DylanJ

10 hours ago, TheHaloCorporation said:

Curious to know if there is a way for an end user to have the ability to send video footage of a visitor using the c4 app? The ideal situation would be if someone comes up to the users house, The user would get a notification on their phone, and have the ability to push a button and the video will download into a 30 second or 60 clip, which would open up a menu where they have the option to send that clip via "text message" or "email" to anyone of their choosing. What would be the way to accomplish this and what hardware/software would be needed?

If anyone has a solution please let me know!

 

Welcome to the forum! 

What you're wanting to do inside C4 would most likely require a custom driver. However one of the most powerful PC based NVR software I've used is Blue Iris. You could use a C4 MGTT driver like https://www.berto.co.uk/berto-mqtt-bridge to get notifications from Blue Iris in C4. This is one of the best videos I've found for setting up Blue Iris https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fwoonl5JKgo&t=85s and even includes setting up mgtt notifications based off AI object detection. It is definitely a rabbit hole, but worth looking into if you can't find or build a driver that does exactly what you want. 

Good luck! 

17 minutes ago, Dunamivora said:

It also sounds like you are a dealer. Just note that you might want to review the contract terms with Control4 and be wary if they take offense a dealer contract termination could be on the table.

I don't think that will happen but you never know. You could start a terms discussion though...

Guys, this is all I wanted. I can easily control anything in C4 using curl with this driver. Why everyone has to be so argumentative, defensive, and egotistical is beyond me. 

This is an awesome driver and will open up a lot of possibilities for integration. That's what this is all about, "hacking" one device at a time

https://berto.io/berto-web-server

11 minutes ago, Dunamivora said:

If you did not get explicit permission, then reverse engineering is hacking.

Not necessarily, reverse engineering for interoperability is generally considered legal. Check out https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/17/1201  

5 minutes ago, RyanE said:

No, you could not say Samsung gets hacked by Driverworks developers for 'C4 integration'.

We (myself included) literally traveled to South Korea, met with Samsung TV engineers for multiple days, worked with them to create / refine their protocol, helped them integrated SDDP into their hardware, and then used that official protocol to create drivers.

It's the opposite of hacking.

RyanE

I think you’re missing the point. I don’t think any of this is “hacking”. I’m just trying to emulate C4 UI commands. C4, Savant, Crestron, URC, RTI, etc all started with emulating IR commands. All systems at one point or another have used undocumented protocols. 

7 hours ago, alanchow said:

I wrote a driver years ago that pretty much made Control4 lighting into CBUS lights.  As such in our showroom we had Control4 lighting being controlled by Control4, Savant and Crestron.  This was years ago and honesetly i've lost the driver.  Worked well though.

If you ever feel like writing a current version I would be happy to beta test it!

4 minutes ago, zaphod said:

Is this all that different from Control4 Homebridge which allows you to control Control4 devices from within Apple's Homekit app and use Siri to do so?

@DylanJ - That may be one way of accomplishing what you want.  Homebridge acts as a bridge (duh!) between Homekit and C4.    But I believe it also gives you a URL that you can hit for each device - for example http://c4controller:8070/38 is the lights in my office.  I think you may be able to control them with that as well.  @Joshua Pressnell is the expert on Homebridge.

edit - Here is the github site for the Homebridge project.  I believe Joshua adapted this to work with C4. https://github.com/homebridge/homebridge

That would work! Thank's for the tip, I'll definitely look into Homebridge!

1 minute ago, msgreenf said:

3 minutes ago, DylanJ said:

Excellent point, but are there driver developers that create drivers for devices that are not partners with C4 and do not have documented API's? Would this be considered hacking or developing for integration? 

Control4 is cracking down on development against unofficial APIs. Hence why the myq driver is no longer for sale

Good to know! 

3 minutes ago, Pounce said:

That's fair. My opinion is that half an integration is pointless and if you have the time it would take to do this.. and you are a dealer your time is likely better spent selling and installing.

What's your dealer location?

Possibly, but I'm off the clock and as I said before it's mostly for fun.

1 minute ago, msgreenf said:

2 minutes ago, DylanJ said:

It was an anology to Pounce's response, he was saying I was just interested in hacking control4 for a custom UI integration, I was making the point that the end goal for all systems is integration. 

Ok. But Control4 doesn't hack Samsung TVs. They are partners and use a documented API....no hackery

Excellent point, but are there driver developers that create drivers for devices that are not partners with C4 and do not have documented API's? Would this be considered hacking or developing for integration? 

1 minute ago, Pounce said:

If you don't event out you wont be aware of any of the events and control initiated by the devices. You would have only one way control and no visibility into state. Seems sort of pointless.

It's not pointless to me, and it's ok if you don't know how to accomplish what I'm trying to do. I'm not interested in starting an argument just a discussion. Let's keep this topic on track. 

8 minutes ago, msgreenf said:

what does that mean?

It was an anology to Pounce's response, he was saying I was just interested in hacking control4 for a custom UI integration, I was making the point that the end goal for all systems is integration. 

2 minutes ago, Pounce said:

So the end goal is in integration of C4 where you can control all of the devices from an interface like openHAB. So, basically, you want to automate the UI of C4 or you want to replace the C4 UI with the UI of your choosing, but that will probably be openHAB. You want to do this without creating a driver by simulating UI events to the controller. In addition you want to somehow event out of C4 for all the devices and internal events so you can keep track of those in openHAB. Do I have that right?

Nailed it! Except eventing out wouldnt be necessary. 

No its currently on 3.1.3. You could say Samsung gets hacked by driverworks developers for C4 integration, what's the difference? The end goal is integration after all. 

2 minutes ago, Pounce said:

What would this do for you? Or how will this help sell products in your showroom?

It's mostly just for fun, but also connivence. It would be nice to create something like an openHAB panel that controls the entire showroom from one interface, without having to write drivers for all the devices or switch between systems.

12 minutes ago, Pounce said:

Why? I'm curious.

I'd like to make a custom interface that can control all the C4 and Savant devices in our showroom...mostly just for fun! Sort of a 2 control systems in one kind of a thing. If the issue with 3.0+ is not having port 5020 open I'm almost certain you could just edit the iptable to accept incoming connections on port 5020, it is running BusyBox after all. I'll have to try this out. 

Is it possible in 2.10.6?

I'm familiar with this driver, however do I understand correctly that it is only good for controlling a single event? Im trying to communicate with the controller directly without an additional driver, and be able to control any of the devices in composer. 

I most commonly see clients wanting to switch between dolby and multi channel stereo. A lot of elderly people prefer mcs because its easier to hear. 

Is there any way to send commands to director through something like netcat? If so can anyone please provide an example? Thanks!