TexasBill

With the idea of getting wireless cameras out of the 2.4 ghz wifi zone - does anyone have a WIFI camera they recommend that uses 5 ghz or 6 ghz?

Bill

OK - now the "hiccups"

Eero's application allows you to monitor real time what is going on with the wireless.

MY problem is the "busyness" which hovers around 97 percent - when it gets to 100 percent the router re-boots.  I am told that the busyness is outside interference using the same channel - 

My Zigbee is on 15 or high channel and the 2.4 channel is the congested one for me - anyone have any idea to try to reduce the congestion? The re-booting is going to drive me bonkers

Bill

I updated my house to EERO 6+ Pro yesterday - I do not have a single thing in my house that supports or can use WIFI 6. BUT - it supports up to 100 contacts PER "router" and the band width is amazing - 

1. ALL my WEMOS connected immediately - (I did not turn on WPA3) and

2. all my LIFX also connected with no issues - 

3. it is amazingly fast and I have not had any hiccups so far.

4. technical support is readily available by phone - a human picks it up and is the person that helps you.

REcommended.

Bill

The thread wanted me to start a new thread - but since it has to do EXACTLY with the topic in this thread I am going to continue.  

WIFI7 is coming out soon an I am going to want to update my house to a newer and faster system.

SO - I am wanting to have switches and light bulbs that work with MESH networks and WAP3 specifically - does anyone know of or have working any "switches" meaning electrical plugs that work with advanced networks that use WPA3?\

i sure would like a recommendation that works.

Bill

Mine would not link - working fine and then stopped working.

I have the old Amazon/Alexa driver and while the license was there is was not making the screen show active. We copied it, removed it, then clicked on sET. Then pasted the license key back in and selected SET.

It came on line - the Alexa driver "skill" then synced easily and it has been working ever since.

Also had the LIFX driver become disconnected as well - this after updating to the 3.40 version of the Control4 software.

The cure for this was rebooting the controller. 

The problem - it seems - was that the driver and the lights were being loaded in the reverse order that they should be loaded and rebooting sorted that out. Thank you Chowmain technical support!

On 4/24/2023 at 7:41 AM, The Remote Guy 13 said:

While I do appreciate the replies and info, I don't understand why only one person answered my question. Which essentially was if upgrading from an EA controller  has anyone noticed any speed increases. I only see reference to driver problems and CA10s... So I will have to take away that there is no speed increase, in fact possibly slower. 

I have a Core-5 AND an EA3 - When I upgraded to the Core5 my speed dramatically improved and I am much happeier with the end result.

I have a rather "loaded" house. I also updateed to three CA-1's.

BIG improvement.

Bill

2 hours ago, DanITman said:

You can purchase direct from Home Depot and then just pop in the control4 kwikset card. You can find them on the second hand market. I have a few laying around. 

Good to know - how much do they go for? I am not in the market right now - but just checking - 

I have Kwikset 916 and other models all over my house and they work great.

My only caution is that if you call Kwikset they will warn you that this is a soon to be discontinued model and they no longer sell them.  Unfortunately - as I learned from experience - you cannot simply purchase a Kwikset lock with Zigbee - you have to purchase from Control 4.

BUT - this is a good solution and it works well with Control 4.

Bill

I have FloLogic AND also have now purchased the latest Flume - the flume is really great - (I also really like Flologic) 

FloLogic is integrated with my Control 4 and while the Flume has an API - there does not appear to be any integration yet with Control 4.  I did a search for Flume here and the messages are all over a year old. Has anyone successfully integrated this with Control 4 yet?

Bill

I have tried to use the ZWAVE and ZIGBEE Kwisket locks and have found the follwoing to be true - if you don't purchase them from Conrol 4 they will not ttach to your network. PRIOD.

I have spent a large amount of ie and effort and the long and short of it is that you have to have a ZIGBEE card (or ZWave)  FROM Control 4 or they simply will not work.

Bill

I have been working on getting some additonial locks nistalled - my first ones were ZWave and even though my Core-5 suports Z wave my house is too big and the locks are too far.

So - back to Zigbee - I ordered several f the Kwikset 914 look with Zigbee and they simply will not add - I notice with irritation that they are Zigbee 3.0  and I suspect that Control 4 does not support 3.?

Does anyone have any words of wisdom?

What options do I have other than returning the locks?

2 hours ago, chopedogg88 said:

I have a kwikset obsidian lock in black (open box), with Control4 zigbee card...if anyone is interested...

Sure - how much is the lock?

Bill

On 1/8/2023 at 5:19 PM, johnpg said:

Does anyone know which Kwikset Z-Wave locks are supported? Also, do they work with the Z-Wave dongle for the older EA controllers? Is there an updated list of supported Z-Wave devices anywhere?

Yes - it looks like the 9XX series is supported and the 6xx is not - unfortunately I have 610 and 620 locks - these are the newer ones and from what I see the 9xx series was being discontinued as it used an older chip/protocol.

If anyone knows how to get a 610 driver or 620 driver for ZWAVE in Control4, I would REALLY like to know.

18 hours ago, chopedogg88 said:

The zwave is turned on and works great wirh Kwikset zwave locks. You just go to connections in composer and then zwave and enable the controller. 

I go to Connections

I click on the Zwave tab

I see the driver for the kwikset lock

If I click no it or do anything on that page it indicates that I need to have a Zwave controllre.

I see no option on enabling the controller on that screen/page.

Can you think of anything else tha I might need to do first?

Bill

I have never installed anything ZWAVE before - but now that I have a CORE 5 which has ZWAVE included I would like to install a couple of Kwikset locks that have ZWAVE connectivity in them.

I installed the driver for the KWIKSET locks but when I try to attach them it indicates that "there are no Z wave controllers".

Can someone give me a quick tutorial on where to go to turn on the ZWAVE controller please?

Also - how far can the locks be from the ZWAVE controller (Core 5?)

Does ZWAVE use the light switches as well as ZIGBEE does so that they can be just close to some light switch and find its was back to the Core 5?

Thanks,

Bill

On 12/28/2022 at 6:59 AM, C4 User said:

@TexasBill very cool indeed. I have actually been thinking about doing the same. My challenge is that I will need to put solar panels on the street side of my roof in order to get enough panels to supply my daytime power AND charge my batteries for night - and this will upset my neighbors and HOA (even thought I legally can do it). Would you mind sharing how much you have invested in your setup, or your estimated breakeven payback in years?

See my post on costs..

On 12/27/2022 at 11:11 PM, zaphod said:

Very cool, but how is this sustainable for Reliant?  Isn't their cost to keep you on the grid more than that?  I know that some states have started upping minimum monthly bills because lots of customers had solar and were paying very little.

Or are they happy with the system to subsidize a few folks like you that truly minimize their bills.

Are there conditions around the truly free nights?  What if you got a huge bank of batteries and loaded them up every night.  Would that be allowed?

I posted the link so that you could read what they say on their web site.

I do not sit in their board room so I have NO IDEA what they think or are thinking. All I know is that I have talked with their representative and no one has expressed frustration.  There are no conditions - I pay (when I need electricity - like the battery is exhausted due to no solar) 24 cents per KWH.

Bill

On 12/27/2022 at 7:32 PM, msgreenf said:

But how much have you invested in solar and batteries?

The solar has been paid off - and I had $18,000 in those.  I am now positive on that financial front.

The battery was $22,000 after rebates and tax incentives etc.

My math indicates that I should be positive - if I take the money that was paying off the solar and apply it to the batter it should mean that I am positive again in less than 4 years.

The good thing for me is that I don't have any electrical bill to speak of in my retirement.

I don't think that there are many that have done this - so I thought I would put this up to encourage others and help others if they are going down this path.

I have a rather large house (about 5,500 square feet) in Texas. We have (usually) light winters and HOT summers.

Electricity for houses like mine are running anywhere from $500-700 per month for electricity. (not a scientific survey but a quick canvas of local neighbors)

I put in (about 11 years ago now) a 10.8 kW solar system (18 panels)

I loved it- together with my foam insulation I was paying about $180 in electric every month - I was conserving air conditioning during the day because I wanted a credit to help cover my nights. 

So we were always bordering on sweating or freezing (wintertime) 

Then Reliant (my electricity company) starting offering "Truly Free nights". From 8 pm to 6 AM electricity is free. Yes - you pay 24 cents per kwh in the daytime to offset this "free" nights but - my brain said that I have solar during the day so it will be free during the day. So - I switched and we found that we could move all laundry etc till after 8 pm nightly and we were now down to $110 per month approximately for electric - but - the difference was that we could now air condition the dickens at night - down as low as we wanted to go, charge the Tesla and during the day we had plenty of electricity from the solar so now we were much more comfortable and not spending a lot of money.

THEN we added a 31 kw Harris battery (https://www.harrisbattery.com/) with a 15 kw Sol ARK (https://www.sol-ark.com/sol-ark-15k-all-in-one/) to cover from 6 AM when electricity is no longer free till the sun comes out and then from when the sun goes down till 8 PM (I refer to these times as the "shoulders" of the bell curve produced by the solar generation.

The house (using the egauge: https://www.egauge.net/) "knows" when we are making solar and set the air condition appropriately - when there is no solar being made the thermostat is made higher so that the AC does not kick on so low.

MY electric bill last month was $14.

I am telling you this because Reliant advertises this truly free nights:  https://www.reliant.com/en/public/truly-free-nights-plan-lf.jsp and if you look, they show that what I am doing is PART OF THEIR PLAN and recommended - 

So - we now have "gas" free - we no longer pay for fuel for our travels.

My plan was up in March so I went to "renew" expecting that they would not let me renew and I would have to pick a plan that worked differently - Imagine my surprise when they offered to allow me to renew for FIVE YEARS online with one button click.

DONE - I now have for the next five years, electric bills that should be $25 or less.

Now - I am nearing retirement age so this is really cool to get this under control for my monthly expenditures when I am retired.

31KW does NOT handle all my electrical needs - I also have a generator for power outages to keep the refrigerator running etc.

I wanted to post this in case it helps anyone else out there.

Bill

On 11/22/2022 at 5:24 PM, Andrew luecke said:

I might have to put a warning for all Mesh Wifi products then (and orbi specifically).. It sucks, but unfortunately, may be the case (the same warning would apply to both LIFX and TPLink, because the architecture is similar) 

My experience with the OLD/STANDARD Google MESH WiFi is that is "just works". Everything I hook up to it works fine.

The speed is good - I have gigabit internet and get 750-800 download and 50 up.

I just thought that if this just worked that others would as well and the simply did not.

I really like the Lifx and Wemo drivers from Chowmain... they really work well - even better than the original drivers did and that is saying something. They also have the best support I have ever seen - particularly from a totally different country.

Bill

On 11/7/2022 at 1:10 PM, Andrew luecke said:

Just to confirm, the lifx didn't work on the Google either?

The LIFX works just fine on the OLD STANDARD GOOGLE mesh - it does NOT work on the new 6e Google Mesh.

On 10/23/2022 at 11:00 AM, Control4Savant said:

Oh, well good luck with the refund still. 

Again, Google Mesh is specifically designed to work with every IoT as easy as possible so no surprise there… that is not advanced not secure networking in any way but thats a different conversation. These consumer use designed “configurations”  are a half measured in-between and something is obviously not right. My point is just that Netgear makes many levels of tech and IMO as a professional, the consumer grade performance stuff is always junk. I’v never liked a Nighthawk router in my life. Ubiquity thrives and selling enterprise grade stuff at a consumer level price.  If you want to spend money on a performance mesh, buy the Pro Orbi for the same price.

I have gotten my money back now for the ORBI960 as well as the trial that I did for the Google 6e (the new one) Neither of them "worked" in my house and it was very discouraging to fail after trying so hard.

On 10/20/2022 at 10:15 PM, Control4Savant said:

I mean… line of sight doesnt negate your RF environment. It sounds to me like you are just randomly placing them which is not how you setup a mesh or any wifi…but 960 is also just the consumer line and full of lots of marketing stuff. The pro line has some performance and configuration advantages. I would never have google mesh or Eero in my home but thats my .02… glad you got your money back, they are certainly not cheap either way. 

Remote support cant properly measure your RF environment, and more technical networking gear has always caused more issues with smart home stuff because of the more advanced traffic management verse the unmanaged and plug-n-play IoT systems like Google Mesh. 

I don't have my money back yet - but hope to hear on Monday.

The Orbi 960 had a LARGE number of configuration options - we used all of them and it will did not work. I have WIFI monitors and the mesh was set up0 appropriately - I worked with Control 4 tech support (phenomenal by the way there as well) and we moved all the other RF out of the way and tried all the channels for the WIFI and channel 11 was the best but it was still not reliable.

The Google Mesh works a treat in my house. It also works well with WEMO plugs and LIFx devices as well. I would highly recommend the Google mesh network personally.

Bill

On 10/20/2022 at 9:39 PM, Andrew luecke said:

So.. Just to confirm, the BR30's, A19's and the LIFX Z Strips appear to be working? 

If so, I am going to put a BIG fat warning in the FAQ of the LIFX driver ASAP

I've always advised against Orbi gear in the past, but if they're refunding your money, it sounds like the issues are even bigger than I thought..  

But yes, thats one of the big problems with Mesh systems (and its always better to try to get some cables wired between the points). The signal will appear strong irrespective of the actual inter-link strength and mesh systems tend to be more likely to mess with the traffic too and cause other issues

 

Andy    

First of all - they have not agreed to refund my money yet...

I am supposed to hear on Monday.

Your Version 3 driver is fantastic and with the Google Mesh it is simply amazing.

Thank you for all your help - it is and was really appreciated.

Bill

More testing in the monring of the new V3 drivers - but they appear t be immediately working on the Google Mesh network - no failures yet

EVERYTHING snapped to attention when google went back on line. at least so far.

I will post more when I have rsted.

Bill