Well, this weekend we will find out. The FedEx guy just dropped an HC800 off, ahead of the anticipated delivery date.

I’ll make sure and let everyone know how things go with the new controller, and how much the GUI is improved with these new processors.

Control4 released this promo video and it looks mighty impressive. I have high hopes for this thing.

You can click on the new page you see above (Can C4 really be DIY) to get the full scoop, but here I’ll tell you this. These guys are great. They can be as hands on or hands off as you want. The understand that us DIY guys exist, and they cater to people like you and I. Guys who want to get their hands dirty a little bit. They won’t refuse to help you identify equipment bought on flea-bay or C4Forums, they won’t charge you $400 to add your new Bluray Player, etc…

They will be posting things on the blog from time to time. Make them feel welcome. They can both be contacted directly at jim@c4diy.com or rich@c4diy.com.

Welcome guys…we’re happy to have you!

1) Create a number variable, with appropriate name (“Panic” in our case)
2) Figure out what you want to do to trigger the event. We used a triple tap on a six button keypad.
3) Go to the keypad, and on that key (for 1.8 and later) look for the triple tap button. If you don’t have the triple tap feature, you’ll have to program around that using a variable that counts taps, or just program it on a press/release
4) “When the six button is triple tapped..” should be in the middle of your screen now.
5) On the right hand side, look for your variable. (“Panic”)
6) You’ll want to drag over the following elements:
Increment the variable +1
Set the variable to 0
If the variable = 1
If the variable = 0
7) Create a timer, with a name (“Panic”), that’s repeating, and a duration of 2 seconds.
Go to the timer on the left side, and choose “When the Panic timer expires”
9) On the right hand side, choose your actions. In our example, we want to toggle some lights on and off. Note that you can’t easily toggle a light scene and they take some time to execute, so you might pick a few key elements and toggle those. Drag the toggle lines of code to the middle.
10) Go back to the variable programming for Panic. On the right hand side, choose the timer and drag “start the panic timer” to the middle.
11) If you want to change LED colors to indicate whether or not the Panic mode is activated, you can drag in that code as well under 1 for on and 0 for off.
12) When finished, here’s what our code looks like on the six button:
On the triple tap event:
Increment the panic variable +1
If the variables>Panic is equal to 1
Set an LED color to red
Start the panic timer
Email a notification
If the variables>Panic is equal to 2
Set the variables> Panic to 0
Stop the panic timer
Set an LED color to blue

How are you guys and gals putting timers to good use?

If you’re not familiar with this, watch the demo video below.

The unit he is speaking in to is not the final product. The final product includes a touchpanel from them (looks really nice) as pictured below.

If you have any questions or any specific things you would like me to try and post video of, let me know in the comments.

Oh yeah, and while I can’t say a lot right now, there is more than this from these guys in the pipeline. The part I’m most excited about won’t be available for a little while, but this is a company we need to pay attention to.

The first thing we want to do is create a scheduled event, call it “Maid Code Set” if you want. Have it repeat when you want (ours is weekly on Wednesday), and at the start time you want (11AM). Create another repeating scheduled event “Maid Code Delete”, with your end time (2PM).

Now under programming and scheduler, click the “Maid Code Set” event. On the right, under actions, choose the Kwikset lock. Under device specific command you have “Set name, code”. Choose that command, and then type in the user id (make sure its not being used already) and the name,code – 15 and maid,1234 for example. Drag that to the middle column. This will set a code for the maid at the start time.

To revoke access, under the “Maid Code Delete” event, choose the lock and select “delete code”. Type in the User ID for the maid (15 in our case), and then drag that to the middle. Now when 2PM rolls around, this scheduled event will execute and delete the code from the lock. When the code is attempted to be used after that time, it won’t work, denying access.

Voila! Note: Use this programming at your own risk! We can’t be held responsible and are just giving you a programming idea. Enjoy!

The Kindle Fire tablet is supported as well, but is currently waiting approval from Amazon’s marketplace. When it is released for Kindle, you can find it in Amazon’s app store. You can download the Android app from the Android Market here.

As with the iPhone/iPad apps, the 4store is not supported and neither are themes at this time.

The app is free but requires an available device license or site license in your Control4 system. These licenses can be purchased from your dealer. It also requires that your Android device be on Android 2.1 (Eclair) or later, and your Control4 system be on 2.1.1 or later.

Today Extra Vegetables announced an update to the Pandonos app in the 4Store.

All your existing Pandora stations are listed on the App. Simply select a station from the list and it will start playing.

Now Playing cover art and info is shown on the same screen. The familiar Thumbs Up and Thumbs down buttons are available and now new in Version 1.1 the ‘Bookmark’ button.

Edit and Delete Stations
By pressing the ‘Edit’ button next to any of the stations you can either change the name or delete the station from your Pandora account.

Add New Stations
The Pandonos App also allows you to search and create new Pandora stations from Control4. When you press the Create New Station button a full keyboard appears allowing you to search for an Artist or Title to start a new station. The results are then presented as a list to allow you to make your selections. It’s the full Pandora experience!

Improved and streamlined
The App has had a major re-write and is now faster to load and uses less resources – well worth the upgrade.

The update to the Pandonos app is FREE, provided you already use the Extra Vegetables Sonos driver to integrate with Control4. Want to get in on the action? Call or email your Control4 dealer and point them to http://www.extravegetables.com/products/sonos

Remember, Extra Vegetables is a solutions provider for Control4, so they support and update their drivers and applications outside of Control4. Your dealer should direct sales and support questions for their drivers to Extra Vegetables and not Control4.

There are two different ways. If you’re willing to spend the extra money for it, you can have dedicated outlet switches programmed into your system and stored with your holiday decorations. It doesn’t cause an issue for them to be offline most of the year, and when you plug them in they’ll come back online without any special intervention (and automatically update the firmware if needed on themselves). We’ve created a basic holiday scheduled event that turns on the lights starting on 12/1 with those outlet switches, ending on 1/1 the following year and running from 30 minutes past sunset until midnight and repeating daily. The scheduled event looks like this in Composer.

When this scheduled event happens, it triggers a light scene. This light scene can include any combination of lights and doesn’t have to be just the outlet switches. Here, the porch lights and a few other accent lights are turned off for better effect of the holiday lighting. The great thing about using it this way is, you can set up a light scene including the holiday lights and have it execute year round if you want – if the outlet switches aren’t plugged in, they wont execute the on/off.

Additionally, you can use the outlet switches for other things for the rest of the year, and for the holidays have it included in the special lighting scene and just move it to a different location in your house. As long as it can talk to the rest of the zigbee mesh, you can plug in holiday lights to it and it will be part of that scene. When that scheduled event has run its course (hopefully before March, right?) – simply move it back to it’s location for the rest of the year and have it be part of some other light scene. Depending on your light scenes, you may want to remove it from other scenes though – for example, you dont want to turn on your inflatable Frosty the Snowman when you turn on the living room lights.

How are you using Control4 to deck the halls?

This is simple to do, but it does require a few steps. The first thing you do is jump down to the programming tab in Composer, and in the “Device Events” pane in the top left, select the keypad you’re going to be adding this functionality to. Just below that pane you’ll see in an image of the keypad. Select the button you’re going to work with, then select the “Press” action.

(I realize in this screenshot I have “Release” selected. At this point you want to make sure you are working with “Press”. We’ll get to release later)

Now, in the “Device Actions” pane in the top right, select the room you’re wanting to control the volume in. Down in the lower right section select the commands tab, and in the bottom drop down select volume down (or up). Below that drop down select “Start”.

Drag that line of programming into the middle of the screen. Now you need to go back to the “Keypad Events” pane and select “Release”, but instead of selecting “Start” below the volume up (or down) command, select “Stop”. This way when the keypad is pressed it starts sending a continual “Volume Up” (or down) command, and upon release it stops sending that command. As the button is held down the volume will control to adjust, and stop upon release.

I sat down on the side of the road, pulled out my cell phone and proceeded to turn on the TV in my master bedroom. About 20 seconds after I noticed it had turned off. I turned it back on. Then I turned on the light. After they turned off I turned on the music, then turned the light back on, and proceeded to do this back and forth with my wife until finally she was fed up. In a frustrated state she goes and grabs her phone to call me and tell the system is on the fritz, when she sees all the missed calls and realizes it is probably me doing it intentionally. Ultimately I ended up getting her awake, and getting a ride to save me from a 3 hour walk…but it was a lot of work on my part. That’s when I decided to do some creative programming.

I now have it setup so that a simple email sent to my homes email (thanks to Alan Chow for this wonderful driver) executes a series of events such as what I executed earlier, and will automatically continue to turn on music/TV/lights, until the person I’m targeting (I set one up for each guest bedroom and my master bedroom in case we have company over that I would rather wake) does a press and hold on a certain keypad just inside the house from the garage door. I’m hoping I don’t get stranded anywhere again, but if I do…I know it will be a lot easier to wake someone up at my house and get a ride home.

As I typed this I just thought of an addition I can do. Have my location appear in text as a pop-up on my touchpanels…man I love this stuff!

Thanks for reading…I thought I’d share another creative way to utilize your Control4 system.