Want to ditch my dealer

[N347RG]

My AV dealer talked me into the Control4 system. Seemed like a great idea. Problem is that about one per week my wife or daughter pick up the remotes and somehow get everything out sync. I have to turn off the whole system to reboot and get it up and working. I added a new WiFi system a couple of days ago. Set it up as a dual NAT. Should not have had any interaction with Control4.  Everything was working great then yesterday, Control4 stopped working. My dealer told me that it was because of the new WIFi, which is a system they do not support. The soonest they can get out is Monday, today is Friday. this is unacceptable. I have purchased about $30K worth of hardware from these guys and that is the service I get.  I am done with relying of a service provider. If I can’t have control of the system, I want to rip it out.

 What are my options?

[OceanDad]

Get a great remote dealer from this forum, and a copy of Composer HE.  Your new remote dealer will be more responsive/more skilled/cheaper/quicker/funnier/cooler, and Composer HE will give you some level of control and programming ability.  

My strong recommendation - don't rip it out in frustration.  This system can do amazing things.  I would say that 90% of complaints like yours are fixed by :

1. Minor programming tweaks

2.  Some optimisation of the Zigbee mesh (Channel choice, location of devices etc)

3. Some optimisation of router, wi-fi, general network.

[N347RG]

2 minutes ago, OceanDad said:

This system can do amazing things.  I would say that 90% of complaints like yours are fixed by :

 

Perhaps, but my whole house; media room, family room, gym, patio, etc is run off of Control4. When it is down, I have nothing and have to wait on my dealer’s schedule. Control4 is certainly a revenue generator for the dealer, not sure of the value for the end user. 

[OceanDad]

2 minutes ago, N347RG said:

but my whole house; media room, family room, gym, patio, etc is run off of Control4.

So is mine.  It's rock solid, and yours should be too.

When you say 'out of sync' can you be a bit more specific ?  TV not turning on, or remotes not working etc ?  

 

[N347RG]

1 hour ago, OceanDad said:

Get a great remote dealer from this forum, and a copy of Composer HE

Where do I purchase Composer HE? 

[N347RG]

1 hour ago, OceanDad said:

When you say 'out of sync' can you be a bit more specific ?

Some stuff turns on some stuff does not. Mainly it is the cable boxes that are out of sync with the system. Sometimes it is the LG OLED. If my wife pushes a button and nothing happens or at least nothing happens as quickly as she would like, she pushes it again and there we go.

If I let the batteries die in the remotes, I lose them and have to get my provider to reconnect. Ching Ching. Ridiculous operating model.

Right now, my remotes are not connected and I can not log in with my phone, I get an error saying I don’t have access to my own system. No TV until Monday evening for me. 

[eggzlot]

40 minutes ago, N347RG said:

Some stuff turns on some stuff does not. Mainly it is the cable boxes that are out of sync with the system. Sometimes it is the LG OLED. If my wife pushes a button and nothing happens or at least nothing happens as quickly as she would like, she pushes it again and there we go.

If I let the batteries die in the remotes, I lose them and have to get my provider to reconnect. Ching Ching. Ridiculous operating model.

Right now, my remotes are not connected and I can not log in with my phone, I get an error saying I don’t have access to my own system. No TV until Monday evening for me. 

Composer HE can be sold to you by a remote dealer. 149 one time fee. Comes with a year of 4site too

composer HE is Windows software  and lets you do 90% of what a dealer can do so really minimizes how often you need a call 

this seems to mostly be networking or binding related.  Curious if the TVs are IR, IP or serial controlled.  

you did mention a new Wi-Fi system.  If that included a new router it could do some IP address changes and yes it will throw things out of whack   

either way go to the Section on this form called “looking for an integrator”.  Read postings.  Read views.  Chat with 1-2 and figure out who you like and sync up with and off you go.  As long as the wiring is in place they can fix you up quick. 

[JSTRONG]

Also sounds like the dealer didn’t use discrete ir commands 

[JSTRONG]

And you definitely cannot replace a router without consulting your control4 programmer. 

[South Africa C4 user]

10 hours ago, OceanDad said:

Get a great remote dealer from this forum, and a copy of Composer HE.  Your new remote dealer will be more responsive/more skilled/cheaper/quicker/funnier/cooler, and Composer HE will give you some level of control and programming ability.  

My strong recommendation - don't rip it out in frustration.  This system can do amazing things.  I would say that 90% of complaints like yours are fixed by :

1. Minor programming tweaks

2.  Some optimisation of the Zigbee mesh (Channel choice, location of devices etc)

3. Some optimisation of router, wi-fi, general network.

This is great advice.  My system is rock solid (took a few weeks at the beginning to get it perfect).  Pretty much the only reason that I have any issues these days is because I like to have the latest and greatest, so add new drivers (including Beta versions regularly) and I move on to the new OS versions on day 1 most times.  I would advise you to wait a few weeks before ever upgrading to a new OS.  Then your dealer will know if it is a really stable release like  OS3.1.2 or if it has a fair number of bugs (like OS3.1.3 - my personal view but agreed by my dealer) and whether any known bugs are likely to impact your system.

A remote dealer is a must.  Fortunately my dealer has become something of a friend and does both remote work and truck rolls.

[Neo1738]

Agree we did all lights, hvac, security, tvs, audio, etc with C4 and despite the growing pains of figuring out how we will use the system and my own learning curve for programming it's been rock solid. Also it has only done what I have programmed it to do for better or worse ;) Long story short when done correctly it's amazing. So nice to have blinds and lights automatically open/close on/off based on time of day, if we're watching tv and time of day is xyz then lower blind etc. 

[vitali]

On 8/21/2020 at 3:20 PM, N347RG said:

Perhaps, but my whole house; media room, family room, gym, patio, etc is run off of Control4. When it is down, I have nothing and have to wait on my dealer’s schedule. Control4 is certainly a revenue generator for the dealer, not sure of the value for the end user. 

System is network based. I would check your network setup and equipment. Very cheap router or very expensive managed switch can cause to problems. changing network configuration can cause some issues (ip conflicts, wrong sub net, etc), changing wifi configuration can affect remotes and lighting (very close channels wifi and zigbee), you need to know what to do and how it works before you change anything.

[N347RG]

1 hour ago, vitali said:

. I would check your network setup and equipment. Very cheap router or very expensive managed switch can cause to problems.

My dealer also manages my Router, Switch and WiFi.They only support one platform. They have been out three times to try to improve the coverage and performance. The WiFi is a bigger problem. I bought a new system to add as a dual NAT, which is where this mess started. EVERYTHING was working great. I had blazing fast WiFi. Latency issues with Ring went away, etc. then about 24 hours later Control4 stopped working.  As long as I stick with my current dealer, I will have shitty WiFi and no control over Control4. Will see how things go when they come out tomorrow. 

[msgreenf]

Agree that your dealer sucks and networking if they're doing dual nodding. drop me a message if you want some help getting everything back in shape

Sent from my Pixel 3a XL using Tapatalk

[vitali]

5 hours ago, N347RG said:

My dealer also manages my Router, Switch and WiFi.They only support one platform. They have been out three times to try to improve the coverage and performance. The WiFi is a bigger problem. I bought a new system to add as a dual NAT, which is where this mess started. EVERYTHING was working great. I had blazing fast WiFi. Latency issues with Ring went away, etc. then about 24 hours later Control4 stopped working.  As long as I stick with my current dealer, I will have shitty WiFi and no control over Control4. Will see how things go when they come out tomorrow. 

I don't exactly know what is going with your network, dual Nat may cause to troubles as well, Im not sure if it can shut down all system, I saw that stuff working no problems for a wile. Anyways, few times I got issues (with Luxul routers) after firmware update system started to act bad, nothing to do with tech or installer, I didn't know what to do, C4 tech support didn't know, Luxul tech support didn't know. But for sure network is a base, it must be solid and properly configured. If your system getting stuck and nothing responds I can suspect IP conflict. Or maybe you get 2 routers on same switch, or cascaded routers with same sub net. in those cases network may work for a wile and stuck after short period of time

[vitali]

Just in case, what is your location?

[Köhler Medientechnik]

Multiple MAC addresses on one switch/router port can cause a switch/router to shut down the port (often not immediately but with some delay) or even whole communcation. Double NAT can cause this. Do you really need double NAT?

[N347RG]

11 hours ago, vitali said:

what is your location?

Austin, TX

[N347RG]

8 hours ago, Köhler Medientechnik said:

Do you really need double NAT?

No, I need reliable WiFi that my dealer can not seem to provide. That is the first priority. Second is a stable AV experience that doesn’t require a reset once or twice a week.
 

My WiFi system is Araknis, Router, 2 switches, 2 repeaters. Shitty coverage and speed

[JSTRONG]

How many sq ft and how many levels of your home needs WiFi? 

[vitali]

We moved to Ubiquity. Works pretty good, but now with internet speed close to 1 Gig download speed it is going to be next challenge.  

[N347RG]

6400 sq ft, single level

[vitali]

Araknis. I didn't work a lot with it, just few times. Didn't find anything wrong with it. You may have "initial design" issue, wrong Waps locations, wrong network setup/configuration, not enough WAPs, faulty devices. Unfortunately there is no "one click" or " Ha, this is wire with wrong color here" solution. All that stuff (especially won big projects) needs to be checked. Any changes in system can cause some issues, such as:

my cameras stopped working, I don't see my smart devices anymore on network, my intercom stopped working, ETC. 

[vitali]

1 minute ago, N347RG said:

6400 sq ft, single level

2 waps should be enough. depends on you house of course.

[hardwareguy2068]

I would highly recommend contacting @msgreenf.  I have a decent dealer but Mitch surpassed their knowledge and accessibility in about 15 minutes.  He has my system working exactly as it should and has helped me add various components multiple times.  He is a rockstar in the C4 area!!