Andrew H

From your posts, I think you may not be up for the challenge since you seem unwilling to do the work and learning required. There are a few replies in this thread trying to help you, but nobody is going to do the work for you (for free), and, as mentioned, the process isn't so simple to be contained in a single PDF or guide, assuming you want a 2-way driver. You will also have a very challenging time trying to create a driver if you haven't first learned how Control4 works and have some understanding of how it interfaces with 3rd party devices. If you'd like to learn to build drivers, have your dad teach you that first and then dig into the resources I posted earlier. If you have more specific questions from there, I'd be happy to help via message or post in the Driver Dev section of this forum. For now, Andrew Luecke has given you your best option:

You'll probably have to get the serial commands from the manufacturer. Without those, you won't be able to do much. You'll also need access to Composer to upload and test your driver. As far as making the driver once you have those, get familiar with the Control4 driver SDK (https://github.com/snap-one/docs-driverworks). They also have some sample drivers in that repo to help you get going. Control4 has a tool for writing and building drivers which can be useful for learning the basics, but is not a great tool for actual development. @Rexabyte has a tool for Visual Studio Code that might help you get up and going, but a Control4 C4Z driver is just a zip file with a different file extension (see https://snap-one.github.io/docs-driverworks-fundamentals/#understanding-c4z-drivers). I'd recommend getting familiar with the sample drivers and the sdk linked above to get a feel for how Control4 communicates to its drivers and how the drivers communicate with other devices. Once you get familiar with those, feel free to message me with more specific questions or make a post in the "Driver Dev" section of this forum.

@Evan Marty - PM for OvrC I don't remember Connect being an option. I remember seeing an option for 4Sight, but I didn't previously have 4Sight, so I didn't check that box. Would not having checked that box have signed me up for Connect by default? The way I read it was more like choosing an add-on and less like opting out of the new system. My accounts were linked more than a day before this handoff.

I am a Control4 dealer. It is entirely possible that I did something wrong in registration. PM Sent. Thanks!

I did open a ticket with C4 support yesterday but haven't heard anything yet. I was able to verify just now on a legacy-registered system that I am able to connect, so I'll try tonight to see if switching registration methods works to re-allow access. It's looking like Matt is right and that Connect is required for new systems registered with OVRC immediately.

So Connect isn't required until April only if you're using the old method of registration? I changed the registration on my home project from the old method to OVRC last Friday and logged into it on the same phone just fine after the switch, but now I can only connect to systems registered with the old method without purchasing Connect.

That is supposed to be the case. Unfortunately, there seems to be a bug in the app that will not let me log in without purchasing Connect, so I'm not sure why it isn't fitting here. See these screenshots for the page that comes up when I try to log into a new system. The only way I've found to escape this page when it comes up is to uninstall the C4 app.

I set up a test controller (EA1 on 3.4.1.701303-res) a week or so ago and registered it via OVCR. Before this morning, I had not logged into it from my phone. Now, when trying to log in (App Version: 323.51.2.14, Phone: Pixel 8), I get forced to the purchase page for Connect. At the time, I was enrolled in the Android beta program for the Control4 for OS3 app, so I unenrolled myself, uninstalled the app, restarted my phone and logged back in. This process, unfortunately, changed nothing aside from removing my home system (EA1 on 3.4.1.701303-res which had been working fine before uninstalling the app) from the Control4 app. Now both want me to purchase Connect, and the only way to escape the purchase page is to uninstall the app. I was under the impression that Connect was not required until April, but it seems it's required now.

What would be your use case for outdoor lighting? As long as the lights won't be directly exposed to the elements, a lot of 'indoor' fixtures and strip can be used outside as well. Check out the photo gallery on our website to see some examples of this. We have also worked with landscape lighting before, which is directly exposed to the elements. This can be a bit more challenging to maintain but certainly can be done. As for the outdoor decoders, you would be better off finding an indoor/covered place for the decoders to live, if you can. The decoder does not have to be right next to the fixture. As long as the gateway and decoder will stay dry and not overly hot, you can use an 'indoor' decoder to drive outdoor fixtures.

Almost certainly not the case. Especially if, as you said, the same issue is present on other hardware. This is very likely a Tidal issue/change as mentioned above. Even Apple limits how far you can upgrade your devices. If you're running any hardware on EOL software you should not be expecting to get the latest features/upgrades.

A lot of smart bulbs do not work well with dimmer switches since the expectation is that the logic in the bulb will control brightness/color/temperature. A quick Google doesn't turn up anything suggesting that HALO is compatible with Control4, but I will admit that I don't know that for sure. I haven't personally used the Philips Hue with Control4, but you should be able to do what you suggested: use a dimmer or a switch (not wired to the bulb - feed the bulb constant power) to trigger a C4/Philips Scene. If you're open to a third option Mirus Lighting does everything that you're looking for. Feel free to shoot me a private message or call/text our office to talk with someone if interested.

There are a couple of ways to do this depending upon what exactly your drivers will be doing. You could make a custom binding that would appear under the connections tab using a special class type. This would allow you to connect your devices and to treat this connection as a communication bus using SendToProxy. Another way to approach it would be to use GetDevicesByC4iName from one driver to obtain a list of drivers in the project that are the type with which you wish to communicate. You could then use SendToDevice to send a command to a given device by device id. Either way, it won't be as easy as pulling properties from the same driver. You'll have to write functions to pass info between drivers depending on what you want to communicate.

Do you have commands in your driver which can switch the coax outputs separately from the HDMI outputs? If the two are not switching together automatically, this means that your HDMI matrix has the ability to matrix audio and video separately, and you'll need to tell Control4 that you want them to switch together. I'm not familiar with this HDMI matrix, but some have the option to lock a given audio and video output together. If this is an option in your matrix and you don't want to use separate matrixing, it may be a quicker way to solve your issue.

Please enlighten me. I'm curious what I'm supposed to have assumed.

I haven't. Saying that you should contact C4 directly and that this is "not the right place to ask" is not the same as saying that you'll get a better answer from Control4. I don't disagree that you could get a better answer directly from Control4, but unless OP is trying to get at a private API -- hence my comment about discretion -- then the "Driver Dev" section of a Control4 forum is exactly the right place to ask questions regarding developing a Control4 driver.

Why wouldn't this be the right place to ask? Control4 has a public API that anyone can access. As long as the folks with access have the discretion to not reveal private information, the only thing public conversation does is benefit others with the same or similar questions. No API call that I'm aware of, but you might be able to make it happen manually depending on what you are wanting to do. Are you wanting to restart the same driver making the restart call? Another driver that you wrote? Any random driver?

I am on 3.2.4

The driver that you posted adds to my C4 project just fine. I'm not sure why it's not showing the connections as available for you. My first step, if you haven't yet, would be toremove the driver from your project and from your Control4 drivers folder on your PC and restart Composer and then add the driver back. I've had this clear some driver issues before. I'm seeing the same thing with editing if I right click on the driver in the project and select Edit Driver. This shows the Input Output tab greyed out. Using the Driver dropdown option works as expected.

It sounds like you're using the Driver Creation Wizard in Composer to create your driver. Is this correct? As far as I/O connections not showing, that sounds like an issue with driver creation. Could you post the resulting c4i file? Just to confirm, is the I/O block greyed out if you use the driver dropdown at the top of composer and select 'Edit Existing Driver' to edit your driver?

There's a few discussions on this forum on the topic. See here to get started. Control4's Github page has a lot of good information about driver development and is going to be your best resource by far. I'd recommend getting your feet wet with DriverEditor, which you can download from the Control4 dealer portal. It's not a great tool for long term use, but it has everything laid out in a way that is specific to C4 drivers. The post I copied here has some good information about getting started with better tools once you have a basic understanding of a C4 drivers anatomy. If you find that anything isn't clear or is missing from that post (and the post linked within that post), I'd be happy to help with a more specific question. For now you should start with the things I listed and just play around.

@Rexabyte is this the Control4 extension which was released 10/27/17? If so, this is actually one of the extensions to which I was referring to using. Regardless, the coming updates are very exciting! I will be grabbing that very soon. Thanks for your work on this!

@Matt Lowe There was a pretty good discussion about how to get set up using Visual Studio Code (or really any other text editor you'd like) with the driverpackager tools on another thread. DriverEditor is OK for learning the way around C4 drivers and how to put them together, but you'll like life a lot more once you get the hang of how to use something better. My experience has been that Visual Studio Code with a few plugins paired to the DriverPackager Python tool has been much faster and easier to use. It's also less prone to crashing if you mess something up or use it in a way which it doesn't like.

Thanks for your works guys! I think having a driver development/creation area would be helpful, even as a subforum to something else. If there's not demand for this, would it be possible to somehow clarify where these topics should go for future posters?

Unfortunately the Control4 integration for Home Assistant uses an unofficial API which can be broken at any time and only supports lighting control. Understanding this, I still find it useful for location tracking for turning on/off lights when arriving/leaving home. I have it set to turn different things on/off depending upon who is home/arriving/leaving and time of day. Location tracking is not always immediate, but I rarely need to manually turn lights on when I get home or turn them off when I leave. I prefer to use Home Assistant for this over other services because supposedly they don't sell any collected data to third parties, and it's convenient to have tracking from a service I already use. I also pay for cloud access with Home Assistant ($5/mo) which gives me remote access to control my system (and C4 lighting by proxy). Everything else that I might need remote control access to is also integrated to Home Assistant, making it my primary control interface. As someone who mainly uses Linux, I also appreciate that I can control and program Home Assistant from my web browser and don't need a separate or virtual machine to make changes to my setup. I don't recommend using Home Assistant with Control4 if you're looking for guaranteed stability, and obviously YMMV on experience. I'd love to see an official integration from Control4 with more capabilities, but I don't see that happening.

Not only does preference play in, but signal path (equipment) and room play large factors in how you should set an EQ. Without knowing these things, it's impossible to say if someone else's EQ will translate well to any other system. If you're looking for help or pointers, your question is a bit too broad to provide any meaningful answers. Can you give some insight as to your end goal with this question?