TexasBill

Looking for a few answers when using your driver for LIFX bulbs and rope lights.

1. If I wanted a specific color - How do I go from RGB to your driver and get that color?

2. Knowing that I have 4 LED LIFX rope strips and approximately 30 light bulbs, If I wanted to have let's say ten standard colors is there a way to have these "colors" R,G,B stored somewhere and then have the lights change to that color?

For example: I would like Red, White and Blue for patriotic holidays.

I would like all blue for showing support for healthcare workers, I would like Easter colors for easter holiday, I would like to have Dallas Cowboy colors (if we ever have sports again).

What is the best way to handle this standard color setting?

Bill

It overlooks a 29 mile lake. I would only be able to afford this property in Texas. 

Thank you for your comments. 

Yes - it is a lot of switches.

I really don't use many of them manually - the house does most if not all the work.

Bill

23 hours ago, Cyknight said:

If you have a back-up you can load in virtual that has the trigger/event still in there - then yes the full code will be there.

I have YEARS and YEARS of backups.

Bill

9 hours ago, ILoveC4 said:

I kind of hate to ask, but I'm dying to see. Can you take a picture of "your side of the bed" and share? I cannot imagine what 17 light switches next to a bed look like. Are they stacked like 4 different 4 gang boxes one on top of each other? Like a cube? A bunch of boxes side by side in a row?

18 - is my side of the bed

19 is the entrance to the master bedroom

20 is my wife's side of the bed

21 is be the loggia doors

22 is the entrance to the master bath

23 is the other side of the entrance to the master bath and controls the sauna

24 is also by the entrance to the master bath and controls the Rinnai instant hot water heaters, the master suite thermostat and the hot tub controls

All in all I think 26 total light switches, some control more than one light as they are joined to perform multiple functions based on how many times you push them up or down. They also change colors depending on what is engaged and not engaged - although I had to stop this practice - just too many options and the human cannot keep up with it. 

I attached a few other pictures - the outside lights can do 1.3 million colors and are LED 

The loggia is a picture with the solar shades down

There are a couple of pictures with the master bedroom showing the television that comes out of the base of the bed.

The crowns at the head of the bed are because my last name is King. grin

. 

1 hour ago, Cyknight said:

Install a nice zebrawood panel to cover all of those with a cutout for a touchscreen on either side of the bed....

 

Even if Control4 ever stops existing, there have been solutions in place could have replaced it if push came to shove for longer than the term 'smarthome' has existed.

 

Sounds a lot like your dealer was in over his head at the time, though kudos to them I suppose as it's all still working!

Things are working a treat - I work with my dealer now on programming and new ideas etc to enhance the new installation and new ideas. The installation is fairly large - We utilize almost everything that Control4 has except touch screens.

Since very few things need human interaction in the house (almost everything is motion driven or schedule driven or audio/voice riven) we do not use touch screens and have no incentive to have them.

Things that we have in the house -

1. conditional voice announcements - some examples are - someone is in the driveway, the mail has arrived, it is raining, the garage door has been left open and cannot be closed due to blockage, the garage door has closed, The garage left garage door is opening. The garage door has closed, the garage door will be closing in two minutes, (there are three garage doors.

2. seal the house automatically by locking and closing all openings

3. reminders to turn on alarms if both of us have left

4. closing open windows automatically

5. letting us know when we are making enough solar to turn on dish washer or cook, or whshing machine/dryer etc.

6. automatically turning on and off lights

7. turning on or off fans depending on the internal temperature of the house

8. setting all thermostats set point automatically.

9. voice control of lights in rooms

10 party mode makes changes in houses behaviors

11. video an audio switching between 8 different sources and supplying this video to any of about 10 televisions in the house.

12. entire house audio that is voice controlled

13. LED lighting through out entire house and support for color lights around outside of house, landscaping, inside house and rope lights around outside of house.

14. control of solar screens if the sun is coming in or not

15. automatic water shut off if leak detected (FloLogic integration)

16. Alarm system integration

17.outside floods integration

18. garage door integration

These are a few of the integrations

1 hour ago, msgreenf said:

Can you tell us more about switch 14?

I can't its too ugly <grin>.

Well - here is the issue - when I did all of this I did not know much about Control 4. My installer did not know much about it either. One of the caveats I gave him and my electrician was that if I ever wanted to sell the house and the person buying it did not want Control 4 or an automated house I wanted the ability to manually control everything. So Everything has a switch to control it.

While we can turn on and off all the items in our house - we don't usually even remember what the switches are for or where a specific switch is - everything operates automatically on schedule or on occupancy/motion or temperature etc.

The master bedroom is fairly large - probably about 650-700 square feet

That speaks to ugly.

Now about switch 14. I have a wireless camera that looks over the hot tub. You can imagine that when someone is in the hot tub that there might be times when you ant no video monitoring of the area?

So - I can:

1. turn on the jets,

2. turn on the lights

3. turn on the heater

4. turn off the camera

and when the temperature is 100 degrees it announces in the house that the Spa is ready for occupancy.

5. I turn on the cameras power automatically after I power off the ho tub.

Is that what you were thinking I was doing with it?

I uploaded a picture of what the spa camera "sees" and you can see that it would record the user on the way to and from the spa.

Bill

1 hour ago, Cyknight said:

While it would show you what it would have done in the past, this wouldn't allow you to remove it.

You'd have to redo any work done after the fact after step by step clearing the programming, then the events, and then as said make any changes manually again that were done to your system after the fact.

 

If it says unknown event, it won't be doing anything.

 

UNLESS you're looking to recreate some of the programming that was accidentally lost, you're on a wild goose chase.

Totally get it -

My plan was to find out what the trigger was - determine if I still wanted that trigger - did I rename it, mess it up somehow?

Then I can put back the trigger and then the code should become available again and then I can remove it or delete it or change it as necessary.

I am right about the code then being available once the trigger is back?

Bill

ok - I have not been shown that -

I have seen this on the login screen forever and just never looked at it - I use the other two potions all the time but never even noticed the "virtual" option.

Thanks!

Bill

Well - to be honest I think that my house was the first house that my installer had ever done on this magnitude.

Every single thing that this house can turn on has a switch for it.  Since you can come in and go out of the living room we duplicated all the switches so that if the home automation did not go well or in ten years no longer worked you would still be able to turn on and off lights manually.

So - in the master bedroom:

1. hot tub power

2. hot tub lights

3. loggia lights

4. lights to the hot tub

5. outside landscaping lights in the front of house

6. outside landscaping lights in the back

7.  downights in front of house

8. down lights in back of house

9. upper rope lights in bedroom

10. lower rope light in bedroom

11. ceiling fan

12 lights in entryway to bedroom 

13. down lights in bedroom

14. power for camera over the hot tub

15. lights over head of the bed.

16. lights over pictures/paintings in bedroom

17. Blind controls (open and close)

Note: 

The above are on MY side of the bed

They are duplicated on my wifes side of the bed.

There are also some of these on entrance to the bedroom as well. So I was a little shy on the actual number.

Bill

Not just OCD - the problem is that I seem to have a number of these - and consequently I am not sure what is no longer working and what is.

I wouldl ove to be better at removing things that should not be there.

It would really be cool if there was a way to show what it used to be and then let you manually remove it.

Bill

Good idea - 

Does this cause any issues in the home? i.e. obviously it will wipe out definitions that are current etc. but I can just look and then restore the latest backup and be back where I was? I have never done that on a client before so I just don't want to cause issues.

Thanks,

Bil

I have in the Detective Suite the following:

Variables Agent

       UNKNOWN ITEM EVENT: [Variables] / 650

             If Variables > Party Mode is True

                  Turn off the Kitchen > BuffetHallTableLight1

I believe that this means that I removed a variable at some time and the code is still there. Since I don't know the variable name that I removed, I cannot call up the programming to remove it. 

Thoughts would be appreciated.

7 hours ago, HRT said:

another way you could notify yourself without having to have a light on would be to change a color of a keypad button from green to red or whatever colors you like, or change all the colors on all of your dimmers using the LED wizard driver. This is if you had control4 dimmers/keypads.

i have dimmers and keypads everywhere but have never found that changing the colors on those to be easy or helpful.

My wife cannot sleep in our bedroom unless I turn off all the lights on the switches - yes - we have 30 in the bedroom but I have to run a routine every evening to turn them all off and then turn them back on again every morning.  The routine is several pages of code.  Even using the Wizard it does not make itself easy - do you know a cool way to do that?

The thing I like about this method is that one can see from anywhere in the main living area if we are making energy or not.

OK - I am extremely happy.

Alan Chow's driver is fantastic. It works a treat - the documentation is not great and it is difficult to get support from Australia - but he makes a good driver.

Here is the scenario -

I get free electricity after 8 pm and before 6 AM every day 7 days a week. I have solar panels so if we have sun, then I get free electricity during the day - this means that I don't get PAID for my EXCESS electricity - I get to give it back for free, but - I now only pay for 6 AM to when the sun comes up and sunset to 8 PM.

Here is what I have done -

1. install the driver

2. Set the IP address of the eGauge

3. Set the register to total generation

4. in Composer you simply indicate that when the "poll" is successful you want to determine "If the total generation is greater than the total usage" then

5. now I have one light ini the center of our living area that is now the "indicator light".  If we are generating more than we are using it comes on, and if it is after 8 pm and before 6 AM it comes on. It is an LED light so it should not cost more than $1.00 per year to run this.

The really cool thing now is that we have a visual way to know if we are paying or if the electricity is free.

This absolutely works and is really a game changer for me because I used to be that I had to look it up on my phone o my wife did when she wanted to know if she could run the dishwasher or dryer or oven etc (or ask me to do so).

Thank you Alan Chow!

9 hours ago, AVNeeds said:

I am not sure if you are aware.. but one of the posters responding is who you purchased the driver from. 

Yes - Alan Chow - he is very good. I just need to get some documentation or examples on how to use it - I have read the posted documentation and it does not give me enough - sorry for my ignorance on this - 

I THINK that I PROBABLY need to set up a 30 minute polling of the eGAUGE.

BUT - There are about 8-10 variables that have names that i am not sure what they map to. 

Then there are max and minimum amounts that I need to set and I am not sure what the units are.

What I specifically want to know is: when am I "making more energy than I am using"?  If I can get an example of how to accomplish this I can probably figure out the rest.

17 minutes ago, alanchow said:

Restart composer as broker is disconnected.

Also one is the older driver and the new one which is written for eGauge Pro / Core will also work on the EG3000 but is written to grab registers rather than individual CTs like the old one did.

Flawless! Thanks.

It updated just great.

Now I need to develop some programming to use it. Where is the best documentation for this?

I have read the documentation Chowmain web site - here is what I am looking for:

Pseudo Code follows:

If I have (or am) making solar above my current usage then set the COOL set point on my thermostat to 72. If I am not currently making more than i am using set the set point to 78. 

I would like to be able to set the polling interval to every 30 minutes - (unless someone says that some other interval would be more productive?

Can anyone tell me how to use this driver as above?

Bill

OK - I purchased the driver - 

It has TWO c4z files in it - Neither one can be added to the project.

Not sure which one to try to add but neither one will add - it throws an error and does not add it to the project.

Technical support does not seem to be in today.

Any thoughts would help me greatly as I would like to get this working.

Thanks,

Bill

1 hour ago, Gene said:

What computer do you use for your Blue Iris? There is alot of information out there but other peoples experience is much more reliable with what actaully works.   Or did you build it?

I use two junk computers - they are total trash - nothing spectaclar at all - there are a couple of things that you can do to make the CPU usage drop incredibly on the computer so that you can easily ahve 15 cameras running on one computer with 70 percent utilization as well.

22 hours ago, ILoveC4 said:

Do you use the Blue Iris mobile app?

Absolutely - all the time every day

I have about 30 cameras now on Blue Iris (actually two computers busy with it). It is so powerful and fast and emails me issues and is totally controllable. I have not found anyhting in Control 4 that tempts me into trying to put it there.

By the time the cameras come on line in Control 4 there is nothing there any more.

Bill

I have a number of solar panels installed and would really like to know when I am"making more electricity than I am using.

I have egauge installed so I can visually see on my computer - but I would like to do things like:

1. turn the thermostat up or down based on if I am making solar or not.

2. allowing certain things to run if the sun is out.

Is anyone aware of a way to determine if the meter is spinning one way ot the other? if the solar is making money or you are using more than you are making?

Thank in advance for any ideas.

Bill

OK - I can open and close my doors in Control4. I already have the  relays set up - the problem is that my wife does not use Control 4 on her phone and this is her car. She is used to pressing a button on her visor that is integrated with the car. I have a hand held remote that she is currently using but was wanting something a little more "elegant".

I would like to voice control my doors. Does that help?

Bill

Just got a new car and there is no garage door openers in it - I could put a garage door opener in the car but would rather voice enable it. 

Is it possible with your driver to:

1. on your Apple iphone 11 say 'hey siri" open right garage door and

2. have the garage door open using control 4.

I have a fair sized Control 4 application already running and would like to enable voice control of the doors with SIRI.

If this is possible can you tell me what the costs are?  We already have alexa integrated to if it would be cheaper to use alexa in the car I can do that.

Thoughts?

I purchased the Lifex Chowmain driver.  Works a treat - decided to purchase 5 BR30 downlights.

The work a treat in the APP. I would like to add them to Control4 but when I drag the light driver over to the left side, Composer indicates that it has issues with the WEMO plugs in my house and disables the driver. 

The driver says that it automatically configures and adds new lights. But I do not see in the app where it is added or that I can reference the new lights in control composer.  Where should I expect to see the new lights in Composer?  I would like to add programming for these lights and simply cannot find where that can be done.

Bill

I have a number of BR30 (PAR30) light bulbs in my house. They are all white.  I would like to find (something other than Philips) that does not require its own "hub" for control and start switching these out for the ability to change colors.

The Philips bulbs are expensive, require s separate hub and just not he road I would like to go down at this point.

I see several of these on Amazon, but non of them have drivers (that I can tell) that will work with Control 4. They all require that you change things on your phone.

Does anyone have a recommendation for a PAR30/BR30 bulb (about 65 watts) that will do colors and be controlled by Control 4?

Thanks in advance for any information you can provide.

Bill