Want to replace control 4

I'm very new to home automation, but the subject is fascinating to me and a growing hobby of mine. I currently have a Control4 box in my house, with a 5 zone amp, and a wireless music bridge. When Control4 works it seems to be a fine system, but as of lately I've been getting a lot of error codes, time outs and unresponsiveness. I called the control 4 dealer who originally installed the unit and he informed me there was a software update available for a price. Long story short, I didn't like his approach and I'm looking into something different. We also recently purchased the Phillips hue bridge, and are transitioning rooms in the house to wireless hue lights. At 30 dollars a bulb, I've decided to add them as lights go out. Now control 4 has a plugin that will control the philips bridge, but again I will have to pay the dealer to install. We have a nest thermosat, and three Apple TV 's, and three tv's set up to run through control 4. I'm going to add an additional 2 zones of speakers, so will be getting a new 7 or 8 zone amp. I also have an alarm system setup that isn't currently communicating with control 4, but would like to tie it together. I'm wondering if this platform can handle what I'm currently doing with control 4. Forgive my naïveté and respond accordingly.

Hi and welcome!

I don't have any experience of Control4 particularly, other than when I asked them to quote for something a few years back and it was extortionate!

Indigo is pretty good at all of the items you have mentioned, specifically:

Philips Hue - Works brilliantly (I have 6 rooms with Hue in various guises, outdoor lights, lamps, main living room lights, bedroom lights etc..) Since the bulbs are so expensive I actually use a Fibaro Dimmer for light fittings that have any more than 3 bulbs. (Bulbs are £15'ish each in the UK, Fibaro dimmer is £45) as it works out more cost effective, andI like that you retain control from the light switch, which you don't get with Philips. (If you switch it off at the switch, you can't switch it back on again from the Philips Hue app).
Nest Thermostat - I used to have one, again it worked brilliantly with no issues.

I'm not sure how the AV kit is wired in via Control4 particularly, perhaps you could explain a little better?
Alarm systems can be integrated but depends on what alarm system you have.

You'll also need to factor in the cost of a Mac Mini, unless you are running Indigo on a spare Mac. This needs to stay on and running 100% of the time.
You can also integrate Apple's HomeKit and Amazon Alexa into Indigo via a 3rd party integration (lots of posts on this forum) to control your home with Siri or Alexa - very neat!

Hopefully some of that helps!

I currently have a Control4 box in my house, with a 5 zone amp, and a wireless music bridge … We have a nest thermosat, and three Apple TV 's, and three tv's set up to run through control 4. I'm going to add an additional 2 zones of speakers, so will be getting a new 7 or 8 zone amp. I also have an alarm system setup that isn't currently communicating with control 4, but would like to tie it together. I'm wondering if this platform can handle what I'm currently doing with control 4.

Hi Spoof,

I have Control4 and Indigo. If I could ditch C4, I would in a heartbeat. For all the same reasons you listed. It's a powerful system, but their business model is infuriating.

I started with Indigo and then "upgraded" to C4 because I wanted to do more. I wanted to control an alarm, integrate door locks, whole home audio, and more. One of the key elements, for me, was actually a simple thing: light switches. Insteon's switches had the functionality I wanted, but they kept failing. Z-wave was way more reliable, but I couldn't replicate the behavior. Control4 switches and keypads gave me what I wanted. So for me to switch back to Indigo full time, it's both a matter of software capability and hardware availability.

On the software side, the forthcoming Indigo 7 sounds like it may address many of my concerns. Little information has been released, but from the teasing on Twitter, it sounds like locks may be supported, whole home audio might work (via Airfoil / Airplay at least—not sure about matrix support), and a bunch more.

But until more information is available, it still seems like there's a level of integration possible with C4 that's not quite achievable with Indigo. I'm frustrated by C4 every single day and desperately hoping that one day I can ditch it in favor of Indigo (come on Indigo 7!), but so far I haven't figured out a way to do it.

If anyone else has made the transition, please share your experiences!

Brendan

[jay (support)]

whole home audio might work (via Airfoil / Airplay at least—not sure about matrix support), and a bunch more.

Airfoil/Airplay already works with Indigo 6...

Airfoil/Airplay already works with Indigo 6...

But they have to be running on the same machine, no? I need to be able to control Airfoil on multiple Macs. And also to be able to integrate non-airplay sources.

Further investigation on these forums suggest that matrix control is doable, but it requires programming via a serial bridge plugin. So far all reference to that plugin I've found is 4-5 years old.

[jay (support)]

Airfoil/Airplay already works with Indigo 6...

But they have to be running on the same machine, no? I need to be able to control Airfoil on multiple Macs. And also to be able to integrate non-airplay sources.

To use the plugin, yes. However, you can use AppleScript (and remote tells) to control Airfoil on other Macs.

Further investigation on these forums suggest that matrix control is doable, but it requires programming via a serial bridge plugin. So far all reference to that plugin I've found is 4-5 years old.

Not sure what specifically you're talking about here.

But, this completely illustrates the difference between Indigo and Control 4. With the former, you're provided a "toolkit" with which to build your automation system. Almost anything is possible, but some things require scripts/programming to make happen. You add the hardware bits and use the tools provided to tie it all together. With Control 4, you pay a lot more $ to have all the tying together (including some custom hardware) done for you.

Control 4 doesn't really position themselves as a DIY product but rather as a professionally installed system. Indigo doesn't compete with professionally installed systems - that's not our target market. That's a very crowded market and requires a significantly different business model. We cater to the higher-end DIY market, where our users are slightly more technical and who like to do the work themselves (call them smart home "makers"). We understand this market and we enjoy working with it.

[Jay, should you merge these two identical threads?]


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I have Sonos throughout my house and the Sonos plugin for Indigo works well with that for play pause mute/unmute individual speakers
(although I am not sure you change playlists from within Indigo, I just use my iPhone or iPad for that anyway)

FWIW, if you're remotely technically minded I'd avoid both of those and go to Openhab.org.

I realise posting this here is a bit provocative but I'm very very very annoyed that Indigo stopped supporting new devices. It's okay if the delay was going to be a couple of months, but e.g. the Aeotec Multisensor6 has been out for many moons now (I've had mine since feb) and Jay and Matt refused to support it (and locked threads complaining about this decision).

I was honestly pretty happy with my Indigo setup, but I had a choice: either stop with my house automation project (since my local suppliers stopped selling Indigo-6 compatible products, and in fact I accidentally bought several I couldn't use), or migrate to another solution. I chose the latter, which was a massive pain (and still isn't complete yet), but frankly Openhab does everything Indigo does (and more) and on top of everything else, it's free. I bought Indigo for myself and recommended it to my parents, who also bought it. I really wish I hadn't.

Perhaps I7 will be incredible and I'll rethink my position, but I doubt it.

For what it's worth from my side of things i'd avoid openHAB.. i was equally frustrated with the lack of device support in indigo so tried openHAB for a few weeks. I had nothing but bother with z-wave queueing issues and errors and problems before eventually deciding that it just wasn't a suitable replacement. I also found the support to be rather unhelpful.

The grass is always greener on the other side as they say..

Maybe I'm missing something here, but why wouldn't you want to run iTunes on your Indigo box? I tried doing it because I thought it would be more convenient, but when I embraced using it via Indigo controls, everything just fell into place.

Indigo can control your whole house audio several different ways, ranging from AppleScripted Airplay speaker control to 3rd party plugins for whole house audio switchers that look every bit as good as professional grade systems.

And I run Indigo on a 2009 Mini that's also my iTunes server. ALL my Airplay problems disappeared when I moved from consumer grade Airport Base Stations to a UniFi Wifi AP. Bonus: There's a UniFi Plugin that talks to Indigo and it's awesome!

I've used most everything out there, from free to VERY expensive; a good bit of it is still running in some capacity in my home. EVERYTHING available has its weaknesses and strengths. As to OpenHAB; if you like to code, and if you like Java specifically give it a try. If you like Windows try Homeser, CQC (get your wallet for those two), Housebot, or any of the others, there's a ton. Want a "Hub"? Try an ISY or Vera. Find what works best for you and your home. The free stuff is -well- free, so try it. The expensive stuff has a trial, so try it. You'll quickly start to narrow your scope and find out what you do and don't like.

Is Indigo perfect? No, of course not, nothing is. Matt and Jay are TWO guys. Two guys that value quality over quantity. Alone, they will never be able to support everything, nor should they. What Is supported (which is a lot BTW), will be top-shelf, however.

Specifically about OpenHAB, I appreciate the concept. I love open source but it isn't the great savior that everyone wants it to be. As an example, read the struggles of this person trying to sync a light with the sun to see if it's something you wish to tackle:

https://community.openhab.org/t/simply- ... n-openhab2

That's a 30-second effort in Indigo...

Terry


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I'm not saying that OH2 is perfect (I'm struggling with some stuff too, and the documentation is pretty poor) but it's not really fair to compare something which is under very active development and in beta to I6 (unless you're somehow in a private beta for I7?) You could do your example in OH1 I think (I dunno for sure though as I shifted to OH2 a couple of weeks ago)

And of course it depends on your use-case, but at least I CAN get Openhab to work with the available devices whereas there's nothing I can do with Indigo since we're totally dependent on two guys who refuse to give a timescale for when support is coming. In these circumstances, and after >6 months of waiting, I don't really see that I had any choice but to tear my existing system up and start again from scratch. I'm pretty pissed off, and would strongly urge others to think twice about becoming so dependent on such a small and insular outfit.

[matt (support)]

Moyse – It is not appropriate to use the Indigo forums to actively encourage our users to use other products, as you have done on this thread. We are very busy right now and don't want to have to be forum police/moderators, so we would appreciate it if you refrain from such posts. Otherwise, you will be banned from the forum. Besides, if you are no longer an Indigo user (as you claim) then there really isn't any point to visiting our forums.

We understand your frustration with the lack of the Aeotec MultiSensor 6 support, and we hope to have a major new release of Indigo soon.

Well, this was a thread about which product to use (and, if we're talking about decorum etc then personally I think it's even less appropriate to decide to abandon your users and leave them with non-functional equipment) ... but fine, it's your forum and I'll butt out.

FWIW the reason I came back was to see if I7 was finally out, because there were aspects of I6 that I really, really liked.