Archive for September, 2010
Are light switch LED lights keeping you up? Here’s your cure!
Last Updated on Saturday, 2 October 2010 10:59 Written by Joe Whitaker Wednesday, 29 September 2010 06:12
How To: Set Dimmers / Switches / Keypad to dark at night
Here is a quick tutorial on how to have all the led’s on a Control4 dimmer / switch / keypad turn to black at night.
First you need to create your schedule. There will need to be 2, 1 is for the day mode, the second is for the night mode. Here is an example. Notice the 2 schedules for LED Colors On & LED Colors Off.
Next you will need to set your variables.
Now we get to do some easy programming! First we need to tell composer that when LED lights is true to black out all th led lights. You need to do this for every led that you want to turn black. This is how it should look.
Now we need to add the programming to allow them to light Back up during the day. This needs to be in the same script as the above programming. Note that these are programmed based on the on and off status of the device.
Next go into programming, scroll down to your scheduler, and select led colors on schedule. For led colors on you will select set variable led light = true. For led colors off you will select set variable led light = false. Here’s an example for this. Don’t forget to go to your led lights off scheduler to set the variable back to false!
All done right? Well not really. This works fine for Dimmers and Switches but for a Keypad as soon as you touch a button, the button will light up. So here’s the fix.
Since we are still in programming scroll up to a key pad in the room you want all the led’s to black out. Select one of the buttons on the Keypad. Check the release on that button. You first will drag in a conditional. In the right pane you will select the variable led lights again. Select the conditionals tab and check false.
And now the last piece of the puzzle. In the right pane scroll back up to the keypad and select the button you are programming on. Select all current and change the led color to black.
Now you are all done. These last steps need to be done on all individual buttons on keypads you want to black out. Now that you’re finished GET SOME SLEEP!
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Pool Control is slated for a full return.
Last Updated on Saturday, 2 October 2010 11:00 Written by Joe Whitaker Tuesday, 28 September 2010 10:04
Also at Cedia this year Control4 show the revitalization of pool control. While the product is not yet finished i can tell you a couple things about it.
Stability. With the use of the new flash interface it seemed on the surface to be much more stable. I remember the days of loss of focus in the pool control UI which at times was frustrating. This new version seemed to flow very well, was extremely responsive, and was just plain pretty. When will we see this? No official release as of yet, but the answer was soon.
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The Return of the Video Wall!
Last Updated on Saturday, 2 October 2010 11:00 Written by Joe Whitaker Tuesday, 28 September 2010 09:58
Yup you heard that right. The video wall will be back and in an even better way. At Cedia this year a newly revamped Video Wall was shown at the C4 booth that made me drool and made me wonder why it wasn’t done this way in the first place.
For those of you new guys, or those not familiar with the video wall let me explain. A Video Wall is used in an environment where multiple displays are used to “on the fly” switch which display  is using which source. This is very common in theaters where 3 displays are used, sports rooms where 3 to 5 displays are used, and small sports bars. When i say on the fly switching i mean that if display 1 has Espn on, display 2 has Cnn on, and display 3 has Tnt on with the press of a button you can send any of the sources to any other screen and the audio will follow your main viewing screen.
The equipment required to pull this off is multiple displays, multiple sources, a video switch with enough inputs and outputs to handle all the displays and sources, and of course in this case a Control4 system.
So whats new in this incarnation of the Video Wall? Previously the Video Wall was set for 3 displays only. NOW the Video Wall will support 3, 5, and 7 screens. This broadens the spectrum of applications that can can now branch from residential installs to small digital signage applications.
I personally have missed the video wall since 2.0. It was a great option and i felt that a good handful of consumers lost some great functionality just to advance in technology. Well no worries now as we know it is coming back!
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