I have a Control4 system and am unsatisfied with the black box nature of the system and an audio amplifier that won’t turn on/light up and being told by the technician that the device needs to be replaced. I’d like to have a system that can be more amenable to troubleshooting or that I can fix in the future. I’m decent with analog electronics and can hack through a bit of code if I have to, but I’d like to have my audio system working again quickly and don’t want to do more harm than good. My time is also pretty limited right now. In this context, I’m wondering if there is someone here who lives in Long Island, NY and might be willing to help (I’m happy to pay for your time) me to upgrade to openHAB, while preserving the wiring/speakers and as much of the rest of my audio and video system as possible. Anyone interested or have suggestions?
Before you begin the journey you should have an idea of what hardware that you want to use as a replacement for your Control4 whole house amplifier and see if openHAB supports it. There are several supported options including AmpliPi, Monoprice/Dayton, Nuvo (discontinued Grand Concerto), Russound, etc.
Then you should determine what you what openHAB to do with the amplifier (simple control vs. automation). If you just want to control the zones with a phone app, that is pretty straightforward. If you want the bathroom zone to come on automatically at 6:00 am M-F, switch to source input 1, and start playing your favorite Spotify playlist, there will be some coding of rules involved.
I’m in the same position as Kyle but in the UK. I started this journey a couple of weeks ago. So far I have purchased an ODROID with openHab and a few other bits already installed. With considerable help from the supplier, I can now communicate with the C4 amplifier but haven’t yet progressed to doing anything useful - still exploring.
I haven’t yet looked at the coding implications of this switch and my last serious coding was more than 50 years ago in Fortran! So that’s all a bit scary. My system communicates with a Lutron lighting system. We have multi-room links. We have a uniquely UK problem in that BBC radio is soon to terminate its feed to TuneIn. We listen mostly to BBC radio so this is a major problem to overcome; so far the signs are not promising that C4 will come up with a timely solution.
We should stay in touch as we progress (and regress!) through this switch.
I am getting messages that suggest that Home Automation might be a better alternative but I haven’t yet looked into that.
Three years ago I also had a similar challenge - I was no longer satisfied with the Closed Shop of my Crestron system and the inability to easily get away from Flash and to easily do changes. Main Part of Crestron was obviouly the Audio control in 8 rooms. I have installed a battery of 8 Raspberry Pi’s with HifiBerry installed on top in order to have a more decent Audio quality. Kodi is installed on each Pi to stream radio or music from the library. All integrated in the OpenHab interface to control but also accessible directly from the Kodi Interface. Nice benefit: Integration with other items like switches. Switching on the bathroom light also turns on the Audio.
Obviously the audio enthusiasts might hear a difference between the output that the Pi&HifiBerry produces versus a Crestron/Control4 audio amplifier.
Can you tell me more about how you are communicating with the C4 amp?
Amen.
I looked for a solution that would allow me to control my Control 4 C4 amp when I first started using openHAB a couple of years ago. The closest I found was GitHub - SH-Matt/OpenHab-with-Control4: work-in-progress files for an openhab install that directly communicates with some Control4 components, which is based on an earlier openHAB version and was beyond me at that time.
I’m still interested in finding a solution. I have all of my home automation on openHAB, but still control my AV systems with Control 4. The C4 amp is the big reason I haven’t moved on there as well. It is wire to speakers in the ceilings in 4 different rooms and works great, other than being captive to a closed system whose representatives want $125 to make small changes.
Buy google home’s or google max or google mini.
Just plug them into your Spotify account and be done with it.
Yeah I can ask google to turn lights, fans aircons on all controlled by openHAB aswell.
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