New to C4 (for new home) - What components do I need?

[zr123]

Hello C4 Community!

I am new to C4 when it comes to having it installed for myself.  Looking to build a custom home (nothing uber fancy) and looking to have some home automation and integration.

I have spoken to a couple of dealers who have been open to me providing the hardware, doing the prewire, and having them come in to put everything together and do the programming.

Was hoping that you would be able to help me understand what components I need so that I can have everything ready.

Here's what our home will consist of:

4 bedrooms (no TVs).

1 living room with TV/cable/Fire TV/Nvidia media player.

1 home theatre/media room with cable/Fire TV/Nvidia media player (most likely an Anthem receiver and LG projector).

6 zone in-floor heating + forced air air conditioning (ecobee thermostats, most likely).

Looking to have 6 to 8 zone multi-zone audio.  Ideally something that can stream Spotify and Tidal, if nothing supports this natively, I would consider Sonos amps for each zone.

DSC alarm.

3 to 4 cameras (any suggestions?).

Would like 2 or 3 in-wall touchscreens.

Would like 2 Control4 remotes with the ability to control things on the TV in the living room and on the screen in the media room/home theatre.

Legrand lighting controlled by LC7001 (compatible with C4 as far as I know).

If I could get some advice on which components I would need to buy (ie: part numbers and what they do) that would be much, much appreciated!!

Thanks in advance!!

 

[JSTRONG]

4 hours ago, zr123 said:

Hello C4 Community!

I am new to C4 when it comes to having it installed for myself.  Looking to build a custom home (nothing uber fancy) and looking to have some home automation and integration.

I have spoken to a couple of dealers who have been open to me providing the hardware, doing the prewire, and having them come in to put everything together and do the programming.

Was hoping that you would be able to help me understand what components I need so that I can have everything ready.

Here's what our home will consist of:

4 bedrooms (no TVs).

1 living room with TV/cable/Fire TV/Nvidia media player.

1 home theatre/media room with cable/Fire TV/Nvidia media player (most likely an Anthem receiver and LG projector).

6 zone in-floor heating + forced air air conditioning (ecobee thermostats, most likely).

Looking to have 6 to 8 zone multi-zone audio.  Ideally something that can stream Spotify and Tidal, if nothing supports this natively, I would consider Sonos amps for each zone.

DSC alarm.

3 to 4 cameras (any suggestions?).

Would like 2 or 3 in-wall touchscreens.

Would like 2 Control4 remotes with the ability to control things on the TV in the living room and on the screen in the media room/home theatre.

Legrand lighting controlled by LC7001 (compatible with C4 as far as I know).

If I could get some advice on which components I would need to buy (ie: part numbers and what they do) that would be much, much appreciated!!

Thanks in advance!!

 

Looks like a nice setup and your dealer should be explaining everything to you otherwise I would  get another dealer  

Ea5 in the rack and ea1 at the main tv 

triad amp and triad matrix for distributing all of the streaming audio from the ea5. Would not recommend going with Sonos

i would definitely switch the lighting to c4  you can use the essential lighting just check on led compatibility. I suggest some c4 keypads with engraving at door entry locations  

t4 touch panels and sr260 remote controls

Luma nvr with Luma cameras 

you should not use the isp networking. I suggest unifi or ruckus 

[crazybuppie]

8 hours ago, zr123 said:

Hello C4 Community!

I am new to C4 when it comes to having it installed for myself.  Looking to build a custom home (nothing uber fancy) and looking to have some home automation and integration.

I have spoken to a couple of dealers who have been open to me providing the hardware, doing the prewire, and having them come in to put everything together and do the programming.

Was hoping that you would be able to help me understand what components I need so that I can have everything ready.

Here's what our home will consist of:

4 bedrooms (no TVs).

1 living room with TV/cable/Fire TV/Nvidia media player.

1 home theatre/media room with cable/Fire TV/Nvidia media player (most likely an Anthem receiver and LG projector).

6 zone in-floor heating + forced air air conditioning (ecobee thermostats, most likely).

Looking to have 6 to 8 zone multi-zone audio.  Ideally something that can stream Spotify and Tidal, if nothing supports this natively, I would consider Sonos amps for each zone.

DSC alarm.

3 to 4 cameras (any suggestions?).

Would like 2 or 3 in-wall touchscreens.

Would like 2 Control4 remotes with the ability to control things on the TV in the living room and on the screen in the media room/home theatre.

Legrand lighting controlled by LC7001 (compatible with C4 as far as I know).

If I could get some advice on which components I would need to buy (ie: part numbers and what they do) that would be much, much appreciated!!

Thanks in advance!!

 

You should be working directly with your dealer of choice on your system design, not relying on random forum users' expertise. There is no 1 "right" way to do a C4 system. There are always many options, and experience is what will tell you which is better in your specific situation.

I suggest, now that you apparently have interviewed a few dealers, is to pick one and sit down with them and hammer out a system design. Sounds like you want to be involved and that's great - but you will get a much better end product if you partner with your dealer, vs expecting them to work magic on equipment you sourced...somewhere...that they had no say in. 

[zr123]

6 hours ago, JSTRONG said:

Looks like a nice setup and your dealer should be explaining everything to you otherwise I would  get another dealer  

Ea5 in the rack and ea1 at the main tv 

triad amp and triad matrix for distributing all of the streaming audio from the ea5. Would not recommend going with Sonos

i would definitely switch the lighting to c4  you can use the essential lighting just check on led compatibility. I suggest some c4 keypads with engraving at door entry locations  

t4 touch panels and sr260 remote controls

Luma nvr with Luma cameras 

you should not use the isp networking. I suggest unifi or ruckus 

Thanks for all of the feedback! Would you recommend an EA-3 for my media room as well?

Are you familiar with the Ecobee thermostats tying into Control4? Do they work well, or would you recommend another type of thermostat?

[msgreenf]

I recommend ecobee and they integrate well. They did have some api issues in oct -dec but they are stabilized now

[South Africa C4 user]

7 hours ago, JSTRONG said:

Looks like a nice setup and your dealer should be explaining everything to you otherwise I would  get another dealer  

Ea5 in the rack and ea1 at the main tv 

triad amp and triad matrix for distributing all of the streaming audio from the ea5. Would not recommend going with Sonos

i would definitely switch the lighting to c4  you can use the essential lighting just check on led compatibility. I suggest some c4 keypads with engraving at door entry locations  

t4 touch panels and sr260 remote controls

Luma nvr with Luma cameras 

you should not use the isp networking. I suggest unifi or ruckus 

This is good advice.  For remote control,  I would look at the SR260 and the Neeo and make a choice based on preference.

[JSTRONG]

2 hours ago, zr123 said:

Thanks for all of the feedback! Would you recommend an EA-3 for my media room as well?

Are you familiar with the Ecobee thermostats tying into Control4? Do they work well, or would you recommend another type of thermostat?

Like Mitch says, the ecobee works good. We have used many in a c4 home. Ea3 would only be suggested if you needed more then 1 stream of audio in that specific room. But I think your going to distribute audio using the triad matrix and amp using the Audio streams from the ea5. 

[am350z]

Fyi, ecobee doesn’t work for variable speed hvac systems.  If you are building new, highly likely you would go with variable speed setup for efficiency and need to use manufacturers tstat.

Also, go Lutron for lighting.  No question.  

[zr123]

Thanks for all of this guys!

What about cameras? Are there any good, cost-effective, cameras/NVR's to look at?

[mindedc1]

The sexy setup is blue iris with the AI object recognition AITool. There is a thread somewhere on how to set that up, google will surely find it. I use Hikvision cameras but I'm cheap and not worried about chinese snooping given that my cams are on an isolated firewall segment. There are hikvision drivers as well as drivers for Blue Iris. I have tried some other brands, keep coming back to Hikvision for value. I have a Dahua currently in my setup and it works well. You will need a dedicated PC with an i5 without AI and depending on the amount of cameras and resolution an i7 for AI. I have 10 cameras and a recent i7 can handle AI on top of Blue Iris quite handily. The beauty of Blue Iris is it will work with almost any model of IP camera, get cheap ones here, expensive ones there, special feature for that one over there, no problem. I slowly expanded my system over time and wound up moving a bunch of cams around because you want to optimize the field of view/zoom for each location.  I have C4 bypass BI for live viewing and pull streams direct from the camera.

 

[zr123]

Does Sonos integrate well with C4? Better/worse than a multi-zone amp+matrix which has Spotify/Tidal streamers?

[fredsoneya]

23 minutes ago, zr123 said:

Does Sonos integrate well with C4? Better/worse than a multi-zone amp+matrix which has Spotify/Tidal streamers?

Definitely worse in my opinion. I ripped all my Sonos out and replaced with native C4.

[zr123]

8 hours ago, fredsoneya said:

Definitely worse in my opinion. I ripped all my Sonos out and replaced with native C4.

Are you able to provide some model#s of the C4 native solutions which you suggest to go with?

[fredsoneya]

Just now, zr123 said:

Are you able to provide some model#s of the C4 native solutions which you suggest to go with?

So I have the 8 zone audio matrix and 8 zone amplifier, both are the latest triad versions. 
 

These are being fed their streams via my EA5 controller with 4 (2 analog and 2 digital) connections. 
 

If you can’t wire to every location then Triad One is awesome and just like a Sonos Amp has built in stream. 

[mindedc1]

Also, RE above variable speed blower thermostat integration. I got around this with a zoning board. I actually do have zones, but it handily does the staging of the air handler and exposes standard thermostat wiring to zones... I use Ecobee and it works great.

[therockhr]

On 1/15/2021 at 8:34 AM, crazybuppie said:

You should be working directly with your dealer of choice on your system design, not relying on random forum users' expertise. There is no 1 "right" way to do a C4 system. There are always many options, and experience is what will tell you which is better in your specific situation.

I suggest, now that you apparently have interviewed a few dealers, is to pick one and sit down with them and hammer out a system design. Sounds like you want to be involved and that's great - but you will get a much better end product if you partner with your dealer, vs expecting them to work magic on equipment you sourced...somewhere...that they had no say in. 

The "you need to ask your dealer" post is the most useless kind of post on this board. The poster said they are talking to a dealer. They came on here asking for other opinions. I dont know about you all but I wouldnt just trust the opinion of a couple of dealers only just because they were local to me.

My 2 cents; if you like the way the legrand lighting looks and it integrates with Control, go for it. You wont know the difference of how it is controlled.

Dont let a dealer talk you into multiple controllers or one at every TV unless you are dead set on the C4 on screen display at every TV. You only need 1 controller if you use IP controlled TVs.

Dont do sonos amps if starting from scratch. Do native C4 audio.

[DLite]

On 1/17/2021 at 6:51 PM, mindedc1 said:

Also, RE above variable speed blower thermostat integration. I got around this with a zoning board. I actually do have zones, but it handily does the staging of the air handler and exposes standard thermostat wiring to zones... I use Ecobee and it works great.

@mindedc1Which zoning board you use that supports continuously variable blower speeds?  I am curious because the ones I've seen all seem limited to 3-4 stages only.  Thanks!

[mindedc1]

The board may only support a few stages but the issue I had was a little more complicated. I have a Lennox system that originally had a third party zoning board. It used the standard old school thermostat wiring to talk to the board in the air handler. It was controlling staging of the blower. Thermostats in zones were first Honeywell, then Honeywell ZWave, then later Ecobee. The issue I had was Zone 1 calls for cool , meanwhile after 8 mins Zone 2 calls for cool. After another two mins Zone 1 is satisfied and quits cooling. The air handler however sees a continuous call for cool, decides it's not getting the job done and increases to max fan speed at the 12 minute mark when Zone 2 which is much smaller really only needed to be run at low speed. Then you get a freeze/thaw cycle in your house. 

Going to a Lennox zoning board allows it to control the cooling/staging and it knows the CFM and cubic footage of each room and can make a determination based on which zones and how many are calling as to the best fan speed. I don't know the model or how many stages it supports. It wouldn't help you if you don't have Lennox or are after only purely variable speed zoning.

Probably not perfect but it's a hell of a lot better than before. It could probably be better if I ripped out all my ducts and completely re-did the zones etc... but it was cost prohibitive. This was a great compromise for the zoning board and some minor duct moves for a reasonable price to my HVAC guy.

[wnpublic]

With that set of needs, I would also consider not using C4 and just living with a few separate apps.  You’re not doing matrixed video; for audio, Sonos on its own is just fine, and there are a lot better options than LUMA for security cameras. I mean, a  LOT. You will save a big chunk of change to boot. 

[JSTRONG]

What remote control or automation system would you suggest he look at for a single app/remote control solution to control everything?

He wants multi room audio , hvac control , multiple TVs with different sources , lighting control, alarm system , security cameras , multiple touchscreens , and on screen tv navigation. 
 

It’s these exact type of systems that control 4 was developed 

This dude would need about 3 remote controls and 7 different apps on his phone to control everything. Then of course nothing would be integrated  

[C4 User]

5 hours ago, wnpublic said:

With that set of needs, I would also consider not using C4 and just living with a few separate apps.  You’re not doing matrixed video; for audio, Sonos on its own is just fine, and there are a lot better options than LUMA for security cameras. I mean, a  LOT. You will save a big chunk of change to boot. 

I had SONOS, now i have distributed audio and would never go back. There is no comparison if your goal is distributed audio. Now if your goal is localized audio, SONOS can be a good solution.

I never had distributed video. About 4 years ago I looked into adding a video matrix system. In the end I did not, and I have no regrets since Roku and AppleTV give me all the distributed video I need - personalized by tv location.

I do not have HVAC integrated into C4 yet for the reasons above. I have two systems in my house, both with variable fan and heat and 5 stage heat pumps running 8 zones. I use the manufacturers thermostats - in this case Carrier Infinity. I would love a good solution that would allow me to change the programming schedules by zone via C4 (only because different guest have different preferences) - but none exist yet.

My alarm is integrated into C4 giving me access to program off of door status, motion status, alarm status.

My cameras are integrated into C4 giving me ability to view all cameras from any touch screen.

My shades are integrated into C4 giving me ability to program all shade control.

So in reality, no one needs home automation. We have it for convenience. And single app integration far exceeds multi app integration.

Have fun.

[eggzlot]

7 hours ago, wnpublic said:

With that set of needs, I would also consider not using C4 and just living with a few separate apps.  You’re not doing matrixed video; for audio, Sonos on its own is just fine, and there are a lot better options than LUMA for security cameras. I mean, a  LOT. You will save a big chunk of change to boot. 

to each his own - its not an incorrect statement but you are assuming the original poster is tech savvy, can set up the home network and all of these IoT devices and maintain it all.  Some people actually set up C4 via a dealer because they do not want to hassle with these items - they want to pay someone, have it work, and if there are issues call someone to fix it.

The post didn't mention anything about DIY, tinkering, etc.

Again as others mentioned, it comes down to control vs automation.  None of it is needed that is for sure, this entire space is a luxury item and service.

[wnpublic]

Wow, the defensiveness is strong here. All I did was suggest maybe for this set of needs the OP should consider whether the juice was worth the squeeze - maybe compare a $50k plus investment to using a few different apps instead of three.  (Because give me a break - C4 users use at least three:  C4, C4 Intercom because they still can't manage to integrate that functionality, and Luma or whatever else is used for security NVR review).  It wasn't an attack on anyone's investment (financial or emotional).

Reminds me of how fraternities work - cognitive dissonance.  "I must have a good reason why I put a marshmallow up my rear and drank myself blind during hazing, so SIGMA CHI IS THE GREATEST AND I'LL FIGHT ANYONE WHO SAYS OTHERWISE!!" 

[wnpublic]

40 minutes ago, eggzlot said:

to each his own - its not an incorrect statement but you are assuming the original poster is tech savvy, can set up the home network and all of these IoT devices and maintain it all.  Some people actually set up C4 via a dealer because they do not want to hassle with these items - they want to pay someone, have it work, and if there are issues call someone to fix it.

The post didn't mention anything about DIY, tinkering, etc.

Again as others mentioned, it comes down to control vs automation.  None of it is needed that is for sure, this entire space is a luxury item and service.

There are lo-vo dealers who will happily install, set up, and maintain a non-C4, decentralized setup.  I received numerous such bids for my new house.

[eggzlot]

3 minutes ago, wnpublic said:

There are lo-vo dealers who will happily install, set up, and maintain a non-C4, decentralized setup.  I received numerous such bids for my new house.

well if they are going C4 likely they want something more centralized.