Andrew H

no, you won't find a 1 page step by step guide for making a serial driver...

@ILoveC4 i sent you this in response to your PM but thought that this should information should be a public in case anyone reads this thread in the future.
DriverCentral and the majority of driver marketplaces are tied closely into the dealer model that the industry is based off of.  It is history that stems all the way back to the Extra Vegetables days.  These marketplaces are not designed to be B2C for one off purchases as support for end users does not scale and any profit is essentially wiped out (or worse).  It is designed around a B2B model which involve dealer partnerships leading to skilling up dealers through repeat installations, usage and sales.
Note that whoever you purchased the 'licence' off of has you tied into their account. I am assuming that your 'licence' is the driverCentral project token.  This token enables the cloud driver to connect the project to a bundle of licences administrated in the driverCentral portal.  So my advice is to keep working with them as migration to another dealer is something that only driverCentral can do in their databases.  You cannot purchase from multiple dealers essentaily unless driverCentral migrate your project to their account.
Hope that helps clear things up.

Even good VPN routers are fairly cheap these days, so I'd recommend just using a router honestly instead of shuffling data around your network back and forth and you're less likely to run into issues long time.
PC's also drain a lot more power, and need more maintenance. Furthermore, most routers have better traffic management, and some even have IPS and advanced network security technologies like anti-ransomware.
That being said, you can use PC's too

personally, I don't care if you call it OS3, OS 3.5, OS4...what really matters is what functionality are you gaining

I disgree with your assessment.
There are releases that have fewer flashy features and releases that have more flashy features, with things still being done behind the scenes for future functionality.  This is just one of the first kind.  There are a ton of bugfixes and architectural changes that will bear fruit in the future.
Control4 development and resources for development haven't appreciably from when Control4 was a separate company.
RyanE

You do realize that since Windows 7 you've been able to update for free as well right? Provided the hardware supports it. Same as MacOS.
And be it Microsoft or Apple's OS - you wouldn't expect either one to keep support up to run current programs (sorry ... apps) on the old (not updated) software.
Something got changed on Tidal's end (as nothing got changed on Control4's end) - Control4 is looking into what it is, and if it could possibly be fixed for those unwilling to replace hardware to get current OS.
Can it be (reasonably) be fixed? No clue at this point. Maybe wait until more is known before going for the 'they're doing it to force us to upgrade' card?
 

Mod action: thread locked. This is going downhill and no reason to continue this

https://github.com/13mralex/c4-pyatv-remote
 
This driver will provide you with MiniApps on Apple TV!

I suspect this might be an enduser. I could be wrong, but not sure if Composer HE has System Manager, or access to terminal?
I guess my question was more, in what circumstances and why is @pfissure rebooting the controller, more than why it's being done via software? Is it to resolve an issue with a specific driver, for maintenance or for another reason? Because Driver issues should be reported to the developer, and maintenance shouldn't be required (unless a driver has a bug)  

It isn't nearly as cool as what you are suggesting, but you can buy motion activated sprinklers for less than $50. But using C4 to do this gives you major geek cred in my book!
Blue Iris allows you to trigger http events which you could receive in C4.  With a ring camera and the ring C4 driver you can program against motion.
 
 
By the way, this issue with Canada Goose poop being a problem is an episode of Letterkenny, the best show on TV. NSFW on the account of every other word staring with F. 
You got a problem with Canada Gooses, you got a problem with me.  And I suggest you let that one marinate!
 

my advice is hire a c4 dealer and save yourself a headache.

Thank you Andrew for your help. I discovered that a glitch occurred when deleting the driver from the project. When adding the driver I noted that the info of the driver details when loaded into the project were different from the actual driver details. The project referred to a test driver I quickly wrote to test the commands but somehow was retained in the project file. I was able to sync this driver with the correct driver through the project driver screen. Now all is correct.

$1300 for a phone that can't make calls...  Honestly, it looks cool.  I would definitely try one, but not at that price point.

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.

I'm in the process of updating my VSCode extension I started long ago. I actually just added support for updating Lua script today after Ryan's comment.

The formatting of the driver is quite different and there's no modifications inside of XML anymore. Most sections are broken out into JSON files for their specific purposes (properties, commands, events, connections, etc) and provide a webview for modification, you can still edit the underlying JSON file as well (backed by JSON schemas)

I've also been able to include some improvements for things that bothered me, for example you can now specify the amount of HDMI connections you want to generate rather than copy pasting a bunch of XML blocks:


Properties & Webview example:


Auto completion of functions:


Signature helpers:


All that being said I still haven't pushed a release as there are some issues to work out around the UI capability section.

Repository here: https://github.com/annex4-inc/vscode-control4-ext

@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.
 
 

Yeah. Totally agree on dark mode. I may actually redo the entire theme!

Not a fan of the red color.  I don't see a way to switch the theme as a user.  Is this possible?

When ever we do strip lighting or any LV system we use Mirus Inc lighting system. No need for a wall of DMX decoders and power supplies. Everything is wired back to a panel. Control module is POE powered, all drivers communicate through the network and fully supported in advanced lighting scenes. They have other cool stuff like Input modules to use standard switches to control integrated lights (works with momentary contact switches too) and relay modules. We did a 7K sqft house full mirus lighting. All Cans, fixtures, and accent strip some 80 normal light switches wired into the input system and another 30 C4 keypads where it made sense.
https://mirusinc.net/
 

Driver Dev section is live!

Would love a FAQ/BEST Practices section that newbies could be directed to, rather than rehash it each time.
Dedicated threads or guides for things like MyQ, AppleTV, 4sight, composer, etc.

One app update since 2017? What? The control4 app is updated every few week and the os a few times a year...

Take a look at Mirus lighting.
https://mirusinc.net/
Centralized low voltage (DC) lighting system. Fully supported in Control4.

Anyone else notice that the default button icon looks like a Unifi Access Point?

Great article, and it sounds great if it can be realized.  Not the first try at something like this, though.  As the article notes, I think the big companies are still going to keep some of their best stuff proprietary and require you to go through their UI to access it, while providing basic functionality through matter.