cdcllc

@Rexabyte?

More details on hook-up in this post:

If you have a new door opener, it probably is a Security+. Do you have this part between the door opener and the i/o extender? https://www.garadget.com/product/security-2-0-dry-contact-adapter/.

I live in southwest Florida which has a great deal of lightning during our 6 month rainy season plus assorted brown-outs throughout the year. To manage power for the house, we put whole house surge protection in the electrical service panels, a dedicated circuit to the main network, AV and HA equipment rack, plus surge/UPS/power conditioning in the rack (Wattbox). WAPs are POE from the rack. We don’t do surge protection at our TV outlets. Knock on wood! - we haven’t had an equipment failure due to power in our 5 years in the house. We also installed whole house surge protection at our previous home in GA and had 5 years without problems. So I’m a believer in whole house surge protection. But it is not the full solution. You need to look at the circuits you use to power your critical/most expensive equipment and determine what else may be on those circuits. HVAC and appliances should not be on those circuits or any other high amp devices. And local surge, etc. is recommended. The goal is to keep externally generated surges out of the house as much as possible and also protect key equipment against internally generated surges. A good electrician can do wonders for you and I believe there is an ROI in reliability and up-time for their fee.

We basically do the same. Run sources (Xfinity cable, AppleTV, NAS, etc.) through the video matrix, which down-mixes to the audio matrix and then can be distributed to all the audio speakers. We use all the time while in the pool to watch TV and listen via the pool-side speakers. Works well with no timing issues. You can still watch the SmartTV apps, but only "local" audio. I've looked at running audio back to the matrix from the SmartTVs, but more than I want to spend (so far). The biggest issue I see with my setup is I have to choose between video quality optimization (i.e. SmartTV apps get 4k HDR content via stream) vs. audio quality optimization (my video matrix - C4 LU862D - has to push 1080p because I have an old Pioneer Elite that I just can't give up and you can't mix 1080p and 4k on the matrix). Still more than I'm ready to spend right now to solve the issue (i.e. new video matrix that has 4k HDR capability plus 1080p and 4k HDR output simultaneously)! But I have to say we love the setup here and works well for us. We've had it for 5 years.

I’m dipping my toe in the water with Philips Hue. I have KD-120’s everywhere and a couple of questions about wiring for hue: 1) how do you determine which button physically controls a given load? I was thinking turn off the EA-5 and start pushing buttons; I don’t have HE. Or should I call my dealer? 2) can you programmatically re-map “long press” dimming from the KD-120 to the hue driver and mimic the current functionality while simultaneously keeping a short press to natively toggle power on/off? And map double / triple presses to hue scenes? Thanks

I have the same issue with a new (newer at this point - over a year installed) keypad I installed. To troubleshoot, I installed the blank keys and they “clicked” appropriately. So I think it’s the length of the post on the engraved keys that actuates the switch. Mine has gotten better over time (middle buttons now “click”), but the top button still doesn’t “click”. Like yours, it does still work. Hopefully someone on here has a solution! Thanks for posting.

And if you went to the economics forum, you’d find that none other than Milton Friedman would disagree with you. Friedman frequently cited the unintended consequences of efforts to help others and gave as an example minimum wage laws. He believed the minimum wage laws hurt low-skilled workers (the very people they were intended to help) because it takes away the low-skilled worker’s biggest competitive advantage - the willingness to work for lower wages. I think a zero skilled worker that wants to get paid with knowledge/experience seems more like a barter transaction. So a little unusual; both parties need to understand what they are getting into.

Hhhhhhmmmmmm . . . . I'm dipping my toes in the water and installing Philips Hue at the house. Tired of replacing a myriad of incandescent BR-30s at the house and want LED and to play with some color. Just doing kitchen can lights to start and may never go any further. I'll be very interested in the responses you receive. From my research - and take everything with a grain of salt because I have no practical experience - I'm assuming that you will need Hue bridge(s) so you need to identify location(s) for those. I think the bridge needs both power and wired ethernet; not sure if POE is an option. As for the lights themselves, my understanding is C4 is used to switch the load on & off and the hue drivers/bridge/app for all else (dimming, color setting, light groups, etc.). So On/Off control path is C4 --> C4 Load controller and the main functionality control path is C4 --> Hue Bridge --> Hue Bulbs. C4--> C4 Load controller at my house is via C4 Zigbee network and C4 --> Hue Bridge will be an ethernet connection. As such, I don't see Philips Hue bulbs being a primary driver of the panelized lighting requirement. I would think whatever normally drives the requirement for panelized lighting still holds. Hopefully this isn't stupid rumbling . . . I'm assuming 110 volt bulbs and colored lighting.

Thanks for the post guys. Guess I need to play with the remote more and/or read the doc because I didn't know you could change colors on the SR-260 itself. When I replaced a few of my screens, they defaulted to white text and I've had it on my list to call my dealer to change the color - but one of the really, really, really low priority tasks. All changed now!

Just for grins, what would the MSRP be for 2 new SR-260’s?

Agree - it’s worth it. I used the instructions @Amr provided in another thread to replace 2 screens. Worked like a charm and my wife has asked me to do 3 or 4 more. I recommend reading that thread before you throw in the towel and buy new. The screens are so cheap, there’s not much downside.

Why do you want to switch brands?

I think a timer needs to be defined in the system via Pro or HE before you can use it in When/Then (which almost defeats the purpose!). What you can do in When/Then is "Wait for a period of time" and that command is at the bottom of the "Then do this" actions list. The wait can be in the middle of a string of commands. When/Then seems to be a quick way to get straight forward stuff done (i.e. when this button is pushed then do that). For example, I used When/Then to program an SR-260 button to toggle room lamps on and off. And it is very good and fast for those type of tasks. If you are looking for more sophisticated scenarios, HE, your dealer, or one of the remote dealers/programmers on this forum are your best bet.

Thanks to all for your feedback. It's very helpful.

Yes - I have C4 switches/dimmers. The reason I was looking for smart bulbs was to add variable color lights. Are there variable color lights that can be directly set from C4 (i.e. add a soft blue tone that matches the accent color of the room)?

We’re rapidly tiring of replacing filament light bulbs in our house! Dozens of BR30 can lights installed and seems we are replacing 1 every week or every other. So I bought a box of LED BR30s from GE. I wasn’t paying attention to the color and got a very bright white vs. soft white. Now the kitchen looks like the deli area at Publix. So I have to make a change and figure I might as well start down the color LED path. The first big question is which platform. I’ve read a ton of articles on the forum as well as the internet in general and it still seems pretty murky. I’m thinking my objectives (in priority order) are: Robust Control4 integration. Two way status with vendor app and full-function/wide functionality adopted in the driver(s). Utilization of Control4 ADP-120, KP-120 and Aux switch to drive the load at least for total on/off functionality – I really don’t want to change out any of this infrastructure or re-wire. I don’t care if dimming has to be programmatically changed to light driver, but I would still want to be able to dim/brighten the light(s) on Control4 keypad long press. Reliable and broad product line from a stable company that will continue to invest in the platform. Although I realize good Control4 integration can insulate from individual vendor details a great deal, there is not enough standardization and too much complexity to totally isolate (i.e. very different from a Bond Bridge RF signal generator to multiple vendor products – and don’t get me wrong! We love our Bond Bridge with Chowmain driver C4 integration; couldn’t pry it out of our hands at this point). Really great bulbs and strips including functionality/app – doesn’t have to be best of the best, but do want top tier in this space. Accessories (i.e. TV-sync, etc) Cost Product control technology – Wifi would probably be better since it is already in place, but I’d be fine installing a zigbee bridge(s) My only concern for this scope is in-door products. Any opinions whether a single vendor stands out on these objectives? Single vendor vs. Best-of-Breed strategy opinions? Implementation will be very small at first – 8 BR30 can lights in the kitchen. Future plans would be more can lights, replace under-counter fluorescent lights, add TV LED-sync lighting. Thanks for your help.

Our preference for above the cabinets was to install LEDs toward the front in order to highlight the decorative items.

I don’t know whether there is such a thing as a zigbee sniffer, but it would be interesting to see the hand shaking / lack there of, going on when the shades go offline. This sure feels like the QMotion shades might need a bit more latency tolerance at a lower level in the stack. Don’t know how you can positively identify root cause without a log of messages.

Can you switch a known good TV cable from one output port on the matrix to the output port that is currently not working? That will tell you if the problem is on the matrix end or TV end. I've done it before on my Control4/Leaf 8X8 and I make sure I power down the matrix / unplug before changing cables. I also have Leaf baluns on the TV end of the line. Another suggestion would be to have your dealer support person on the line to assist as well.

I went back in and looked at my when/then and I have used a “pause” before. I went through the screens again and the action called “Wait for a period of time” is all the way at the bottom. So the 3 actions you would add upon the press of a button (or double press, etc.) would be something like: turn light on wait 360000 ms turn light off I can’t remember how long the wait goes, but you can play around with it. I programmed a custom button on the master bedroom SR-260 to turn on a few lights very dim to light the way to the bathroom at night and automatically turn them back off after a few minutes. Works nicely! Hope this helps.

I used this part from Garadget: https://www.garadget.com/product/security-2-0-dry-contact-adapter/. How to wire to the Z2IO is in the post. Yes I have a button on the wall that still controls the garage door (i.e. 2 sets of wires on the same posts on the garage door opener). I also have MyQ integration (which I never use any more, but it still works).

Not sure the size of the user base, but I find it very convenient for simple jobs like i) adding a lamp toggle to an SR-260 custom button, ii) scheduling Christmas tree lights to come on and off, etc. You can make the updates and test in minutes usually. I don’t have HE and I don’t frequently update my project. I would also expect my project overall isn’t large or that complex. The app does take a backup before doing the update too! If I had HE, I’d probably use it vs. When/Then.

I have 1 EA-5 on a matrix with 6 TV's and 2 people in the house. Same experience as what others are saying - we use OSD maybe once per month primarily from the bedroom. The OSD automatically comes on the TV from the room tied to the SR-260 that initiated OSD. So absolutely you can share a great many OSDs per TV and not run into a problem. If all I was doing was adding EA-1s for OSD, I would be very aggressive with the ratio of EA-1s to TV's knowing that I can always add more if it turns out to be a problem. And if OSDs were driving a much bigger and more costly matrix, I would seriously consider cutting even more.

Sorry - must have missed it; looking for the solid blue circles for speakers! Nope - one pair will do!