cnicholson

On 5/4/2024 at 12:53 AM, South Africa C4 user said:

The driver properties say that I need to log in with a Hifi account to change the settings but all accounts are now Hifi and the driver does not seem to recognise this?

I have Family Plan (which I believe used to unlock all quality levels) and it still shows quality as “No Limits” but the MQA option seems disabled (I honestly can’t say for sure if it was previously allowed).  I get same message to log in with HiFi account to unlock this.  Not sure how to see details of what quality it is actually using for any given song.  Also not sure if I could hear the difference, so not too worried, other than obsessive desire to get the max quality I can. . 

Sounds very similar to the Ratgdo.  Any differences in the capabilities of the hardware or C4 driver?

On 5/7/2024 at 4:00 AM, Reednatron said:

Just gotta chime in and say these Modern Forms fans are 100% legit.

 

And a free C4 driver that actually works without another "bridge"!

I have ~10 of these and when they work, they are great, but I have had some issues with them dropping off network (Router shows good link, but they stop responding).  Control4 driver works great, but not when they aren’t reachable, even from native ModernForms App.  Power cycle seems to mostly fix it.  I have very robust WiFi coverage.  Anyway, not trashing them— I love them when they work, but that’s my experience.  

2 hours ago, ekohn00 said:

I put everything in a fake room called Drivers.

Yeah, the virtual/proxy remotes seem to always all go in the HomeKit room that you tell it to put the “bridge” (your C4 controller).   I’m on latest software all around.

On 4/18/2024 at 9:53 AM, South Africa C4 user said:

I can say that I assigned all of mine to separate rooms in HomeKit.

I did another Factory Reset of Apple Bridge and re-added all AppleTVs and remotes, one per HomeKit Room.   No improvement.  . 

5 hours ago, tripleC said:

make sure that each remote that gets created in HomeKit was assigned to a room with the AppleTV in your HomeKit

Hmm.  I assumed that C4 doesn’t “know” or care about the relationship between HomeKit “rooms” and C4 “rooms” and, therefore, I just assign the virtual remotes to random rooms (and, generally, it seems to work for me without problem).  IIRC it doesn’t even tell you (during activation of AppleTV controls) which AppleTV you are about to “place” in a HomeKit room, so not sure how you would even do that.  That said, maybe it is bad to assign more than one AppleTV per room?  I will experiment with that.   Thanks.

It has been bad for 2-3 weeks, IIRC

Thanks.  C4 support tell me dealer that 17 should not be a problem, but I have the same concern.  I have had various glitches, but this time it is not solved by my normal approaches.  Kind of makes the remotes useless if you can’t grab and pause (or do other stuff) without waiting 5-20 seconds.  And the “time out” to loss of function is pretty fast— maybe 5 mins.

I have lots of AppleTVs (17 of them).  I am used to seeing the message “Control4 Remote Disconnected” (won’t accept commands) followed by “Control4 Remote Connected” on the TV screens occasionally.  Now this happens consistently, which is annoying.  It takes 15-20 seconds before it will take commands, which is surprisingly long when you want to grab the remote and pause your show real quick.  Once “connected,” response is very zippy— no issue there.  But then it seems to time-out and remains disconnected until I try to issue a command from remote.

I’ve tried rebooting Apple TV’s, rebooting controller, doing “Factory Reset” on Apple Bridge driver and re-enabling Apple TV controls.  Nothing seems to help.  I am mainly using Halo remotes, but I don’t think related to physical remote since I see the same thing using T4s and SR260– seems to be related to the “back end” HomeKit connection used by controller to talk to Apple TVs (and not remotes talking to C4 controllers).  Volume up/down continues to work without delay, for example.

Anybody else experiencing this?  Any advice (other than “Switch to IR”— which I am loath to do unless nothing else works, since I’d like to retain Halo voice control, which I assume requires using Apple Bridge) ?

Thanks

On 4/10/2024 at 10:51 AM, Darin, PM C4 CX Platform said:

Please give it a try and let me know if you are experiencing any bugs. 

 

So far, so good.  Thanks!

9 minutes ago, eggzlot said:

Call that "Eggzlot's Law"

Certainly not for everyone.  I get that.  But if you take the population that is spending six figures on home automation / home theater / computer control of their nightlights, you’re going to find a lot more Vision Pro users in there than in the general population.  Not here to evalgelize— but, as an aside, you might want to get a demo— you might be surprised.  A couple of guys from my C4 dealer team were here a few weeks ago and I gave them demos.  One was “meh” but the other guy was like profoundly impressed.  Anyway, the point of the post is to gently prod/beg C4 to please undo their opt-out so we can use the existing app.  All the while knowing that this is a niche thing.

1 hour ago, eggzlot said:

why would you put on a VR headset to turn a light off in the kitchen or something?

Ha!  I hear you.  But the Vision Pro is not really about gaming or doing a discrete VR experience.  It is geared toward extended use as your work/productivity environment.  You have a browser window, a spreadsheets, messages window, mail window, Word, one showing your actually laptop’s screen, etc. all open at once.  Anything you can do on your phone, iPad or computer, you can do inside Vision Pro.  You guessed it, I’m using it right now to type this.  

Anyway, in that context, you can hopefully appreciate the desire to use all the app you are used to using— including C4.  Absence of C4 app is honestly one of the significant gaps for me.  And, just to reiterate, Vision Pro runs ALL iPhone and iPad apps by default (in additional to native apps, of course).  If developers don’t opt-out, that is.  C4 has opted out— for legitimate testing purposes to ensure good experience.

I do have some voice controls set-up, but I still use the C4 app for some stuff.

On 2/6/2024 at 10:51 AM, Darin, PM C4 CX Platform said:

We chosen not to have the app be available until we we are able to test compatibility and the experience. You can expect the app to become available once the review and testing process has been completed.  This is the same approach that was taken for supporting iPadOS apps on MacOS with Apple Silicon chips (M1, etc).

Any update?  I’m happy to test current iPad app via Test Flight.  Control4 is one of the only things I can’t easily use with Vision Pro, and actual reality is just so tiresome….

We all need to Rage Against The Garage Door Opener (company):  RATGDO.  They are awesome.  As @Matt Lowe said, flashing the firmware can be a bit tricky based on what computer / OS you have, but not too bad and a 60 second process once you find machine with right serial driver (my Mac worked).  I installed eight of them and so far, so good.  Chowmain driver even exposes your garage door’s motion sensor, light and IR beam sensors in C4 as a neat bonus.  Highly highly recommend.  They are about $45/each (you need one per door opener), plus the driver.   Install on opener is pretty fast: insert three wires into your motor unit’s wiring spring-clamps.  Works over local WiFi— no cloud component at all.  Do it!

Sounds cool.  Is this all pre-baked in Unifi?  I have a Dream Machine SE, but I don’t use Protect.  Wondering how hard it would be to implement via emailed photos form my (non Unifi) NVR.  Not sure I see a C4 angle, but still cool.  

I just installed three of these (and ordered five more) and use with the Chowmain driver.   Just follow the directions to flash the firmware (easy) and wire it up (easy) and it works like a charm.  I was pleasantly surprised that the driver suite auto-installed supporting drivers to expose the garage opener light, motion sensor and IR-beam stuff and makes them available in C4.  Nice bonus (although I haven’t tried those extras— I assume support varies by model of opener).   Basic garage door control “just works.”   I already pointed my old (broken) MyQ based programming to the new drivers and restored ability to control doors from DS2, navigators, etc.

Good stuff!

Any limit on number of doors/gates controlled in a single project?  I have a lot of garage doors.  

15 minutes ago, South Africa C4 user said:

You can access the if statements for day and month etc. by choosing the scheduler on the right side of composer.

I never knew.  Awesome.  Thanks!

35 minutes ago, Cyknight said:

All those date commands are available in the standard scheduler in C4

Awesome.  I will explore more.  I did have the same question as @Shoe in terms of how to literally do this in composer.  Are you firing off scheduler events of like every 14th of month?  I'm still not seeing how to do this directly in Programming.  

Taking cues from @RAV, I have started to do this by using a HolidayState variable that I set to "Valentines" on 12:01am every Feb 14 and then set to "None" at 11:59pm every Feb 14, etc. and then in my Sunset event, I do a series of "If HolidayState=Valentines then [do Valentines stuff], then stop."  With default stuff at bottom

Happy Valentine's Day!   I sat down this morning to do some programming to make all my landscape lights be red tonight.   I currently have a Scheduler event for Sunset everyday where I turn on landscape lights.  I decided I should make a macro that is invoked as part of my Sunset actions "Turn on Landscape Lights" and want to put in some conditionals to kick off different landscape lighting programs based on special days / ranges.  Like Feb 14 every year or Xmas lights between Dec 1 and Dec 30, etc.

I guess I just assumed that there would be a system variable for Current Date and I could drive it off that (hopefully with > and < modifiers).  But I'm not seeing that.  What's the best way to do?  Kludgy idea I had was to create a variable "DaysElapsed" and increment once at midnight (and reset Dec 31) and drive the logic off that by manually computing that Feb 14 is the 45th day of year (or whatever) and using my variable in conditionals.

Is there a better way?

23 hours ago, bballjn64 said:

However it requires constant tinkering and programming to truly make it your own and user friendly. The programming side of it is the biggest challenge, and you can do some modification as a home user, but the bulk of the programming is locked away behind your dealer to keep the user from breaking it.

Agree with you comments, but would add that the ability of end user to directly program / tweak the system WITHOUT getting too deep into the weeds of the tech stack is, for techie tinkerers, a huge huge plus.  I want a professional solution that "just works" for the basics, but I can't image NOT being able to constantly add/improve stuff myself.  I understand that most customers don't care about this level of control / don't find it fun.

22 hours ago, BDavisNJ said:

My experience with C4 branded centralized lighting (C4-DIN-8DIM-E, C4-DIN-8REL-E, C4-DIN-8TV-E) and the KCB backlit keypads has been remarkably positive. 

One of my regrets is going with Lutron panelized/centralized lighting.  It "works" awesome, but I have found that the only way to get refined simultaneous ramps up/down in scenes with lots of loads is to do the programming on the Lutron side which is a huge pain since, as end user, I can't fiddle with the Lutron programming-- and the need to bulk upload the whole project to make even small changes in annoying and inefficient.  I should have stuck with C4.  

4 hours ago, Leighm0 said:

I have now added the ability to turn Discovery to Manual in latest version of my driver

Great.  I will give it a try.  Thanks!

10 minutes ago, Andrew luecke said:

So just a heads up. Even with stuff like HVAC, you'll want to engage installers early to ensure that drivers and such exist

Excellent point.  A lot of details you will be deciding now will make integration much easier (or harder or impossible) later.  Fireplaces, landscape lighting, wiring for lighting (panelized or traditional) etc, etc.    

I faced the same question four years ago and ended up with Control4.  I would do it again today.  Your list is pretty comprehensive, especially if by "AV" you mean a whole-house audio system.  When we built a previous house, I did everything DIY, and had some fun doing it, but I wanted a "grown up" system to be, as you said, one system to "rule them all."  I think of the house as a series of subsystems, that roll-up in Control4, and one screen to control *everything*.  Control4 can do that for you, in spades.

I would ignore your architect's comments and instead talk to a few dealers that are local to you.   As others have noted, these things are likely outside their area of expertise, no matter how great of an architect they are.  Your doctor has probably heard stories of people being unhappy after buying a boat.

One thing I would say, regarding expectations:  it can be expensive.  Depending on the budget/scope of your project, that may or may not be significant to you.  Relatedly, be prepared to pay a multiple of the price for a lot of components versus the "consumer" versions.   It is what it is.  There are often ways to save money around the edges, but I would recommend you stick with solutions your dealer recommends and will support.