Question for C4/Sonos users.

How to bring the functionality of these two great systems together....

1/ Get an iphone or itouch

2/ Get the Sonos app

3/ Get the C4 app

4/ Could someone write a "driver" or bit of code into the C4 app so that when the "music" button is pushed on the C4 GUI, the sonos app is launched? Presto...no wife or daughter confusion!

How do C4 users (who also continue to use Sonos) currently get around this integration? Do you disable the C4 music button? , or better still can you completely remove the C4 music button from the C4 GUI? Or is there another way eg programming C4 to say launch the Sonos desktop controller on an networked MAC when the "button" is pushed....?

I'm sure one could do that on the iPhone. As a practical matter for my household, though, we don't use any Control4 UI besides a light switch and a remote, and the remote is pretty much reserved for turning everything on and off (ever try to actually use a TiVo with a Control4 remote?)

Thanks for your reply BriPink.

So what happens when you push "music" on your remote?

I appreciate the difficulties in getting C4 to control various music/video server solutions. Look at Alan Chows fantastic attempt at control of XBMC!

But Control4 needs to take a good hard look at this important issue IMHO.

I'm a future C4 customer. But the ONE thing stopping me taking the big step and committing to this great product is the lack of flexibility in the C4 GUI and the fact that you can't change the GUI to incorporate the SONOS music server.

Yes I know Sonos is a "locked up" system and it is not necessarily C4's fault here. And sure, C4 has it's own multi room audio and there are business arguments for/against this sort of thing. But there are now Controllers out there that support Sonos (Philips Pronto and now the iphone)

And for a number of reasons, I want to stay with Sonos for audio distribution...

As a future user, THE number one selling point is ease of use. It may seem a real petty point, but the whole Control4 product will fail in my house if there is not a simple solution to flip between Sonos (for music) and C4 (for everything else).:/

There is a simple solution but it requires two remotes which i guess in turn makes it a hard to use solution. It has been done by alot of dealers out there before Control4 integrated rhapsody. Now that it is done there is no point in integrating sonos as Control4 does everything sonos does plus alot more.

Personally i think you should palm off your sonos system to fleebay and utilise the control4 system you are looking at getting. not only will recoup some of your cost but you will get one system that is easy to use. I am not telling you this as a Control4 Distributor but as an intergrator and end user.

I guess the question is how much effort/cost is that worth to you? The C4 solution is good (and is what I went with), but if you have something in place already it may or may not be worth changing over. The 4x4 audio matrix switch from C4 is $1200, the 8x8 $2500, and the wireless speaker points are $250 I believe. Not too bad, but I dont know how much the SONOS stuff runs.

The Rhapsody integration is really nice.. I havent gotten my system yet but saw it at the showroom and have heard rave reviews.

not sure on MSRP pricing. Unfortunately international pricing differs due to import taxes, distributor/dealer margins, etc. Luckily in australia our pricing is pretty low compared to other countries.

wappinghigh: when I push "Music" on my remote I get three lines of Control4 UI that I'll never use (the remote sits next to the TV, where we don't listen to music.)

Which avenue you take really depends on how much you value having a single integrated control solution for everything in the house. For me, that kind of integration is not nearly as important as having the most usable music solution possible, and that's Sonos.

Thanks everyone for your replies.

First of all this is why I want to stay with Sonos for music: and I'm obviously not alone on this one!

Sonos

1/ Allows distribution of higher resolution files (ie >mp3)

2/ Allows ongoing use of hi end gear (particularly DAC's: I have 2) :the sonos zone players feed digital out

3/ Some mods are already available to improve the sound output even more

4/ Allows user upgrading of software via the net (doesn't require additional visits from installer)

5/ new zones can be added and relabeled really easily

6/ Works seamlessly with my itunes library (ie extremely mac friendly)

7/ Can be controlled directly from my networked mac's using a specific software package

(ie has a "software controller") which is not browser dependant

8/ Has stood the test of time. I have spent considerable cost in time and money perfecting the networking and setup

OK. So I want to keep it. And I don't want C4 interfering in what is already a very good multiroom audio set up

Rather than having unusable code appearing after the "music" button press, can an installer encode C4 to do something different on the "music" press. I have a separate Audio Visual amp for home theatre in the family room. So on pressing "music" could say my AV amp be switched on and set to a radio station (it has a built in tuner), or better still could it play and control music from a docked ipod in the C4 ipod dock?

If so: great, I'd accept this. I'll just control it all from an iphone. It's just a pity that the C4 GUI "labels" can't be altered just a bit to help "useability". That is in the above scenario say changing the "music" label on the opening screen to "ipod". I mean how easy would it be to add this functionality?:|

From what I understand I dont see why there would be any problem doing what you say. You could create a fake room and essentially the C4 system would just 'think' that when you press the music button it should start the receiver & switch to the tuner or ipod dock, and you could control the C4 ipod dock, you just wouldnt be able to control the SONOS hardware/choose which rooms to play in without switching to the SONOS interface.

Thanks akg4y

I'm just wondering if someone from C4 could confirm this about the ipod doc.

Just how is it integrated and controlled by C4 software?

Thanks again to all who are helping me

I'm not sure I understand your question, the new iPod dock was developed in house by Control4, and is controlled over Ethernet.

1/ When you dock in the ipod is C4 "launched"?

2/ Can you choose a track on the ipod whilst it is in the dock and if you select "play" does the track start "playing" through the selected source? (ie is music automatically loaded like you can program C4 to automatically select the correct settings and play a movie when you load a DVD.)

3/ Once docked can you navigate the full ipod menu via the C4 touch screens?

4/ When doing this can you still navigate via the ipod (ie is it truely "2-way")

5/ When (if) controlling via C4: For track selection and play, do you go in via the main C4 "music" button? and to play ipod videos via the main C4 "video" button, or is there just a general "ipod" button created by the C4 software?

I've tried to get the answers to these questions via trawling the website, pdf's on the product and this forum. There are none!

....See why a future customer can get a bit confused just how "customable" the C4 GUI really is.....:|

1) It works similarly to how the iPort driver works, if you've ever seen one of those. There is no 'launch' per se. When it's docked, you must still select the iPod as a device in the Control4 system, so the Control4 system can route the audio to the room you're in.

2) No, you can't choose a track on the iPod screen while it is docked. You can certainly choose what you want to play (or keep playing what you already were playing in the car, etc.) on the iPod, then press 'play' within the Control4 system to continue.

3) What happens is that when you dock your iPod in the Control4 Dock for iPod, the display shows 'Control4' on it, and like every dock I've ever seen, navigation on the iPod itself is disabled. All navigation from that point on happens on a Control4 UI (i.e. on a touchpanel, on an on-screen, on a 10-button LCD Keypad, or on a System Remote.

You choose what you want to play (using the SAME navigation structure as you use on the iPod itself) using the control4 UI, and when you select to play, it starts playing. It's controlled from that point on like any other device (play/pause, stop, next, prev, etc. all work).

4) Yes, you can navigate the 'browse' portion of the iPod dock while listening to music, just as you can on the iPod. You can't do that as mentioned before with the iPod's touchscreen itself. Again, this is pretty standard. Apple's protocol doesn't let you use the iPod screen while it's docked with a dock that does 'control mode' as the Control4 dock / iPort / etc. docks do.

5) There are separate entries for the Control4 Dock for iPod under Music and Video. If you have multiple docks, they will show up in each category, and can be selected and controlled independently.

The GUI is not 'customizeable' per se, i.e. you can't change how things are arranged on the iPod dock screen, etc.

A couple of things not mentioned, as songs are playing, you can view the metadata (song / album / artist info -- and cover art on the 7" and 10.5" touchpanels) on the 'Now Playing' page, as well as the song position (1 of 20, etc.), and playing time and time remaining. Cover art is an option that can be disabled, as it does take a few seconds to retrieve each cover from the dock, and during that time, no transport control (prev/next/pause) is accepted by the dock, although it is queued by the driver.

Good questions. Any other questions, let me know.

RyanE

Edited to add:

Wiring for the Control4 Dock for iPod is: Ethernet for control to the dock location to a network port, Stereo out for audio, Component and Composite out for video. Thus, if you want to distribute the dock audio throughout the house via your distributed audio system, you need line-level stereo run from the dock location to the multi-room audio distribution point.

Since the control is already distributed to all UI devices down to the system remote, it allows you to dock your iPod somewhere convenient, and then listen to that music in any room (or all rooms!) of your home.

It's quite a slick solution, if I do say so myself.

OK Ryan!!!

.....also users can then set up to play their non DRM tracks via Sonos or C4

and now play and control all their DRM tracks (I have quite a few) from an ipod

(I've been distributing my DRM tracks to date from a mac-> into line level input into Sonos)

I've been looking for an easier and better solution for a LONGGGGGG time!

...AWESOME!!!!!!

Yes, as long as the DRM tracks you have can be played via the iPod (i.e. they're iTunes or something else the iPod can normally play).

The audio out from the iPod to the Control4 dock is stereo, there is no digital audio output from the iPod, and because of this, you can obviously only play a single track from the iPod at once, because you're using the iPod as the 'player', even though this 'player' is being controlled via Control4.

RyanE

Cool!

It will be alot easier to control an ipod (than itunes or an Apple TV)...

This is unreal Ryan...congrats!

Thanks.

It's actually not my product, I'm not on that team, but I have been involved in a small way in making it come to pass, so it's been fun.

RyanE

Ryan...could I just follow up on a couple of question /answers if I may.

1/ The ipod "classic" as you explained gets "disabled" once it is connected in the doc. But does the same thing happen with the ipod touch? Can you use the other touch applications whilst it sits its in the doc?

2/ If there are say 3-4 ipods/touches all networked on their docs in the system, does the C4 software group all the music tracks together as one library or are they seen as "separate" devices.

Thanks again Ryan.

iPods are seen as separate units, since they're the 'device' that's selected within Control4, and since that device is 'dedicated' to playing in a certain zone, and you couldn't really mix and match songs from one dock and the other, since one could be already playing it's songs in a zone.

Besides that, the UI for the dock (the list you choose from) is the actual menu from the iPod itself, and it doesn't know about any other iPods in the system. You can choose which dock you wish to navigate and listen to, as long as it's audio is available in your current room.

As far as controlling an iTouch / iPhone while docked, I just asked one of the engineers on that project, and he said that Apple's model is that once it's docked, it brings up the 'dock icon', and you shouldn't be able to do anything else on the unit while it's docked.

RyanE

^^^I know in my BMW the "dock icon" appears when I hook it to the USB adapter, but simply hitting the one and only button on the front of the iPod touch it goes to the main menu and has all functionality available.

I should caution you that I consistantly get my iPod to crash while browsing web while playing audio.

Dear Ilovec4! Next time you see a C4 display/rep could I trouble you to plug in your itouch and give it a burn and see what happens. If you could confirm you can run other apps (even c4's) whilst charging....Id love this feature. I'd get 2-3 C4 docs if this was the case...thanks!

I believe that the intention of Apple (and maybe why you're seeing crashes) is that you *NOT* run other apps while in the dock.

Apple specifically will not sanction applications that run 'in the background' on the iPhone/iTouch, because it's not designed for that. Listening to music in the dock (with the iPhone/iTouch communicating to the dock) while doing other things I don't believe is supported.

RyanE

I think the use of the iPod is the only feature allowed run in the background, but I could be wrong.

I can run almost every other app just fine, it is only the browser that causes crashes, and usually only with 5 or more tabs open - I guess it really isn't that big of a concern.

I am very familiar with the whole "no applications run in the background" rule, that is why my using an iPhone was short lived. It is ludacris to me that they don't allow this to happen, but that is another conversation for another forum, on another day.....*sigh*

Oh, wappinghigh, I will give it a whirl next time I have the opportunity. I don't know when that will be, but I am curious about this as well.

Hi

can control4 run scripts?

i have found a system called HomeSeer which has sonos control

and all it does is have a basic interface with the play, pause, stop, volume...

and when one of the buttons is pressed it calles a command from a script file that a 3rd party wrote which send the command via http (the network0 to the sonos player

can contol4 use the same script file?