TundraSonic

At what point do we expect too much of C4? For me there's little value added being able to see a camera in a C4 app since I can just as easily and with a better UI, better control and better camera quality do that with the native Security Spy app? The exception would be when using an older iPad as a C4 panel but not having it here is not a huge loss and also likely something I can do using the native SS app. Where I do want C4 integration is; 1) Triggers - both ways to have C4 trigger a camera movement or recording or have C4 respond to camera motion, 2) Display a camera on a T3/T4 panel, 3) Display a camera on an app per above when using an iPad as a C4 control panel.

Is it Snap firmware? Or Hik rebranded?

Some good advice from @Andrew luecke. Two other reasons for separate net/vlan are to simply keep camera traffic away from other stuff and almost all cameras have a tendency to 'call home to mamma' so this allows them to be isolated from doing that. I don't have a problem with WiFi cameras (or PL based cameras) and we have several of each that we deploy around the house when we're on holiday. You just have to understand the risks. Best recommendation for BI & SS are to have two ethernet ports on the host; one for the isolated camera network and the other facing the world/internet. This is what we've done. One port (10gb) is to the switch dedicated to just cameras. The other port (USB > 10gb) connects to our main switch for remote access and for WiFi and PL cameras on a surveillance vlan. FWIW, most of our cameras are Dahua. Second best is a single ethernet port and all cameras on the vlan. As to the power consumption, our Security Spy mac mini uses 11.2w according to IotaWatt. I don't know what our IC Realtime or Hik NVR's were but 11.2w doesn't leave a lot of room for savings. Even if it used 300w I'd consider the money well spent for the better capabilities and user interface.

Every zone that's part of the session increases. I move the slider to 60% and then it jumps to 100% on its own.

T3 connected to an EA-5. Audio source is Tune-in within EA-5 > Triad 24x24 > Triad 8 zone amps > Ceiling speakers > Anthem MRX (720's & 1120's) > room speakers.

In theory I don't think so but in reality seemingly yes. In mastering stuff for CD's we'd frequently get weird distortion kinds of stuff. There was no technical rationale for it that we or others knew of but everyone seemed to have problems with it. Analog was simply infinite quality (we use to think it funny that people would buy expensive RCA cables for their home as what they were listening to had likely already traversed tens or hundreds of feet of cheap cables from Radio Shack in studios.)

Or want to tap in to a broader knowledge base. Two or thirty brains can be much better than one. No matter how intelligent someone is or how experienced they are, they cannot know everything nor think of everything. Even within an extremely narrow area it's tough to be much of an expert. I once worked for a guy name Vint Cerf. He's the father of TCP/IP and most of how email is exchanged today came from him. He'd ask me questions about email or something and I always thought he was simply testing me - he wrote this stuff and knows it better than anyone. Over time though I learned that he was trying to get a different view on something or tap in to experience that I or others had that was different from his experience. I could devote 100% of my time to mail but he was also doing ATM and Frame Relay and SS7 and a myriad of other things. My integrator is one (or two counting his boss) single person and he does HA and security and media and surveillance and lighting and other stuff. Great guy but no matter how intelligent he is he can't keep up with it all.

As an old guy and former audio engineer... I miss the ease and quickness of physical knobs. In our old house the gain was very predictable and I could easily and quickly adjust it with a rotary knob. I knew what 11 o'clock was or 2 o'clock or whatever and could quickly and easily make adjustments. The up/down arrows on C4 (or similar) keypads are exceptionally slow (and a PITA) comparatively. This is why digital studios or live systems all still have physical desks with physical rotary or slider knobs - easy, quick and predictable. There's a similar issue with Tesla. In my truck I can make adjustments to the HVAC system or other things without looking or only a quick glance. With the Tesla display I have to look away from the road for a longer period. This was made worse about 3 years ago when they moved many of the controls from the top to the bottom of the display. Changing air circulation for instance is an easily locatable physical button in my truck. In my Tesla I have to look down to locate the HVAC button, press that, then look down again to locate the circ button and press that and sometimes a third look down. There are some great bits to the Tesla display but some things are much easier and safer with physical buttons.

For myself, and I think for many others on here, work that we do in C4 (and computers, networks, etc.) is not a hobby. This is a core system that runs our house. I do programming, debugging, maintenance and other stuff because it needs to be done or because it'd be useful to have it done. I do it myself because it is often easier, faster and less expensive to do it myself than to try to explain to someone else what I want done, wait on them to do it on their schedule and then pay them for their time doing it*. I prefer to not spend my time doing networking, computer, C4 and security/surveillance stuff. Or changing HVAC filters or replacing the battery in my truck or whatever. I have other things that I'd rather do with my time, some of which are indeed hobbies or recreational activities that I do purely for the enjoyment of doing them. I wish I could justify the cost or had the money available to have our integrator come by twice a week for a few hours to do a bunch of this stuff so that I could spend more time doing hobbies but I don't have the luxury of those funds being available. Also, hobbies are typically not mission-critical types of things. If I can't go on a hike, do a workout or finish a piece of furniture it's not a big deal. If C4 if malfunctioning then it can be a very big deal that affects a number of people. So I, and I think many others, don't view this as a hobbyist focused forum. It's not a just-for-fun thing. It's actually a quite critical bit of our homes. * There are many instances where paying someone else to do stuff is very worthwhile though - usually because they have skills or expertise or tools that I do not or sometimes purely because I do not have the time and it needs to get done.

We've had an issue that's happened 4 or 5 times over the past year. I'll move the volume slider for a session on a T3 up to around 50% or 60% and a second or two later it will automatically jump to 100% with accompanying loudness throughout our house. The most recent was this past Friday morning. Having experienced this before I'm extremely careful when changing the volume and this time I'd moved it to about 50% and taken my finger off. About two or three seconds later it jumped to 100% on its own. I believe each time its done it was when all zones were a part of the session though I'm not positive of that. Has anyone else experienced this? Any thoughts on what the cause could be? Thanks,

Agree with the last part, not the first. I have three printers that I use for work. Am I a hobbyist because I purchase them myself, plug them in to my computer myself and configure them myself? I have a Security Spy surveillance system in my studio that I purchased, installed, configured and maintain. Am I a hobbyist? Is someone who buys a computer and uses it without hiring someone to set it up for them a hobbyist?

Along w/ some others we did a LOT of research and trials. We found that hardware NVR's are antiquated, updates are not timely and updates can be buggy. Unifi is lacking critical features, not a stable platform and updates are frequent and buggy*. Synology is rock solid but lacking some important features. We all also wanted to stay away from systems that are proprietary and prefer to be able to use any cameras and other devices. Also having all our eggs in one basket w/ Unifi or Synology is scary. Blue Iris and Security Spy quickly bubbled to the top of consumer affordable systems (there are better but they come with too many $$$'s) and of these Security Spy has proven the most stable. Both are pretty full featured and each has some features the other does not. If you're an Apple environment then Security Spy is the easy choice unless there some specific must-have feature that it's lacking. The IOS, IpadOS, and TVOS apps work well for remote monitoring and use as does the MacOS app. We have Apple TV's on all of our TV's that we use for all of our media. The one feature that we're still waiting on from Security Spy is a pop-up so that based on some trigger such as a doorbell ring a selected camera will pop-up in a window. If you're a Windows environment the Blue Iris might be better though some Windows folks have migrated to SS for increased performance and stability (and I know of one Apple person who's running BI for a critical triggering feature that they needed). * Our network is comprised of 27 unifi devices, works well and with capabilities that I don't think could be touched for the money from any other vendor. Cisco would be the next best upgrade, would be more stable/reliable and have more features. It'd also cost about 4x as much (I considered it and priced it). I'll harp about the bugginess of updates and features promised in 2019 that we still don't have but for the money I'll not be going anywhere else.

Recently we've had an issue w/ music automatically turning off after about 2 hrs. This is a new issue that was not happening before. We select a source (almost always Tune-In on EA-5) for the kitchen and then add additional rooms to the session. After about 2 hrs the music stops. The session still shows on the T3 for a few minutes and then disappears. I've looked through properties for Tune-In, Digital Media, and EA-5 for a timeout but didn't see anything. Any advice on this would be appreciated. My wife is getting annoyed by it and starting to use epithets for Control4.

I didn't use room control so mine might be different. A button for adding the upper level zones is the same as the second line but different rooms.

I believe the Tesla API is official. They manage a token system for 3rd party app access, have published official documents on it, and Musk has tweeted his support for some apps like TeslaFi.

We had to redo a wall in our gym so I need to re mount the EA-1 and a few other items. Our integrator mounted the EA-1 with the ports facing up. I was taught to always have ports facing down (best) or to the side (acceptable). Thoughts? Thanks.

Yes. First, I'm not 'spending thousand on Christmas lights'. Even if I were I'd still not want to pay for something that's not needed, especially when I also have to wait for someone else to do what I should be able to easily do myself in 3 - 5 minutes. As I've mentioned many times before, I don't have to hire a tech to visit my house every time I buy a new printer, display or keyboard. I buy it, the system recognizes it, I configure it, and I'm good to go. Similar for Homekit and other stuff. C4 should be the same. If I buy a Hue or LIFX or Kasa or any other device I should be able to easily add it to C4 myself just as I can with other stuff. HOWEVER, I'll gladly hire a tech for stuff that I can't do or simply don't do as well. Initial system install, adding more complicated stuff, etc. AND, my tech doesn't want to waste his time doing stuff that I should be able to do myself. He'd rather be doing stuff where he genuinely adds value not doing busy work just because C4 protects some things for him to do. He's not bored. He doesn't need more work. And he'd much rather do fulfilling work than busy work.

"This adds a missing feature from the Control4 home automation system" Bingo! Now to the other 322 missing features... It's kind of like an iPhone without a keypad "Oh, if you want to be able to dial then you need to buy a 3rd party app".

Getting back to this... The Kasa plug-in 300w dimmer is $24, Caseta 300w is $50 and C4 is $89. Since we need about 40 of them Kasa would seem to be the winner if reliable and the drivers work well. Any thoughts on this? Will Kasa and Caseta both require calling an integrator to add them to our system every time we buy or replace one or once the driver is installed can we add new devices ourselves? ---- "Axxess devices for integration into Control4 products are sold through Control4 dealers." This pretty much screams no for me. This isn't something that should require a dealer and all of their added unnecessary expense.

I can tell you what I do (with a couple of Triad 16x16) but I don't know that it's the best way to do it and it's frustrating because there are no session level controls. E.G., I can't kill a session, etc. But it does reliably play audio when and where we want. I have custom buttons for each of 3 primary audio sources. The button starts a session in the kitchen w/ that source and then adds the main level rooms to it. I then have buttons for 'Add UL', 'Add Loft', 'Add LL' and 'Add Terrace'. Each adds the appropriate rooms to the kitchen session. In practice then... Press one of the 3 source buttons. Wait until you can hear it, then press any of the add buttons. For multiple add buttons I have to wait a few seconds between pressing them or it misses some or all of the rooms. There is an add on package that will supposedly provide the capability to kill a session along with other stuff and it may be a better alternative to lacking C4 capabilities.

Great info. Thank you. Intriguing. Can you elaborate?

Thanks!

Native in every programming environment I've ever worked in (and that's a lot since ENIAC ) would be the 'create session' returning a Session ID that I'd use to kill that session later on. Am I correct that this is a C4 driver (not a 3rd party) and that once installed I, a lowly homeowner, should be able to use it? From a bit of reading it sounds like for multi-room stuff an instance of the driver must be installed and bound to those specific rooms and that this must be done by dealer and not by me? Or am I misunderstanding? Is there a manual for it anywhere? All I've found is a video in Spanish from Genesis Tech. Thanks,

I want a shade to raise 2% with each button press (it's @ 36 so a press raises it to 38, etc). Typically you'd increment a variable by 2 and then raise the shade to that target level or some objects allow internal math so "set blind target level to blind target level + 2". I can't figure out either of these or other alternatives in Composer. I can set the blind target level to a specific number but can't find an option for setting it to the value of a variable either in the top level of the shade or within device variables (actually none of the shade device variables appear to offer commands, only conditionals). Am I missing something? Thanks,

Thanks. Any tips or gotcha's on setup in C4? You're using the Phillips C4 driver? I assume you have two instances of the driver? Thanks,