Singularity

15 hours ago, Dunamivora said:

At least what I have seen and heard, the target demographic is not the 'average Joe' as much as many 'average Joes' would like.

You know. That is actually true. I know that it is a premium product. Still, I just want as many people as possible to experience it. Focusing too much on price doesnt really help anybody. I might have to re-think who I am targeting.

I am excited to see what happens when C4 decides to upgrade the controllers. How much more will they allow to be integrated? What new brands becomes fully integrated?

10 hours ago, Dunamivora said:

That makes sense. The only thing I'd argue is that you're comparing standalone systems vs a full integration. The value from Control4 does not come from a simple setup with a single use case (i.e. lighting control), the value comes from the full home use case. So lighting, audio, video, cameras, intercom, garage, gate, thermostat, and others when combined. That also means a standard install makes zero sense to be small. It is a better idea to use a different product to save on cost, but they don't integrate into the full ecosystem as well.

 

As for Ubiquiti, sure they are cheap, but it comes with horrible support. If you know what you are doing and can be your own support, then they are great. If not, then another brand is better.

I agree that its not a fair comparison, but a lot of potential customers do make this comparison. Its “easy” to explain the difference in experience that the customer will have when using a custom installer, and a fully integrated system. Its easy to justify the extra costs for installing and programming. The part that is harder to explain, is why comparable products could be several hundred percent more expensive when purchasing C4. This does not apply to all C4 products, as some products are reasonably priced. I would love to offer my customers complete C4 solutions with only C4 products (when possible), but at this point.. Nah. 

I know that other integrators offer systems that are a lot more expensive than C4. So what direction is the best way to go? To focus on the wealthier, or “Average Joe”? I don’t know. Where is the best potential for growth? Are we making the entry price to a fantastic C4 experience too steep when doing a retrofit? Or should I just be better at focusing on the exellent experience of having a C4 system. I love it, my wife loves "the remote", my old man loves his system, the kids loves the sound system, the family next door loves their system.

14 hours ago, RyanE said:

Thanks for the clarification.

RyanE

Yep, I can see that the last sentences might have come off as a bit more grumpy than intended.. Its weird how things sound better when thinking it, compared to reading it..

If the delay doesnt work, you could try to make a variable for each TV with true/false if the TV is on/off. So when you activate a view action in a room the variable is true, and when its off its false. If you dont want more macros, just program When variable TVx changes - (add delay xx ms if needed) If variable TVx = False - Turn of TV. 

I might be using too many variables.. I kind of like to use them because then I am able to see if the commands are working or not. (Besides the obvious.. The TV didnt turn off...)

On 10/11/2020 at 4:54 AM, fleon said:

 

 

I've got 300-350 hue lilghts across 9  hue hubs.  Everything works 98% of the time if you do the above.

 

 

That is a lot of bulbs!

I do agree that Hue works about 98% of the time. I have not turned of the tracking, but will do that now.

I sometimes experience that the bulbs turn on, but remain on 1%. (Advanced Lighting Scene)  Would it help to add a millisecond timer to do the command over again?

I just programmed the Red, Green buttons to change subtitle and audio stream. Works perfectly. Just use the toggle command then you can go through all the subs and all the audio options by pressing either red or green. I guess you might be able to do the same with the Yamaha.

This might be a dumb suggestion, but have you made sure that the IR is shielded from bright ligh? I have this issue at home where I control an amp by IR. If its to sunny outside/inside, the IR doesnt work. It works better when I used some black tape to cover the IR and the sensor receiving the signal. Also. It may appear that the IR is at the same spot, but it might have moved a little bit.

If you go to the Pandora driver in programming, Choose Device Variables and Station Name. There you can program the LED to switch when changing channel. (I assume, I dont use Pandora)

If you are able to control them in C4. You could make a virtual switch or relay and program all the lights to react to that. Are you using Chowmain's driver?

Do you have access to Composer Pro?

You could clear Cashes in the driver in System Design and see what happens then. Just remember to shift-F5 to refresh navigators.

Its been a while since I have written in English. So, let me try to explain. First of all. What is the definition of "cheap"? 

If a customer wants to be able to control the lights in a couple of rooms using an "app". When using C4, they would have to get a C4 light switch, a Controller and get an electrician to your home to replace the switch. They also need somebody to program the switch and Controller. The total price of that compared to a Philips Hue light bulb set, and a bridge + sensor is most likely significant.

I don’t have any issues with the electrician and the programming expenses.

What I am worried about is that a Philips Hue motion sensor cost a fraction of the price of the C4 sensors. (Given this is a retrofit, and not a new install.)  Yes, I understand that there might be some difference in quality, but where I  live. The Hue sensor is less than 1/4 of the price of the C4 sensor. Both Zigbee. My experience is that there is a lot of potential customers that don’t understand why C4 products has to be THAT much more expensive. I don’t understand why the difference in price is so significant either. 

C4 has opened up for Z-Wave, but where are the drivers? (I understand that they cant make drivers for all products) This makes cheaper products more accessible. (Yes, and more potential problems) I do prefer quality over quantity, but I also think that we need to adjust to the market.

If a customer has installed an RGBW LED and wants to use a color wheel to adjust the colors, they have to pay $250 for the Janus driver. I don’t mind that the developer makes money on the work they do, but isn’t this something that C4 should have thought about, and made their own drivers? Isn’t this a MUST HAVE if you have RGBW?

BakPak. Insane prices compared to Ubiquiti or other vendors. The prices might be different in the US compared to the European market. Here, everything from C4 is a lot more expensive, and with a lower profit margin than other products. Yes, BakPak is easy to use. Still...

C4 KNX is more expensive and cheaper looking than other comparable brands.

So sure. If you have a $10 000 000 home. Spending $200 000 (random amount) doesn’t seem like much, but if your home is $400 000, then it might be a lot for most people. The people in the $400k homes is not in our target group? Well. They should be, because there is a lot more of them compared to the $10 000 000 segment.

I know that its not fair to compare everything dollar by dollar, but a product price reduction might make the "average Joe" more likely to spend the extra bucks on a custom install.

The biggest reason for anyone to choose C4, in a retrofit home, is the AV integration, which is absolutely outstanding. I do wish that the customer could replace some of the products themselves using Composer HE but I absolutely see that there is a lot that could go wrong there. When argue about opening up C4, I mainly talk about giving us, the dealers more options on what products to use. Especially when it comes to Z-Wave and Zigbee products.

Lets return to the customer in my first example. He might seem like a customer that most of us would not care about because of the size of the project, but who knows what that customer might want to invest when they figure out that C4 is something that they want to integrate in their entire home rather than using Google Home or Samsung Smart Things..

If I am wrong. Please do tell. I am open for any suggestions and arguments that you use when talking to your customers. I understand that it might look like I’m taking a piss at C4 and that is not my intention. Also. Keep in mind that a lot of SnapAV products are not compatible with 240v, and is not available here. 

If you dont want to discuss it in the forum, just message me. If this doesnt make sense to you at all. Ignore me. I dont think I can explain what I mean better than I have done here.

How stable is you network? Are you using your internet providers router? If you do. Dont.

If everything else works, like lights and heating, it might be an issue with the TuneIn.

Blue/Black for lights

Red/Black for Netflix 

Blue/Black for radio (I love using the Light Switch to power on the radio in the morning.. I dont care where the remote is, the buttons are always next to the door.) 

Red/Green for Alarm

And I actually have the LED on LOW in bedroom. I use them as a homing beacon if I need to leave the bedroom when the lights are off. 

Chowmain has created a IFTTT driver that works just fine. The only thing I didnt really like was that you had to connect IFTTT to pushover that forwarded the "command".

IFTTT only allowes you to make a few actions yourself. Then you have to pay a monthly fee. Pushover has a one-time-sum that you have to pay.

Besides that. It works pretty good, and you enable feedback from a lot fo other things that is not currently integrated in Control4.

You might already know that this is available at drivercentral.

My humble opinion, as a dealer, is that if Control4 doesnt open up for cheaper and easier integration... The big corps will eat most of the business. Sure. It may not be as professional. Sure it may have flaws, and most likely a bit less user friendly. But at the end of the day. If you want to control you lights, use Siri or Alex, unlock your door and so on. You can do it yourself at a significantly lower price. Most people dont want to do the programming themselves, but using google home, and Samsung is getting very easy to set up. 

The more funded people will most likely use a professional install. A group that might, or might not be larger in the years to come. There are an increasing amount of pro installers, so the competition is not getting easier.

What happens if you just delete all the playlist and try to do it all over again? If you go to the Spotify app on your phone, go to the "connect to" section and press the three dots next to your Control4 option, and press forget this device. That should remove the connection between the phone/device and Control4. If you then remove all the playlists.. 

IF the playlists are gone, you just reconnect your device through you Spotify app and save the playlists you want to keep. Not the easiest way, but... 

Tell me how it works out!

Hi!

I only have one account, but I think the way that Spotify Connect works, is that it remembers the last device connected. So if your son's phone was the last device that was used to connect to C4, then thats the device Control4 is re-connecting to. So, what I questimate you have to do, is to take your phone. Open Spotify app. Select playlist. Select Control4 as device to play music, and that should be it. This may apply in ALL the rooms that you can choose individually from the Spotify app on your phone.

Good luck!

Hi!

That is not what is happening when I delete a playlist. The list disappair instantly from Stations. Strange!

I know you might have tried this before, but have you mmm.... Tried to turn the controller off and on again? It might just be a glitch.

Hi there,

In the C4 app. Just go to Listen, then Spotify, then press the three dots on the side next to the playlist you want to delete, and choose delete this....

21 hours ago, Amr said:

Now I get it, am sure you have a reason to do that, i.e, no way to attach a toggle switch. This is not what the pucks are designed for, I always attach a toggle switch to it beside controlling it from any UI, San i don’t have any C4 Dimmer/Switch in my house, I don’t know how it works.

Do you have a way when pressing the C4 top button to just turn on the Puck?

No, I guess I could make a button for it on the switch. But then I would have to press two buttons. I would think that the same problem would occur if two switches/dimmers were connected viritually as well, or all your pucks. 

21 hours ago, Amr said:

Am struggling to understand your issue, sorry about that, I personally have zero problems with all Pucks. Also if the link with C4 controller is dead, Pucks will continue to function normally ...

I see where the misunderstanding may come from. I have a puck that is not connected to a toggle switch. It doesnt have a switch at all (besides the viritual once in director). Its hidden behind a blank cover. So I can only control the puck in the C4 app, with the remote control, or an on-screen device. Or if I program it to "copy" a C4 dimmer/switch that is connected to a different load.

I have two different loads in my living room. One with the C4 dimmer/switch, and one with the puck. When pressing the C4 dimmer/switch top button, I have programmed director to press the viritual top button of the puck, which is"load on". But, it seems like the puck waits for the C4 dimmer/switch load to be 100% finished turning on or off before the puck activates its load. 

So. When I press the C4 dimmer/switch button, the load connected to the C4 Dimmer/switch turns on. Then director presses the viritual top button on the puck. Then the second load turns on. Not very smooth at all.

If I use the app, remote, or on screen device,  both loads turns on/off at the same time.

I hope it made sense this time. 

On 5/25/2019 at 2:24 PM, Amr said:

Ahh u r using switch lights ... hmmm, I never use any switch with lights but u can play with the setting I guess so u don’t have to wait ... Is my assumption correct?

Unfortunately  not, the puck always wait for the switch/dimmer to finish the ramp up/ramp down before it starts. So I have one zone in my livingroom that ramps up imidiately after pressing the button on the switch/dimmer, and then the second zone starts. Looks completely retarded. I have looked at ramp times, scenarios and nothing works. I guess if I remove the load on/off function on the switch/dimmer it may work (an make all functions  scenarios), but thats not good if I would have some problems with the controller. Then I might be unable to turn on/off lights if the C4 controller is down.

Am I the only one that has tried this? Or am I the only one that has this problem?

On 5/16/2019 at 3:45 AM, Amr said:

I didn’t get it, do u have this implemented already or asking for such scenario?

It is already installed and the lights conneted to the puck is always 1-2 seconds behind the lights connected to the switch that is used. Switch and puck are synced when I use anything but the switch. Such as the app, or on screen display. I can even see that the l ights on the puck is getting power the moment I press the switch button, but they still wait until the lights on the switch is done dimming up or down before they continue.

Amr. I have a puck that is "connected" with a switch so that if I press top button on switch the same viritual button is pressed on the puck. If I press and hold the button so that the lights dims up or down, they are all syncronized. If i just click it once. The puck is about 1 second behind. The puck waits for the switch load to be done before it starts. The switch is programmed to load on/off. No scenario.

On 3/15/2019 at 10:19 PM, Amr said:

Yes, I installed 20 around my house, just make sure your box have enough depth to hold the puck, I also used toggle switches to operate them.  This allows me to have a normal looking switches all over the house.

The rest of the house I used toggle switches hooked to IO via cat6 and Loades to 3 DIN rail panels, the entire house is now controllable via C4 interfaces, panels, remotes, etc.

How do you program all the pucks? Are they perfectly syncronized when turning on and off the lights? (If you have multiple zones and pucks turning on and off lights at the same time)