livitup

@rolldog I have this exact setup in my home and it works perfectly. Let me know if you can't get it to work and I can post a screen shot.

I think it's a dead amp, but crossing my fingers otherwise. It's possible that half of it is still usable even if some components inside are fried.

Kalidescape. Legal, 4K, HDR, Atmos, digital, integrates incredibly well with C4. Just sayin'.

BMW and Mercedes make affordable cars with cloth interiors, mechanical seats, and manual transmissions. They sell them for mid-market prices all over Europe. A Mercedes or BMW in Germany is the same as a Ford or Chevy in the US. They're just cars. They choose not to import those less expensive cars to the USA, because both companies have decided to market themselves as a premium brand in the US, and premium brands don't sell cars with cloth interiors. It would cost them nothing to start selling those cars here, and in fact they would probably sell a bunch. But how many people are going to buy the $100,000 BMW when the brand starts selling $20,000 cars to the masses? Maybe everyone in this forum is enlightened to the point where they wouldn't make decisions based on such snooty airs. I'm not making personal judgements on anyone in this forum. But you and I both know that there is a percentage of high revenue customers who would bolt. BMW has chosen not to target the $20,000 car buyer. C4 has chosen not to target the DIYer. While we might wish it were different, I'm just saying I understand why.

I thought I had made it clear that I do think it would be nice for a truly capable customer to have the freedom to manage their own system. For the record, I do wish that it was possible for a truly capable customer to have the freedom to manage their own system. It would have saved me (personally) a lot of effort if a truly capable customer had the freedom to manage their own system. Also for the record, I do understand C4's decision to scope their market as "consumers who are more conscious about a clean, functional finished product, than the ability to build it themselves." And I do understand C4's decision to make business choices that protect the brand image they are interested in protecting. Whether they are right or wrong, I can't tell you, because I haven't done the market research. But I can tell you I face similar decisions regularly in running my business. https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/217926

First off, I in no way, shape, or form intended "DIYer" to be derogatory. I am a "maker" at heart and constantly DIY stuff. The problem is that C4 has no way of being able to tell if an individual is capable of making a C4 system sing like Pavarotti, or William Hung. In the case of the former, the upside to C4 is probably relatively low, compared to the large downside of the latter (IMHO). Poorly trained and unqualified dealers are a blight on the ecosystem. But at least Control4 has the ability to remove them from the ecosystem (not that they're particularly good at it). Control4 would have NO ability to remove DIYers that do a bad job from the ecosystem. They have made the choice of (ignoring for a moment the issue of untrained/unqualified dealers) retaining control over their ecosystem. I have faith that, as a successful public company, they made that decision after significant analysis and thought. I actually wish that individuals had access to Composer, but I can understand the risk to the brand image that C4 has worked hard to build, and I can understand, agree with, and respect their decision. Hey, it could be worse... We could be on a Crestron forum.

My 2 cents, for what it's worth... My car integrates components from MANY manufactures. So do jet planes. When my throttle gets stuck and I can't stop and I drive into a wall, who gets the blame? Ford, or the company that sourced the throttle cable, or maybe the computer chip that opened the throttle? When a fan blade separates from a jet engine, slicing through the cabin and killing someone, who gets the blame? Did a "GE Powered Passenger Plane" have a fatal accident, or did a "Southwest Plane" have a fatal accident? Control4 is not so unlike Ford or Southwest, that when their product (which is really built off 1000s of other products with C4's "glue" as the secret sauce) fails, then C4 fails... not Sony, not Samsung, not Apple, not the crappy network in the house... Control4 fails. Control4 knows they have a complex set of kit, and posts on this forum notwithstanding, it works to the customer's satisfaction the majority of the time. A lot of that is because of the dealer network. If I were C4, I would weigh the amount of additional revenue from DIYers, offset by the loss of revenue from people who muck it up and trash the reputation, making the non-DIY customer wary of "that C4 junk" and make a business decision about their distribution, installation, and support model. Oh, wait... I bet they did.

You rock. Muhahahahahaha, an evil plan is forming...

Never mind the wiring... each light needs 1 amp at 24V DC, if my 20-year-old EE degree is any good. So where are people finding multi-amp plug-in 120VAC to 24VDC converters? Or am I way overthinking this? My pidgin Goolging showed nothing turnkey - and I'm not feeling creating my own transformer package...

@jackstone... links?

What are you using for landscape lights?

I'm heavily considering using this solution for outdoor landscape lighting. However, like RobbieF, I'd love some real world examples. Everything I can find on the Internet is stage/DJ lighting or large commercial installations. There's so many lights out there, with a huge range of pricing from cheap to horribly expensive - I'm just scared to take the risk on a large investment to never get it "right". Does anyone have any photos or links to products where DMX has been used for residential landscape lighting? Thanks!

No problem to take photos, just won't be until Tuesday... For me the hardest part of figuring it out is that the switches have 4 pins - one on each corner of the switch "pad". They are really two sets of two common pins. The trick was figuring out wether the horizontal pins made a "pair" or if the vertical pins make a "pair". You either need to connect to the east-west or the north-south pair... I just forget which. I tested it by using a short bit of wire to short between two pins until I found a pair that would operate the opener.

I have three doors/openers, so I bought a single, three button remote, and then used a single piece of CAT5 cable, one pair per button on the remote. On my particular remote (Liftmaster 3 button) I was able to carefully solder the wires on to the bottom of the circuit board, where the switch legs poke through. The other end just strip off the inner sheath on the pair(s) you use and connect to the screw terminals for the controller's relay ports. I'm traveling at the moment, but I should be able to take some photos on Tuesday night.

Depends on how you are planning on triggering door motion. If like me, your plan is to solder extension wires on a remote control, as shown upthread by @BraydonH, and assuming your main controller is within radio range of the garage doors - Then, you could use a single Z2IO in "Option 2" mode, installed in the garage, to do the sensors for 2 doors, and have the remote wired into a controller relay directly. However, if you're going to do it that way, you might as well use the Nyce tilt sensors, as two of them are cheaper than one Z2IO. If your plan is to not use a remote, and instead hook your garage door directly into C4, then the Z2IO would be a better choice, and yes, you'd need one per door. My openers will not allow me to do that, as they do not have simple two-wire triggers - even the wired wall switch is a multi-wire, multi-button affair.

My phone is always in the holder within eyesight and reach. My garage door opener remote is either in my center console or another storage cubby that is blocked by my phone. Yes, I get that it's more taps/swipes to use the C4 (or any other app) than a physical button. Depending on how much I hate the app route, I may buy the HomeLink compatibility kit anyway. Having HomeLink working does not solve my entire problem set, but having C4 integration might. My new openers use what Liftmaster calls "Security 2.0" and I suspect is just a newer/more secure version of the rolling code technology that replaced DIP switches. It requires a new version of the HomeLink software, that comes pre-installed in cars produced near/after the introduction of Security 2.0, but isn't available for cars produced prior to this "innovation." OMG. Nyce Sensors. Where have these been all my life. This, plus the remote hacked into the relay ports on the controller should do the trick! Off to chat with a dealer.

Valid points that made me re-examine my goals here. However, they are still valid because: 1) I hate the remote clipped to the visor. Hate it even more buried in the car somewhere. 2) My newfangled openers aren't compatible with the HomeLink transmitters in any of my cars. 3) Ergo, due to 1 and 2, I have to buy some kind of box anyway, even if it's just the HomeLink adapter. 4) My wife is OCD about the garage doors being shut at night 5) I frequently tell my wife that they are shut, even though I'm not sure, because I don't want to get out of bed to check. 6) Ergo, due to 4 and 5, a green light on a wall keypad visible from the bed, would be a huge plus. Thanks for making me think, though!

So if I wanted to go the contacts and relays route, but couldn’t actually run wires from my garages to my controller? Are the Card Access boxes still a thing? Would I need three of them for three doors? Does someone sell the clips or brackets or whatever to mount the sensors to the doors? Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Would like to get my garage door openers into Control4 next. I’ve got three openers. All three are LiftMaster MyQ compatible, but not MyQ equipped (I’d have to buy the MyQ modules). I do not have wiring from the opener locations to the controller. Most important to me is integration with Control4. I want a single-app house, so I don’t want to use any app besides the Control4 app to control them. Second most important is cost. I am not totally adverse to hacking extra wireless remotes and hooking them up to relays on my controller if that’s the best solution (combined with position sensors?). I have an EA-5 and an I/O Extender and none of the relays or contacts are used yet - though like I said, I can’t really run wire from the garages to the rack. Trying to make this as much of a DIY project as C4 will let me. Advice would be appreciated! Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Your choices are: 1 Sonos Connect and a 16 channel (8 zone) amplifier (you can probably reuse the C4 one). All zones play the same music at the same volume at the same time (no individual zone control at all) 8 Sonos Connect Amps. You get individual zone control, but this solution will cost you about $4000 (shelf price). A different Whole Home Audio solution, such as Nuvo. Honestly, if Whole Home Audio is the only thing you're after, Control4 is way overkill. The C4 value proposition is in the integration and automation of many disparate home systems (audio, video, lighting, security, sprinklers, climate, shades/blinds, etc.). If you no longer have any interest in that value proposition then one of the three solutions above should work for you.

I generally like Meraki gear, even post Cisco acquisition. I actually don't use Meraki at work, only traditional Cisco gear (now a-days it's mostly Nexus and ASR stuff). But I appreciate a lot about Meraki's model and 99% of the time it works flawlessly for me. This is only the second time in the 2+ years I've had this setup that I've wished for CLI access because Meraki is missing a feature available in bigger Cisco metal. Anyway, I was out for the last few hours and just got home. I checked and found that the MAC address is actually a HE user editable field in the driver's properties. I changed the MAC for one of the TVs, and it's working fine. I suspect that the TV being on a different subnet was the cause of the original issue. I had set up the Meraki equivalent of directed broadcast - which should have forwarded the WoL packets to the subnet where the TVs are, but it must not have been. My dealer started making changes to my network before I had the chance to troubleshoot that. I appreciate everyone trying to help. For now, I think this can be laid to rest. I'll update if I manage to get the two subnet setup working, just in case anyone cares.

Derp. I didn’t notice/realize the MAC was configured in the driver, but of course that makes sense. I’ll have to get my dealer (or any dealer) to update them, since they can’t be edited in HE.

For purposes of troubleshooting I connected an Ethernet cable from the TV to the same network switch as the EA-5 is connected to. I assigned it the same IP address it was using when it was on WiFi, which is the same IP address that is configured in the driver. I rechecked everything in the driver documentation: In the "Mobile TV ON" there is only one option, "Turn on via WiFi". This setting is turned on. (This is what made me and my dealer suspect Wired WoL was depreciated in the first place.) "Quick Start+" is turned on. (The driver doc says "Quick Start" but I do not have that option, only Quick Start+.) "LG Connected Apps" is turned on. With the TV Powered on, I can click the "Pair" button, and get the popup on the TV, which I accepted. I can click "Display Version" in Composer and the Toast message appears on the TV. (3.14.309) If I manually power off the TV, originally nothing could turn it back on. Not Control4, not my standalone Wake on LAN tool, not my network gear's built-in WoL capability. Running debug on the driver shows the driver sending the WoL packet and timing out. To be clear, the TV and the EA-5 are now on the same physical switch, on the same subnet, on the same VLAN, etc. The TV is running WebOS 04.70.10. The TV remains "online" from the perspective of my switch (the switch port is still connected) when the TV is off. I started doing packet capture on my LAN to see what was happening. During testing, the TV randomly, but consistently started powering on with commands issued by my PC. (Random as in I don't know what made it start working, consistent, as it has worked ever since it started working.) My PC is 10.168.0.15, the Controller is 10.168.0.35, and the TV is 10.168.0.28. Here is a packet capture of a WoL sent from my standalone tool on my PC that successfully wakes up the TV: Frame 10: 148 bytes on wire (1184 bits), 148 bytes captured (1184 bits) Ethernet II, Src: Pegatron_d7:6c:15 (20:25:64:d7:6c:15), Dst: Broadcast (ff:ff:ff:ff:ff:ff) Destination: Broadcast (ff:ff:ff:ff:ff:ff) Source: Pegatron_d7:6c:15 (20:25:64:d7:6c:15) Type: 802.1Q Virtual LAN (0x8100) 802.1Q Virtual LAN, PRI: 0, DEI: 0, ID: 1 Internet Protocol Version 4, Src: 10.168.0.15, Dst: 10.168.0.255 User Datagram Protocol, Src Port: 65245, Dst Port: 40000 Source Port: 65245 Destination Port: 40000 Length: 110 Checksum: 0xf12d [unverified] [Checksum Status: Unverified] [Stream index: 0] Wake On LAN, MAC: LgElectr_8e:fc:ab (38:8c:50:8e:fc:ab) Sync stream: ffffffffffff MAC: LgElectr_8e:fc:ab (38:8c:50:8e:fc:ab) Packet capture from my switch when I try to do a "Watch" action from C4: Frame 21: 148 bytes on wire (1184 bits), 148 bytes captured (1184 bits) Ethernet II, Src: Control4_90:01:65 (00:0f:ff:90:01:65), Dst: Broadcast (ff:ff:ff:ff:ff:ff) Destination: Broadcast (ff:ff:ff:ff:ff:ff) Source: Control4_90:01:65 (00:0f:ff:90:01:65) Type: 802.1Q Virtual LAN (0x8100) 802.1Q Virtual LAN, PRI: 0, DEI: 0, ID: 1 Internet Protocol Version 4, Src: 10.168.0.35, Dst: 255.255.255.255 User Datagram Protocol, Src Port: 57502, Dst Port: 9 Source Port: 57502 Destination Port: 9 Length: 110 Checksum: 0x214a [unverified] [Checksum Status: Unverified] [Stream index: 1] Wake On LAN, MAC: Arcadyan_d8:df:bf (48:8d:36:d8:df:bf) Sync stream: ffffffffffff MAC: Arcadyan_d8:df:bf (48:8d:36:d8:df:bf) The only difference I can see is that my PC tool is sending the WoL magic packet to the subnet broadcast IP address (10.168.0.255) whereas C4 is sending the broadcast to the global broadcast IP address (255.255.255.255). There are a few other minor differences in the IP headers: C4 sets the "Don't Fragment" bit and it sets the TTL lower, but otherwise they are identical. Note that these captures were collected on the port that the TV is connected to, so both of these frames were definitely sent to the TV. Ideas?

Like I said, not defensive, not blaming anyone, no need to cut slack - because I am not pulling the rope tight! I'm only frustrated because everyone keeps reiterating what I already know: my network is not working right! I've said from the first post that I put most of the blame on Meraki for disassociating WiFi clients when they go into low power mode, and some on LG for removing wired WoL support. Since starting this conversation, I have learned that my information about LG wired WoL support was erroneous, and now I've shifted most of the blame on to myself for a possible network configuration issue, and partially on Meraki because the way it's set up now should work, even if it's sub-optimal. It's Meraki not implementing the 802.11 protocol rules correctly that's causing my current problem. My network is unorthodox. There's a good reason. I have Gigabit internet, but my firewall will only process 250Mb/s of traffic. The equivalent firewall to the one I have that will process 1 Gb/s of traffic is $10k list. I have a Kaleidescape, 8 TVs with smart apps, 3 AppleTVs, DirecTV Video on Demand, and 2 teenagers with mobile devices that could be streaming at any point in time. I made the conscious decision to set up an "outer network" that is not behind my firewall for any "appliance" that does streaming. They are still somewhat protected by virtue of being behind the router's NAT. But those devices can get full speed access to the Internet, without chipping away at the 250Mb/s throughput limit of my firewall. Everything with Windows, OS X, or iOS installed on it goes to the switch or WAP that is behind the firewall. All my streaming devices get the outside network. I figure if the Chinese can bore through my NAT set up and rootkit my Kaleidescape, well then they can have my movies. I do this stuff for a living day in, and day out. I've been a network engineer/architect for 20 years. I'm not saying that to get into a "mine is bigger than yours" debate, but just to let you know that handing the keys to my network over to my dealer would probably not increase the level of expertise on this particular part of my install. I freely admit that my dealer knows a ton more about Control4, AV equipment, automation system design, et al. than I do. Like I said last night - I need to do more investigation on why it wasn't working with the wired setup. I took my dealer's word for it that WiFi was the answer. I'll report back anything I find out!

Bizarre. Either my dealer misunderstood the communication from Annex4 or I misunderstood him. I'm sorry if I sound frustrated, but I agree 100% it's something with my network causing issues. I have never pointed the finger at anyone else, and I have never tried to blame Annex4, the driver, my dealer, or anyone except LG and Cisco. Please stop telling me it's my network, because I agree! My network looks like this: E1|---> Switch -> LG TVs | Internet => Router => | | E2|---> Firewall -> Switch -> EA-5 | |-------> WAP The router is an Ubiquiti EdgeRouter Lite The Firewall is a Meraki MX-64 The Switches are Meraki MS-22P The WAP is a Meraki MR-33 The TVs and the EA-5 were originally on different subnets with the WoL packets forwarded to the TV Subnet. Putting them on the same subnet, still using wired connections didn't help. Only when moving them to WiFi did it work. I didn't spend much time messing with the wired connectivity because the dealer had already proven them working on the non-Cisco WiFi. I'm going to switch back to wired and mess with it some and see if I can't get it working or get some more useful debugging information. I appreciate your help, everyone, and again - I'm not pointing fingers at Annex4!