Joshua Pressnell

Well, thank you!

In iOS 11 Apple is working to improve their GeoLocation capabilities in HomeKit. I don't know exactly *what* they're doing under-the-hood, and your milage may vary. I do know that they've added the ability to keep track of which users are home, based on their individual devices. So you can have triggers based on "first user home" and "last user left home", etc. I would guess that they're using "significant location tracking" and "geo fencing" as the root of the feature, plus also possibly the combination of location updates with the device joining a known "home" wifi network. Since Apple "owns" the OS, they can do things that mere 3rd party mortals can't when it comes to "home presence identification". I can't vouch for exactly how well it will work for all users, as I've only played with it a little bit (iOS 11 developer beta), but I do know that they claimed at WWDC that this feature would be getting better. To tie that into Control4, you'd use a series of "virtual switches" that represent Boolean variables in the C4 system. Then use HomeKit's location triggers to turn appropriate "Is User Home" or "All Users Gone" states via the switches, and possible also trigger switches for when particular users are home, so you can have variable states (and thus programming) for states like "only my wife is home".

I'm preparing a driver and just such a "productized" server appliance now. Nearly done with it. The driver will receive inputs from any number of named dash buttons, and you can program whatever action you want for them. The server is based off of my homebridge appliance. I already have all the components of the system working, and I'm just finishing up the web configuration portal (to make setup/management super easy). After some thought, the driver itself will be free. If you already have my homebridge appliance, the update that includes dash buttons will be free. You can either buy my homebridge appliance (which also lets you use it for HomeKit) for $225, or a stripped down Dash Button only version for $100. I also allow you to license the entire OS image of either for $50.

Right. The problem is that there are too many "options" that exist in the abstract concept of a "blind". It looks like the Control4 stuff "might" support "target position", for instance, but I can't see any way to control/set it in programming. In HomeKit, you can set any position from closed to open and in between (represented by 0-100), so I was looking for a way to check target and current position. It looks like most relay-based blinds only know about "up" and "down" and the C4 driver figures that out based on timing, which seems fraught with potential issues.

I took a brief look at it yesterday. It looks like the C4 system only supports the "up" and "down" position for shades/blinds, and doesn't handle tilt/rotation at all? Is that right? If we're talking about the most basic shade function (traveling up and down), I might be able to get that in relatively shortly.

You can kind of do that now, it's just not as elegant as a truly native HomeKit solution would be. The basic idea is that you create a HomeKit room that represents your AV system and then add a bunch of virtual switches to it, using something like the Clipsal Legacy Relay Light driver. Then you use programming on the C4 side to set the switch states appropriately and react to HomeKit changes. Because it relies on C4 programming and lots of virtual drivers to represent system states and remote buttons, it's a lot more work to setup and maintain than I'd like, and I don't recommend it to the general public, but it is possible. I continue to hope that future releases of HomeKit will actually include AV capability, beyond just the "speaker" representation added in iOS 11 (which only allows volume control).

I won't have the docker version for a while. There's a lot to do, and getting things setup so that all my appliance code works properly involves a lot of low-level linux IT setup. My Pi images are solid, though. The system is intended to expose the Control4 project to HomeKit. All supported devices in Control4 become devices in HomeKit, and you can use those devices as if they were HomeKit-compatible. This lets you control C4 lights, dimmers, garage doors, security systems, etc from Home app and with Siri. What you put where depends on how you want things setup. If you install drivers for your Hue bulbs in C4, and those bulbs support the light proxy, then my HomeKit setup will automatically pick them up, and allow you to also control them in HomeKit, by routing HomeKit communications through C4. I believe Hue bulbs are also directly HomeKit compatible, so you could just add them to Home directly, and add them to C4 and move them to my system's ignore list, so they don't show up twice. There's lots of options.

We'll need a lot more information if we're going to help you. What's the fireplace model? What's the integration module's make and model (back of that box, perhaps?). Are the two wires on the module expected to be a momentary contact or continuous on/off relay? Where do you have the wires from the module connected to your C4 system? What driver are you using to control that hardware? I'm guessing (and this is just a guess) that you have a momentary contact configured, so the switch from C4 closes and then shortly opens again, when the fireplace expects the switch to close and stay closed. If you remove the wires from your C4 system and just wire them together, does the fireplace turn on properly?

Ok... so this will be a little tricky, but shouldn't be too bad. Here's the steps: 1) Identify the device ID values for the devices you're interested in. You'd do this by using Composer to mouse over the device, and jot down the device ID value (likely a 3 digit number) and the driver file name 2) Use advanced mode, and choose the option to edit the raw config.json file. Copy the entire text, and save it to a text file. Pm or email me that file as an attachment, along with your list of device IDs and driver file names. 3) I'll send you an updated config.json file. You'll go back into the advanced options and delete what's there and replace it with what I send you, and save, then restart homebridge (one of the buttons) 4) That should add those new devices into the "default room" and if they work using a similar mechanism to the other C4 switches, it'll work straight up. If it doesn't work out of the box, I can look at the driver and work out what I need to add.

Ok... we can go ahead and test things out manually first. If they work, then you can send me the driver file names for the devices and I'll add it into the drivers supported device list. I presume you're using your own homebridge setup? Or did you get one of my appliances?

Do they function as basic switches? What I can do depends on how the drivers function. Worst case, you could install a generic switch driver and use programming to link the hardware states.

Sadly, not yet. It took me a while to get things straightened out to support more than 100 devices on a single appliance box, and I needed to get that worked out first. After that, it's thermostat support, as a few folks are waiting on that for purchase. Then I should be able to get the docker image out.

I did state in my post when I released the last update that it would expire April 1. :-P Ya know... first taste is free. Glad to hear you're enjoying the setup. I've got some bigger issues to deal with first, and then I'll get on the thermostat connection.

Correct. Although if you've been using the beta driver already, you likely have everything you need setup already and just need the released copy of the driver itself?

The device is $225. You're welcome to setup your own (free) or use your own hardware and my OS image ($50) as cheaper options. The benefit of my plug and play option is ease of setup and configuration. The driver is $175.

You're welcome. I'd far rather you get what works best for you than sell you something that's not what you're looking for. I will say that the most frequent comment I've gotten is "It responds so much faster than I was expecting". With my HomeKit setup, the system responds almost as fast as using the native C4 app manually. The other thing you can do is use Apple's automations in HomeKit. You can trigger things on arriving or leaving home, for example, which uses Apple's internal location monitoring to trigger things.

That's going to be dependent on HomeKit, not my product. My product exposes C4 devices as HomeKit devices, which respond appropriately to HomeKit commands. The entire front-end is handled by Apple's stuff. That said, I haven't tried chaining lots of commands into a single Siri request. Depending on what you're doing, you might use HomeKit scenes to make that simpler, or use a virtual switch in your project to trigger C4 scenes. But what you want may work already. I'll give it a try when I have a chance and post back. Even if it doesn't work now, Apple may add that in the next iOS update.

I haven't played much with Alexa, as I'm a completely Apple household, and I didn't want more devices in the home to overlap with what I already had. I think there's some pros and cons to both. Apple/Homebridge: * Directly integrated with Apple ecosystem and functions natively in all Apple devices. * Not a cloud-based service * Responds and updates very quickly. * Extremely easy to setup, with no C4 programming required. * Limited to fixed HomeKit commands and can't include custom variables in speech (but can use custom values for known hardware, such as dimmers) Alexa: * More open ecosystem with a variety of 3rd party "skills" and plugins. * More configurable and can include custom "variables" in spoken text. * Can use programming to create complex interactions. * Can integrate more interestingly with IFTTT. * Relies on Amazon's web services and may be delayed by round trip networking requests. Bottom line in my opinion is that there's a lot of personal preference involved. I really like my HomeKit setup and don't really see a need for a bunch of dots around my house, since my phone and Apple Watch or Apple TV are always handy to take commands. But some folks really want the open nature of Alexa and the more expansive nature that "skills" offer.

Don't see why not. You just need to install the homebridge-control4 plugin and use my driver to configure the devices properly.

Yeah... thermostats are a little more complicated in terms of devices in HomeKit, but this is the next device I'm going to be working on, so stay tuned.

At the moment, I have my Nest thermostats integrated directly at the homebridge level, not by connecting to C4. Supporting C4 thermostats is on my to-do list. Once the thermostats are in HomeKit, you can certainly tell Siri to to set the temp to 75, or tell Siri to change the AC mode to heating.

The Pi Zero image is here -> http://josh-firmware.s3.amazonaws.com/homebridge_1.0.1_pi0.tar.gz The Pi 3 image is here -> http://josh-firmware.s3.amazonaws.com/homebridge_1.0.1_pi3.tar.gz These are compressed and minimized images, so don't forget to login and do "sudo raspi-config" to expand the flash disk partition to fill your disk space.

If you know your way around linux and using the Pi, you're free to use my Pi OS image to get things setup quickly. It comes pre-installed with everything you need, including my easy-to-use web portal software. If you want to use the web management portal, I license that for $50, but everything else in the OS image works without license. The driver at HouseLogix has a 48 hour trial period. It's $175 to purchase.

Yes, I got a Pi 0, and I bought mine for $15 after shipping, IIRC. Of course, for my purposes, I also needed to add a USB network adapter, which cost another $20. Don't forget that C4 devices also use Zigbee, and also support high voltage (in most cases). You're not only paying for the hardware, you're also paying for UL certifications and all sorts of other costs that go into selling a consumer device. Yeah, C4 stuff can be a bit expensive, but I've never thought it wasn't worth the actual cost. I've built and shipped consumer hardware in one of my previous lives.

I have an image for the Pi Zero and Pi 3.