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Potential workaround to more web control of C4 system?


jbs

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This may be nothing new, but I tried it the other day and it worked well for me, so I thought I would mention it here and see if anyone else found it useful.

There's frequently discussion of when C4 will allow either a local computer or a remote machine connected via a browser to control various aspects of the C4 system. In my case, I was looking to be able to change a video matrix to send a different signal to my SlingBox so I could watch content remotely.

This workaround requires having a 4sight subscription. For those who've not used 4sight (I think that's what it's called, apologies if I have it wrong) it allows you to log in to my.control4.com and execute certain commands on the C4 system through your browser. You can adjust lights, execute lighting scenes, change thermostats, work with the security system, etc. It won't let you access things like custom buttons or variables.

What I did was create a lighting scene called ToggleVideoSource. I added a single light to the scene, and defined the scene as changing that light to level 0. I then went into Composer, found that lighting scene in Agents, and added a line of programming that says, "When the lighting scene "ToggleVideoSource" is executed, emit remote command "ToggleInput" to the video matrix.

Then I logged in to my.control.com, executed the lighting scene, and sure enough each time I did it the video source changed.

You could expand the options by having as many different lighting scenes as you want, all of which change that same scene light to 0, but each of which has different "other actions" programmed to execute when the scene is executed.

Obviously this is far from total control via the web, and requires that you've programmed these things in advance (or that you can connect remotely to a machine on your local network running Composer), as well as requiring a subscription to 4Sight. But if there are discrete things you'd like to be able to do remotely (think turning off media devices, starting your DVR recording, etc) then it might come in handy.

Would love to know if others have used similar means to remote control their systems.

--Jason

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  • 1 month later...

Here's the link...its on Thomas' blog http://control4blog.businessnetonline.com/2007/04/11/control4-cgi-tool/ The only thing is if you make it public, be sure to port foward it so that it's a little bit hidden. Unless you just want to use it around the house to use the computer as a controller...and if that's the case, I have a little better solution in my house!

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