities with them. They will get us an early production model for us to use in the coming weeks.

We are looking at integrating the insight and utilise the power monitoring capabilities for a few applications.