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Super Technical Newsletter from Control4: “Smart Home Pro – Tech”
| Hey, Smart Home Professionals:
You want more technical news from Control4? This is it! Welcome to the first edition of Smart Home Pro – Tech, the monthly newsletter for individual technical professionals who specialize at integrating Smart Home technology into their customers’ homes and lifestyles. In each edition, you get news about Control4 Support, Education, Drivers and more.
This is our first crack at it, so it’s important we get your feedback! Is it worth your time? Does it help you do your job better, faster and smarter? After you finish reading through, tell us what you think from the feedback link below. Let us know you like it and what you want more of, and we will keep it going.
-Ashley Kimsey
Education Operations Specialist
Control4 |
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What’s the best way to design Zigbee for success? Last year, our lead engineers over Zigbee met with Support and Technical Field Managers to document the formula that results in the most reliable Zigbee networks. We now teach this formula in the classroom, and now you can learn it, too. The new “Zigbee Design Guide and Best Practices” completely replaces the previous “Zigbee Best Practices” document. It overturns some of the old recommendations, and clarifies others. Best of all, it breaks down mesh design into simple, easy-to-remember principles for use in every project. It will increase your success rate with Zigbee, so read it today. |
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Your success with Control4 technology drives our support team. To serve you even better, we have made it so that you can add and verify your mobile number and home email address on your profile. Support will soon begin using mobile numbers to identify callers more quickly. And you can opt to receive content like this newsletter at your home email address instead of, or in addition to, your work email address.
Complete your profile on the portal >
Sometimes electronics fail or arrive to you flawed. When it happens, you send it back with a “Return Merchandise Authorization” or RMA. If your company is in a country that Control4 serves directly (not through a distribution partner), here’s a tip for how to avoid waiting in the call queue.
Premier Dealers – If your dealership has premier status (Gold, Platinum or Diamond), use Online RMA. A quick web form escorts you through the process…shipping label and all.
Online RMA Form >
Authorized Dealers – Use chat. Control4 Support’s chat agents can process an RMA quickly for you with a much shorter wait time than the phones offer.
Chat with Support >
Here are some noteworthy articles recently added or updated in the Support Knowledgebase.
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Along with recent updates to the Centralized Lighting product line comes a big update to its online certification, too. The new version has shorter modules, better audio and a structured approach that makes the concepts much easier to learn. In order to purchase from the Centralized Lighting product line, your dealership must have at least one full-time employee who has this certification. (The 2012 edition of this certification still qualifies through March of 2020.) Up your career value and your skill set by getting CL certified.
Add it to your learning plan today >
Here are some noteworthy new Smart Skills on 4K Video Matrix Switches. Learn how to plan and implement video distribution systems from the Smart Skills 4K series. These Smart Skills are a bit longer because they get in fairly deep, so we recommend them in this sequence.
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At a class at ISE we asked the 25 dealers in attendance if they knew about the “Room Control” driver. No one did. You need to check it out right now.
Here are three amazing use cases it can do that used to require programming:
- Volume – Room Control has connections for VOLUME UP and VOLUME DOWN. No more complex programming. Just connect a keypad button to the driver.
- House Off – Add an instance of the Room Control driver and configure it with multiple rooms. Now you can connect a keypad button to its ROOM OFF connection, or call it from a single line in programming.
- Play a Station – Programming a keypad button to play a station has always been complex. Room Control simplifies this, too. Just select a station in one of the five Preset Source fields and then connect the button to a PRESET 1 through 5.
Room Control is in the online drivers. Search for it by name, then read the documentation. You’ll get back the time you spend learning it on the very next job you do.
By popular request, here is a list of some of the most helpful new drivers in the online database.
- Qmotion qConnect Roller Shade – This driver replaces the older-style Qmotion qConnect driver, providing support for the new Shades experience in Navigator that debuted with OS 2.10.
- Weather Station – Updated to use Control4’s weather service rather than Weather Undergrounds API.
- DSC IT-100 – This new driver for DSC security panels uses the new Security user interface in Navigator. It replaces the older driver which was included in Composer Pro.
- KNX ETS Import Wizard – updated to support importing of select 3rd-party KNX keypads.
- Pakedge PE series PDU – various enhancements for integrating power control into a Control4 project.
Pro Tip: You can use Composer Pro’s driver search interface, with the sort order “Modified New->Old” to see which drivers have recently been made available.
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Control4 | 11734 S. Election Road | Salt Lake City | UT | 84020
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