AK1

i wish you all the best with your new career, Neil. I hope it goes well for you -)

We (Coolabode Automation) worked with Paul Sushereba @Cycleguy0623 over a period of a couple of weeks, going over his house layout and what he would need. He purchased Composer HE from us and we added it to his project. We spent literally hours and exchanged Dozens of email and phone call communication. In March we sent over the invoice for his Composer HE 4sight 1 year subscription and a minimal amount of hours worked and he then changed dealers and has not made contact since.
We have tried to reach him several times but he does not respond. If he was not happy with our service, we wouldn't know as he did not express any concern whatsoever. He did, however, view our invoice when we've sent it.
This guy may be shopping around for as much free drivers/labour and products that he can get. Young guy 30-35, American, fairly large home, rents guns as a side job. We have never posted something like this before but thought we should warn the community so that nobody else experiences the same thing. If Paul decides to Pay his invoice, I will remove this post. He was invoiced in March and we have sent several emails and reminders since then, to which we received no response. 

And to elaborate on the programming off of your security system - you can use motion sensors from your security system to triggger lights in C4.  Same with door sensors, window sensors, etc.  That can be very useful.

The one who won't integrate is incorrect and is foregoing a big set of convenience features for the homeowner. For example, turning on the lights if you enter the house at night with the alarm armed. Perhaps this dealer is inexperienced?

The one who won't integrate is incorrect and is foregoing a big set of convenience features for the homeowner. For example, turning on the lights if you enter the house at night with the alarm armed. Perhaps this dealer is inexperienced?

IMHO the essential line is more geared towards new construction where there is more known about the fixtures and the phasing. 

Indeed, if there are two areas of my Control4 system I want worry-free reliability it is lighting and distributed audio. Relying on third party integrations for these major pieces is not recommended from my perspective.

Indeed, if there are two areas of my Control4 system I want worry-free reliability it is lighting and distributed audio. Relying on third party integrations for these major pieces is not recommended from my perspective.

So some clarification and information for you to cut through the clutter. I'm a networking professional and have architected many very large high scale networks (500K user+ type environments). I was CCIE level 20 years ago, tier 3 tac level at a Cisco competitor, have moved on to other products but manage a networking team now. My guys install around 20K access points each year and thousands of switches, lots of large firewalls etc. I also do a little C4 programming as freelance for a dealer on the side, some C4 driver development as well as have a decently large install myself with lots of odd things. I run pro networking gear myself at home in my environment (Ruckus and Juniper switching, have use Mist, Aerohive, and Aruba APs with my current C4 setup as well).
All of the C4 restrictions around networking are because most dealers don't have an in-depth knowledge of networking. Let's discuss:
C4 uses broadcast - not true. Do a wireshark and set the display filter for eth.dst == ff:ff:ff:ff:ff:ff, you'll see lots of ARPs and probably netbios garbage but nothing important for C4 beyond ARP. C4 does rely heavily on multicast (wireshark display filter ip.addr >= 224.0.0.0). Ubiquiti is supposedly on the "no" list because of some UBNT hardware not forwarding multicast, specifically the routers as I recall. It works fine other than that rare case, no reason to change to Cisco or anything else.
Spanning Tree Protocol - Recommended against because it's a pain to configure properly and configured improperly you can have issues, I suppose they consider it better to allow a customer's network to get locked in a hard loop. It works fine, I've used MSTP, RPVST+ and some other flavors with C4 and it's fine if configured properly. Home grade switches may have poor implementations.
Flow Control - Properly implemented flow control is fine, the issue is most network hardware doesn't expose getting pause frames from devices that are overloaded..again instead of identifying the problem it turns into some sort of mystery that's resolved when the overloaded device is replaced randomly. This could be an issue in switch to switch communications or server to server where lots of disk IO is happening. If you're running pro gear and routinely check for pause frames as part of your troubleshooting not an issue.
QoS (Quality of Service) - I've also used switch level QoS with no issues, I would be cautitous about QoS or traffic shaping in home grade routers. Industry standard DiffServe on switches works fine. I would avoid punishing multicast or anything C4 is doing. I would also avoid voice prioritization for wireless unless you have someone who really knows what they're doing set it up. Lots of bugs in those features on most wireless products.
Wireless isolation (QoS setting) - This will cause problems RE C4 discovery works off of multicast.
Privacy Separator - presume this is same as client isolation, same deal
PaGP (Port Aggregation Protocol) - Works fine as well as LACP/802.3AD dynamic and static. If  you don't know how to configure these protocols you can of course create problems. There are special criteria in PIM environments with LAG/PAGP
IGMP Snooping (or any other Multicast Filtration of any kind) - Presuming from the bitching I hear from dealer friends about this, I presume that either the C4 gear doesn't prune/join properly or they've had networking folks not set this feature up. I run IGMP enabled on my Juniper switches but your mileage may vary. They left off storm control, DHCP snooping, Dynamic ARP inspection, etc here but again, I use it and it works fine.
So, the recipe for success, is keep all the C4 gear and all the clients that talk to it on the same VLAN, even over wireless. 
You should be able to have multiple VLANS working with PIM with a phone or touchpad on one side, however if any of the C4 devices don't handle IGMP properly you may still have issues. C4 doesn't really define which devices need which s, g publicly so any PIM troubleshooting would be a guessing game. You may also have RP overload in a home environment with a setup that large. We generally filter out SSDP, MDNS, Bonjour etc in corp environments as I've seen 50 misbehaving clients take down a 1 terabit line rate switch with enough control plane traffic thanks to MDNS. Though technically possible you would be in the minority with this type setup. The exception here would be things that do not need multicast discovery. For example I have all of my IP cameras on a firewall zone on an isolated switch (ethernet connection on the outside of my house, security problem!). The IPs are manually configured in C4 so no need for multicast, works great. If you put things that never need to talk to C4 on different VLANs, that's fine as well.
I saw you ran some pings as a test. 12 pings isn't enough and if you're running 1G or 10G you're not loading enough of the wire to see an issue. I would run 1000 pings and I would also increase the packet size to 1472, after applying the header that's the largest payload you can squeak through a 1500 byte mtu ethernet connection. If you run 100% clean with no loss I would say it's unlikely network is your issue. You will see loss over wireless, I would test from wired. You could still have multicast being blocked but that would be more difficult to test. You can use netcat if you have a unix system or if you have two laptops you can generate a multicast stream with VLC and some video file. Google will explain that process better that I am willing to here. I would also suspect that your issue with controls not working is not a multicast issue. Multicast is used by C4 for discovery. Once the remote device is discovered (Say an EA1) the communications are unicast for which ping is a good test. Anyone that doesn't believe me is free to use the above wireshark filters to find out for themselves.
I think it's unlikely you have a wired network issue.
I would look into the EA that runs director. I've had severe C4 latency issues with an IP driver (Yes, a Control 4 issued driver BTW) eating a lot of CPU and lagging out director. Identifying that driver and fixing an issue with it has completely resolved the issue. I spent a week on the phone with support on that one. Engaging your dealer is the best way to identify if something like that is causing the issue because they're going to have access to deeper troubleshooting tools that you don't.
You could also be having a spectrum issue with zigbee. It's sitting on the 2.4 band. Given that you have 11 APs, hopefully someone has told you or you know to turn off most or all of the 2.4ghz radios. There are only three non-overlapping channels in 2.4, given that there's better reach on 2.4 vs 5ghz, it would be difficult to not have channel overlap 3-4x in that setup. I would only use 5Ghz if possible and potentially only enable 2.4 on three APs at most. If you need more you should do a heatmap of your house and identify which APs have the most RF barrier between them and configure the overlapping channels there, using the attenuation of of your structure to your benefit, adjusting down power as needed. Just the SSID broadcast from two networks (user and guest) could eat something like 40% of the 2.4 ghz bandwidth if replicated on three APs overlapping each other...it would also trash zigbee pretty bad. If someone configured the ubnt gear for 40 or 80 mhz channels on 2.4 you will have similar issues as well. My recomendation would be to disable 2.4 altogether if possible and use strictly non-overlapping channels on 5ghz, I think with 40mhz channels you should be able to just make it.
Speaking of wireless, I would also get someone who is a drop dead expert on the ubiquiti gear or an expert with Airmagnet to look into the wireless, especially if the touchscreens are wireless. 802.11r/k are squirlley in a lot of client and AP chipsets, you may have stability issued on the T3s with roaming given the number of APs you have r/k/v enabled. Band steering can also create issues etc... There are other issues with fast roaming on cheap gear as it generally doesn't generate l2 forwarding table updates on a client roam. Controller based enterprise gear does this, UBNT might, however I don't know. My understanding is that the UBNT controller doesn't really handle traffic so I would expect not. Other solutions like Mist, Aerohive, and Ruckus unleashed have this sorted in a decentralized forwarding plane setup so perhaps UBNT has this as well. I'm also not sure how well autopower/auto channel works on ubnt, generally only Mist, Aruba, and Cisco have this actually working. You should probably use an analyzer to tune down the power on your APs to make a more microcell environment. I would get an expert on UBNT wireless as its very complicated and it's much more about the skeletons in the closet on each platform.
Actually, just looked before submitting and it seems the T3s are 2.4 ghz only. If you're running them on wifi, I would kill all but one of your APs and put a T3 right next to the active AP and see if that stabilizes the T3. If so you probably have channel overlap issues on 2.4ghz.
Good luck, hopefully this helps.
 

OK...so what sort of 4K, is it HDR, what options....what model Balun is it.
HDMI and CAT issues are possible, but I would look at the balun as the culprit first....

Which is why I specified Best Buy LOL

Costco might have at one point 🤪

Oh I see. And if you bought a $5,000 television over 5 years ago would you expect Best Buy to cover it?

Oh I see. And if you bought a $5,000 television over 5 years ago would you expect Best Buy to cover it?

Thanks, hopefully this Dish issue gets sorted out soon between Dish and Control4.

There is a known issue with Dish integration due to a recent Dish firmware upgrade. We've fixed this now for several forum members / clients.

I'm experimenting with mind reading on this post -)) Wired or wireless? Zigbee? Security system motion sensors?

DSC works great. 

I would contact @mujtaba.khokhar - super knowledgeable and responsive.

Promo states: "upgrade or expand" 

Actually that's not important to me. I rely on OVRC for any real time status, setup etc. From Control4, I primarily want to cycle certain outlets e.g. allowing a client to reboot their rack, modem, router etc conveniently from a touchscreen or Control4 app. I could also do this in OVRC home but some clients only want to learn Control4.

I have had zero problems in multiple projects using the driver via SDDP, provided the IP address and credentials are set up correctly. 

You have a Luxul network.
Binary HDMI matrix - distributing AppleTV, Satellite and Blu-ray by the looks, to upto 4 locations.
The receiver is running your theater.
You have an HC250 running the system, and a IO expander for added control outputs.
And a multichannel Control4 amplifier matrix at the bottom.
The HC250's the weakest link. An EA3 would be smart, an EA5 for more audio streams would be best, or even a used HC800 which can also get you to OS3, depends on if there are more HC250's elsewhere in the house for onscreen gui.
If you want to dip your toe in, find a dealer to upgrade to 2.10.6. Get your music files online, and buy Composer HE.
If you like it and want more, upgrade the processor.
If you don't, leave it at 2.10.6, change the audio to Sonos and leave the lights and video control to Control4.

I agree, the ring is hands-down our option for less expensive video doorbells. And there is certainly no 20 foot limitations with regard to Wi-Fi access points.


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