DrGonzo65

I have an odd scenario to program, and I'm not sure how to do it.

In my bedroom, I have an LG TV, with a Roku, and both going into an EA-5. I also have a pair of in wall speakers that are connected to a Triad multi-channel amp for multi-room audio.

At night, my wife and I often watch TV on the LG/Roku/EA-1. Often, one of us will want to go to sleep, and the other will want to continue to watch TV. At this point I usually put a Tidal looping playlist of white noise on low volume on to the bedroom speakers through the amp. The problem is that the standard room control, media scene side of things ends up thinking that I want to switch the media in the room, so it turns off the TV/Roku and starts playing the noise, though I want them to be playing simultaneously. Additionally, if I get it all running together, "Room Off" turns the white noise off when trying to turn the TV off.

Is there any way I can do this?

1) Turn the TV on

2) Turn the white noise Tidal playlist on

3) Turn the TV off, and the white noise continues to play

I would additionally like to be able to use wake/sleep for timers, but, it seems to always turn the noise off when it turns the TV off.

Same thing happening to me, it's really annoying.

Mine says "No System" on the watch, even though my Control4 app on the phone says "enabled" for Apple Watch.

On 11/10/2021 at 12:08 PM, South Africa C4 user said:

I find voice very useful for a few (very few) repeat commands in very specific locations.  
 

1. Lieing in bed and opening / closing blinds

2. Sitting in the jacuzzi and turning in jets / the blower / music

3. Sitting in front of the TV and turning on the aircon or the fireplace 

And that is pretty much it for me.  My wife will  use it for 1 above and that is as far as it goes.

What Jacuzzi interface do you use for this? 

Well, that's flat out crazy. The only way I found this bug was by using director.log. 

Interesting, as I see here, that the syslog port is a known port for the system: 

I assume you mean passworded without giving the user the password?

I know that you can tail log files like director.log from Composer, but is there a way to fetch them over the network? I know the "Open log file" button tries and fails to open http://<ip_address>/log/debug/director.log, but that 404s for me. Is there a setting that has to be enabled? I'm trying to find a way to get logs from my C4 devices into a central log storage.

Interesting. Is there really not a customer desire to have audio support on video streams? I mean, every tablet I have can do it, this isn't a hard problem.

Wow, that seems like a big miss, doesn't it? How does it work for the audio on the DS2 then?

One question though @pbir: When I select that Number of Capture Selectors, It still allows me to configure A and B as well as the three rooms for C. Is that expected? The functionality it sounds above is more about having just C, as it says "1 (prioritized rooms)" 

Thank you! That's awesome, and a feature I will use for sure.

I have some Luma 510 Turret cams, and they feed into my Synology SS. I have them set up to offer Third Stream, which is used by the T3 and T4 touchscreens in the house. The streams are set up like this, with "Video&Audio" chosen:

I get audio on main stream on my NVR, but nothing from Third Stream on the C4 hardware. Any thoughts on how to make this work?

I'm playing around with the driver, adn I found that the "Number of Capture Selectors Used" has a "1 with prioritized rooms (this will be selector C)" setting, and I can't find any documentation about it. Does anyone know how that choice works?

When I'm playing music through the house, which is coming from a Sonos Port into the Triad matrix/amp combo, and a doorbell announcement comes in through the same speakers, the music then stops playing, and I have to re-enable. How do I do this automatically?

Ok, I'm trying to work out what I'm doing wrong with this setup, and could use some guidance.

I have:

triad 8x8 matrix

triad 8 channel amp with a bunch of rooms wired to it

Sonos port (known as Whole House) in sonos

A handful of sonos speakers

Current setup:

Sonos port output connects to input 1 on matrix

EA-5 output connects to Sonos port input

What I'm trying to do (two scenarios):

1. Use Alexa to say "play X radio" and have it play in all rooms
2. Use C4 interface to choose music, and have it play in all rooms

#1 is generally working. I have a house group in Alexa that tells it to play on both Kitchen (sonos 5) and Whole House (Port to C4). It's not perfect, but it generally works using Auto Power Rooms and Override Rooms.

#2 is the sticking part. I want to be able to have a stream chosen on the EA-5 play through the Port, then play on the sonos speakers from it as well as the output into the matrix. What seems to happen is that, when I pick something from C4 streaming, and then get Sonos to choose the line-in, C4 senses Sonos, and wants to switch to the Sonos input as the stream source instead of C4 streams. 

To answer some common questions:

Why not just use native C4?

1. I have a bunch of sonos hardware already, and it's nice to be able to add seamlessly.
2. I like to use voice control to select music by artist/album/song, not just playlist, and C4 is *seriously* lagging behind here.

Why not just get a bunch of Sonos Ports and plug them all into the matrix?

That's still on the table, but I already invested in the current setup, and wanted to see if I can get it working before doing that. Plus, they are crazy backordered.

Any thoughts on how to do this?

On 11/21/2021 at 1:13 PM, TundraSonic said:

I can tell you what I do (with a couple of Triad 16x16) but I don't know that it's the best way to do it and it's frustrating because there are no session level controls. E.G., I can't kill a session, etc. But it does reliably play audio when and where we want.

I have custom buttons for each of 3 primary audio sources. The button starts a session in the kitchen w/ that source and then adds the main level rooms to it. I then have buttons for 'Add UL', 'Add Loft', 'Add LL' and 'Add Terrace'. Each adds the appropriate rooms to the kitchen session.

In practice then... Press one of the 3 source buttons. Wait until you can hear it, then press any of the add buttons. For multiple add buttons I have to wait a few seconds between pressing them or it misses some or all of the rooms.  

There is an add on package that will supposedly provide the capability to kill a session along with other stuff and it may be a better alternative to lacking C4 capabilities.

 

@TundraSonicAny chance you could share some of this programming? I got the dealer to add room control to each room, but I'm trying to figure out how to do the adds.

tl;dr: Control4 apparently doesn't sanitize SQL queries through the History Agent lookup tool, so don't use quotes in your logging fields.

So, I was Using the "HIstory Data" tab to scroll through history yesterday. Used this before, no problems. Then I wanted to get to a specific history entry, one that I defined myself through programming. I chose it from the "Name" dropdown, and bam, history fails, and any subsequent attempt to query causes "Error 4: max concurrent queries".

I spend a bit of time trying to figure out what's up, to no avail. Then, I found the logs in System diagnostics, and tailed the director log. Well, I see an error like "invalid query for 's'" repeating at a rate of tens per second. Then, I think back, and realize I have a log name that has a possessive, like "Mark's room". Good ol' Bobby Tables back again.

I pulled the power on the EA-5, and changed my logging to remove the apostrophe, and it's back to normal. For any C4 devs out there, make sure you heed this warning, and for core developers, please sanitize your inputs!

Prior to Learning about the Access Agent, I had given some people access to my home through customer portal. Add the user, get them to set up a C4 account, then they are a user for my system. This was for parents and house sitters. Then, I realized that I would like to get more granular control of what they have access to. I started reading into the Access agent and, it's...well...fine. Tolerable at least in terms of control. 

Here's the rub, though. The users I set up on the customer portal show up in Identity Agent as "Portal" users, and those do not show up in Access Agent. So, that means that no one that you want to control through Access Agent would be allowed to access the system remotely. Is that true? I mean, every single home automation system outside of this has fine-grained user control, how is this system so behind the times for the price.

Is there something I'm missing? Can you map Portal created users to local users?

When I had my system set up, the dealer made my account and gave me a very simple, and insecure, password. I figured that this was just for the week+ of setup, and I could get things more secure later. I had been under the impression that I would have my login, with my secure password, and the dealer would have a special dealer login that would give them access to my system, as they are listed as the pro that is associated with my system. Is that not the case? Do we really need to be handing over our own login info to dealers for them to make changes? If so, that's insane.

Additionally, I don't know the best way to trigger a default.

The input on the Triad is a Sonos port, as I have some Sonos in the mix in the house, and I want the Echo in the kitchen to trigger that port and the local set of Sonos speakers. That is easy to do through Alexa groups, but I want the kitchen/dining macro to run as soon as that music starts. I am currently using "audio sensed on input" as the macro trigger, but I think that doesn't work well when you pause and restart. Is there a better way to do this?

I have a Triad 8x8 and I'm trying to find a way to set "audio scenes", e.g. play audio in kitchen and dining room, but not office and bedroom, with another scene for playing in all of them.

I am currently trying this with Macros: 1 for kitchen and dining room that disconnects all triad outputs except for the kitchen and dining, and 1 macro for enabling all of them.

The problem that I'm seeing is this: when you have it playing everywhere, you see in the Session on the iphone that all the rooms are playing, yet, when I run macro 1, the music stops in the other rooms, yet the audio session doesn't drop those rooms. I set up custom buttons to test this:

1. Play music
2. Tap custom button for whole house
3. Office shows up in Sessions list as playing
4. Tap "kitchen/dining only"
5. Office music stop playing, but office still shows up in session
6. To restart office music, I have to hit the i/o button next to the room in the session, and then manually add the room to the session.

Two questions: First, This seems like a bug. I tested removing the input from that room output in the traid control panel in composer, and the same thing happens. Seems that Sessions isn't updating in the app. Is this a known problem?

Second: Am I programming this "wrong"? Is there a better way to set scenes of room output selections?

I just had my system installed, and the installers put in a keypad in just about every room for flexibility (I have over 200 switches in the house, so there’s room). The thing is, I need to figure out what I want to use them all for, and I’m frankly stumped. I know I can do some scene control, but I’m looking to the community to find more creative uses. 
 

What really cool function have you programmed into your keypads?

Anyone know what this does? It’s in the settings, and I hoped that it would remember the filter I set for security/history driver, but it doesn’t appear to.

Hi,

I had the ELK M1 set up, and had the dealer set up a Generic Door Sensor tied to one of the interior door contact sensors. I started using it in programming, having it do some things with lights to let us know when that door is opened and closed.

Flash forward a week, for some reason, it's no longer working. The generic door sensor doesn't seem to be linked to the actual sensor, and I, as a COmposer Home user, can't seem to do anything about it. Do I have any options? All I see that looks off is that in List View, the door sensor icon has a big red X over it now, and I don't see the current state change when I open and close the door.