Unable to complete Apple TV integration

[CTMatthew]

I'm setting up my new home system and I'm experiencing something I haven't had an issue with to date...

I added two Apple TVs to my project. When I turned on Apple integration in the Control4 app and added the Control4 Bridge to the HomeKit it only populated one of the drivers. In the selector menu of the populated driver, both of the Apple TVs showed up, but the other driver just remained empty in terms of remote status and selector fields. 

When tech support didn't have any ready solutions, I figured I'd delete the drivers and re-add them. I also deleted the Control4 Bridge from HomeKit. 

I re-added the drivers and re-added the Control4 Bridge to HomeKit and the exact same thing happened. 

I then deleted them all again and set about power cycling everything (EA, AppleTVs, Router).

Now when I try to go through the process again in the Control4 App where you switch on the AppleTV integration I get the message "unable to complete apple tv integration" 

There's no hesitancy at all. It comes right up so I'm not sure what that setting is looking for. 

Anyone experience this and have any luck troubleshooting?

[Cyknight]

This is why I can't be bothered to use the IP driver

[mujtaba.khokhar]

Yeah, 

Use the intrinsic dev Apple TV driver, non of the pairing bollocks required. Or use Jesse Smiths IR driver. 
 

Even if you do get it working, you’ll find it drops out etc. 
 

Thanks 

Muj 

[CTMatthew]

I'm looking to avoid IR as I don't have a C4 hardware footprint in one of the rooms. Also, prior to my disastrous decision to rearrange my whole system the driver worked flawlessly since I set it up. 

I'm interested less in the complaints about the Apple integration protocol, which I certainly sympathize with, and more in looking for some info about how it actually works so I might remedy it. I have a network that can do just about anything I need if that's where the issue lies, but if it's within Control4 it seems there should be some insight as to how this works. It's not like dwarves snuck in and wrote the API without divulging their methods. 

[Cyknight]

2 hours ago, CTMatthew said:

It's not like dwarves snuck in and wrote the API without divulging their methods. 

I wouldn't be too sure about that....

[chopedogg88]

Assume both Apple TVs are running the same firmware?

[msgreenf]

and same AppleID?

[CTMatthew]

Yes and yes. Both current 4K models, both on latest firmware, both static on the network on same VLAN (along with everything else relevant to this system). And the thing that's the most frustrating is that both worked in different rooms in almost identical setups. So aside from an updated TV in one room - which doesn't figure into the control scenario - this exact gear was working fine. 

I don't know enough about HomeKit, but suspecting it might be something in Apple's black-boxed control environment I started deleting and re-adding control hubs ( Lutron, Aqara, Philips Hue, and HomeBridge) and all of them re-added and re-populated with no hesitation which leads me to believe there's something happening on the Control4 side. 

If it were a client's house these would have flashers on them by now, but since it's my own home I'll suffer a little to figure out a root cause. 

Onwards...

[CTMatthew]

Another interesting piece of data:

Out of curiosity I VPNed into my home network from my showroom and was able to add my showroom EA5 to my home's Apple HomeKit successfully. So I feel comfortable at this point pointing the finger at my EA and/or the programming on it. 

[South Africa C4 user]

Will be interested to hear the outcome...

I must say that I have heard a lot of unhappiness about the Apple Bridge driver but I have found it rock solid and have it installed since the first day or so that it was launched.  I installed it a year later at my Beach House and again it has been rock solid.  My only unhappiness has been:

1. My dealer was concerned (nervous) about installing it but we did it together and it worked just fine.

2. You need an iPhone / iPad on site to do the pairing (I can see that being a PITA).

3. I expected great things from this driver down the line (meta data feedback, mini apps etc. but none of this transpired!)

[CTMatthew]

1 hour ago, South Africa C4 user said:

Will be interested to hear the outcome...

I must say that I have heard a lot of unhappiness about the Apple Bridge driver but I have found it rock solid and have it installed since the first day or so that it was launched.  I installed it a year later at my Beach House and again it has been rock solid.  My only unhappiness has been:

1. My dealer was concerned (nervous) about installing it but we did it together and it worked just fine.

2. You need an iPhone / iPad on site to do the pairing (I can see that being a PITA).

3. I expected great things from this driver down the line (meta data feedback, mini apps etc. but none of this transpired!)

I'll be sure to post whatever the outcome is. 

I also agree that prior to this the integration was solid as a rock... for me. I've heard the horror stories and have no reason to doubt them, but HomeKit as a concept has been remarkably reliable. I actually find myself using it more often than Control4. 

And yeah, from the integrator's side it's a bit of a pain in the ass because it's not just grabbing their phone for a second, but really taking a little time to make sure their HomeKit is set up at least minimally and that they understand what's going on so they don't accidentally break the integration down the line. 

[CTMatthew]

For the time being I've hit a wall. My plan right now is to leave the AppleTVs out of the new integration. After a frustrating tech support call with a very nice and knowledgeable tech, I went and grabbed 2 Rokus. It seems that to proceed I'd have to reset HomeKit, but I'd have to do it to all of my "hubs" since the controller role switches automatically when one goes offline. This is just too much time to devote to this solution right now. But the C4 tech was able to determine that C4 was getting an error that indicated that the Hub was already present in HomeKit even though I'd removed it and it was no longer listed as a connected device. 

So, to be continued... maybe

[PorterTX]

As mention by @mujtaba.khokhar above did you get a chance to look at Intrinsic's C4 Apple IP Driver? https://www.intrinsicdev.com/downloads/apple-tv-driver-control4/

[samrwalker]

My project had to be reloaded last night, and now my Apple TV is in the same boat. Cant get it to reintegrate to save my life. About to just let it sit in the closet to act as my HomeKit hub and replace it on the tv with a Roku. 

 

[samrwalker]

2 hours ago, samrwalker said:

My project had to be reloaded last night, and now my Apple TV is in the same boat. Cant get it to reintegrate to save my life. About to just let it sit in the closet to act as my HomeKit hub and replace it on the tv with a Roku. 

 

And just like that, my Apple TV is no longer in the project, and I have a nice new Roku in it's place. Apple makes me sad. 

[cshepard]

I don’t understand why people are still trying to fight with IP drivers for AppleTV. Use IR & be done with it.

[CTMatthew]

35 minutes ago, cshepard said:

I don’t understand why people are still trying to fight with IP drivers for AppleTV. Use IR & be done with it.

Because if you don't have a Control4 hardware footprint where your Apple TV is installed your cheapest option is more expensive than the AppleTV itself. In my bedroom I have a floor standing TV that I wanted to have a single power cord attached to so I could wheel it around (you can use an adapter to share own power cord for the TV and AppleTV). Obviously where it's "just that easy" it's perfectly fine solution, but that's not every case.

[Cyknight]

12 hours ago, CTMatthew said:

Because if you don't have a Control4 hardware footprint where your Apple TV is installed your cheapest option is more expensive than the AppleTV itself. In my bedroom I have a floor standing TV that I wanted to have a single power cord attached to so I could wheel it around (you can use an adapter to share own power cord for the TV and AppleTV). Obviously where it's "just that easy" it's perfectly fine solution, but that's not every case.

Oh, pretty sure a Roku is cheaper than an AppleTV

[tekki70]

delete the driver, and delete the app reboot phone and controller and try again, hope that helps 

[IntrinsicGroup]

Our Apple TV driver should help.

You can try it completely free of charge using our showroom pack, if you don't have one already get one here - https://www.intrinsicdev.com/showroom-license-request/ it gives you a free license for all our Control4 drivers, including Apple TV.

[jimbones]

@CTMatthew did you ever get this sorted out? We’re having this issue at our vacation home.

[Amr]

You know what, I had used EA1 IR Blaster that is located in the same shelf and am done with this, I had to reset the whole thing for no reason, for a vacation house that is used a couple of months a years I didn’t want to invest in another driver hoping one day this will be shaped and these unknown errors stops, one day

[jimbones]

I discovered the root of my own problems and its tied to Control4's home/account management and the way their driver "handshakes" with homes in Homekit. Here's a quick run-through for anyone troubleshooting this in the future:

We have a city home and a vacation home: 2 homes in HomeKit, 2 homes in Control4

• HomeKit setup is using my own personal iCloud account (1 email address: emailA), its the primary account to admin the homes in HomeKit. The homes are shared with multiple family members.
• The two homes in Control4 each require a unique email addresses. City home account was created with emailA, and for the vacation home account I created an email alias, emailB.

When adding control4 to HomeKit at the vacation home, I received the dreaded "Unable to complete Apple TV integration" error and spent the last few weeks troubleshooting. And after some digging I've discovered the following:

• The email address registered to the home in Control4 has to match the email address used in HomeKit. In my situation our vacation home was using emailB, and HomeKit is managed using emailA. Control4 explained to my integrator that this was the issue and there is no way around this.

I spent a few days thinking about ways that I could create some dummy accounts to get by this limitation. I could create a new appleID, emailC, and share my vacation home in HomeKit with emailC, then create a control4 account using emailC and add them to the house, and try to complete the HomeKit integration (can't guarantee that this would work, but I was willing to give it a try). I didn't get very far with this option as Apple only allows 1 phone number to be registered to an AppleID at a time and surprisingly we don't have another unused phone number. I started looking into dummy phone number services, but thought I was going down a real fragile rabbit hole creating dummy phone numbers for dummy email addresses.

At the end I gave up on Control4's solution and installed the @IntrinsicGroup IP driver, but sadly it doesn't have the long press on the TV button to bring up tvOS Control Center and all 4 family members use their AppleTV accounts to track their watch history across all our AppleTV's. But at least there is a "long route" to switch users in the settings app, and that will have to do until we get long press support in the @IntrinsicGroup driver. Fingers crossed!

A potential solution for the root problem would be if Control4 allowed a single email address to be associated to multiple homes. Then emailA would be registered for both houses and we wouldn't have the issue. That would be swell. Is there a feature request voting system somewhere? I'd smash that upvote button.

So there ya have it. Happy to answer any questions, and hopefully this helps someone else out.

[South Africa C4 user]

2 hours ago, jimbones said:

I discovered the root of my own problems and its tied to Control4's home/account management and the way their driver "handshakes" with homes in Homekit. Here's a quick run-through for anyone troubleshooting this in the future:

We have a city home and a vacation home: 2 homes in HomeKit, 2 homes in Control4

• HomeKit setup is using my own personal iCloud account (1 email address: emailA), its the primary account to admin the homes in HomeKit. The homes are shared with multiple family members.
• The two homes in Control4 each require a unique email addresses. City home account was created with emailA, and for the vacation home account I created an email alias, emailB.

When adding control4 to HomeKit at the vacation home, I received the dreaded "Unable to complete Apple TV integration" error and spent the last few weeks troubleshooting. And after some digging I've discovered the following:

• The email address registered to the home in Control4 has to match the email address used in HomeKit. In my situation our vacation home was using emailB, and HomeKit is managed using emailA. Control4 explained to my integrator that this was the issue and there is no way around this.

I spent a few days thinking about ways that I could create some dummy accounts to get by this limitation. I could create a new appleID, emailC, and share my vacation home in HomeKit with emailC, then create a control4 account using emailC and add them to the house, and try to complete the HomeKit integration (can't guarantee that this would work, but I was willing to give it a try). I didn't get very far with this option as Apple only allows 1 phone number to be registered to an AppleID at a time and surprisingly we don't have another unused phone number. I started looking into dummy phone number services, but thought I was going down a real fragile rabbit hole creating dummy phone numbers for dummy email addresses.

At the end I gave up on Control4's solution and installed the @IntrinsicGroup IP driver, but sadly it doesn't have the long press on the TV button to bring up tvOS Control Center and all 4 family members use their AppleTV accounts to track their watch history across all our AppleTV's. But at least there is a "long route" to switch users in the settings app, and that will have to do until we get long press support in the @IntrinsicGroup driver. Fingers crossed!

A potential solution for the root problem would be if Control4 allowed a single email address to be associated to multiple homes. Then emailA would be registered for both houses and we wouldn't have the issue. That would be swell. Is there a feature request voting system somewhere? I'd smash that upvote button.

So there ya have it. Happy to answer any questions, and hopefully this helps someone else out.

@jimbones- this all sounds very logical except that I have a vacation home and main residence and both are working perfectly with the Control4 AppleBridge driver.  A different email address is used for the 2 Control4 accounts (as one would expect) but I only have one AppleID (and, therefore, HomeKit account).  I have multiple AppleTVs at both residences and they work perfectly within Control4. In Apple’s HomeApp (which I never use), I see rooms that pertain to both houses (nicely named so I can see which is my main residence Theatre and which is my Beach House Theatre etc.) as well as all 7 AppleTVs (4 at my Beach House and 3 at my main Residence) and 2 Control4 remotes (presumably one per residence).  I have no idea how this was setup but my dealer did this for me with no problems… the only hassle was that I had to give him one of my Apple devices for half an hour at each House to set things up.  

Both houses have worked flawlessly for a couple of years now (pretty much since the Apple Bridge driver came out).

[jimbones]

7 hours ago, South Africa C4 user said:

@jimbones- this all sounds very logical except that I have a vacation home and main residence and both are working perfectly with the Control4 AppleBridge driver.  A different email address is used for the 2 Control4 accounts (as one would expect) but I only have one AppleID (and, therefore, HomeKit account).  I have multiple AppleTVs at both residences and they work perfectly within Control4. In Apple’s HomeApp (which I never use), I see rooms that pertain to both houses (nicely named so I can see which is my main residence Theatre and which is my Beach House Theatre etc.) as well as all 7 AppleTVs (4 at my Beach House and 3 at my main Residence) and 2 Control4 remotes (presumably one per residence).  I have no idea how this was setup but my dealer did this for me with no problems… the only hassle was that I had to give him one of my Apple devices for half an hour at each House to set things up.  

Both houses have worked flawlessly for a couple of years now (pretty much since the Apple Bridge driver came out).

@South Africa C4 user Hrmm. very interesting! Can you check your vacation HomeKit home to see if there are additional HomeKit users that the home has been shared with? This just gave me another idea around creating dummy accounts to share the homes with. Will test something and share back.