Jmugoose30

I understand what you mean, but the answer is ui and remotes. My 3and 5 yo even know how to use the remotes to get to their apps to watch shows, use the sliders on a device to changes lights. I’ve had C4 for a long time and it has been rock solid. I love the system and it has great acceptance for daily use. That being said I love to tinker and have “wasted” thousands over the years on drivers. Extra Vegetables, Plex, IFTTT etc. chowmain has excellent drivers and I would recommend anything he puts out and still rely on the tcp driver. Plex has died since they changed the api, ifttt has become pointless with local control, and many of the drivers I bought are now included. Home assistant let’s me play with ideas without purchasing drivers. As a business I can’t see home assistant being a viable solution due to the frequent updates and breaking changes, but as a techy homeowner it is amazing. 

I have been reading some of these posts and wanted to throw my solution in the ring. I have set up home assistant as the ultimate do all “driver” for c4. I use chowmain’s tcp driver and some virtual outputs on my elk security system to send info back and forth between the 2 systems. 
I have had c4 for over a decade (probably closer sto 15 yrs at this point). All my a/v, lights, security is c4 and touching it would not have any wife approval factor. So why do I use home assistant?  Well the wife and kids still use all the controls they are comfortable with: remotes, phones, switches, etc.  Home assistant can do more backend things that don’t need interaction such as;
1). People tracking. It works with phones to know where people are
2) Alexa AND Apple HomeKit integration 
3) use of better cheaper sensors. I love aqara sensors. I have their tiny motion sensors and mmWave sensors all over my house. But any zigbee 3.0 sensors work
4) Tesla integration 
5) sleep number bed integration 
6) I have a bunch more that are sort of there but 3 kids they are waiting to be done, including ESPN fav team notification and the big one 2 way notifications.  Be able to interact with the system through push notification.  Ex.  Left your house and lights are on?  Get a push notification and it asks if you want to cut them off  (Done through Home Assistant but can control c4 through a simple tcp command sent to chowmains driver)  
pretty much any thing you can think of that has a home assistant integration can be added for FREE. I run my HA in a virtual machine so the cost to set up was a zigbee dongle and cost of sensors which is 10-20 bucks each off Amazon
i do some programming in node red on Home Assistant side because I like it more for complex programming. For example I have 2 mmWave sensors and 3 ir motion sensors in my kitchen and Florida room. They form a motion group. If motion is not detected in the group for 5 mins. It stores the current scene and turns out the lights. If you enter the rooms within 2 hours the saved scene comes back on. After 2 hours it defaults to a scene based on time of day.  If you manually turn off a light it disable motion for a few mins to prevent turning lights back on.  Home assistant has a driver for control4 lights so it can all easily be done in node red. Also the flow makes it much easier to group all these steps in one visual pane. 

I submitted a tech ticket on Friday (mid day eastern time) and it was fixed when I woke up this morning. I would like to thank Alan for the wonderful support!  I knew the drivers are the best in the business but the support makes them even better. 

I do not have a solution but I have noticed that if I add lights to the Alexa app it adds the wrong light. (I check desk lamp and hit save and it adds middle pendant light). So my guess is Alexa has updated something and broken the function 

Its $5 for a independent program. Suck it up buttercup.