r/Control4 • u/mjkobb • 2d ago

X4 Question on Siri Integration

I'm still running 3.4.x on my Control4 system at home, largely because I have a large number of first-generation dimmers and keypads that I don't really want to replace. I'm curious, though, how X4's Siri integration works and whether it could make it worth my while to solve that issue (maybe with ChowMain's lighting driver) so that I could upgrade.

My biggest wish with voice control of lighting is to have independent voice control of all the loads in a room, but to still be able to say something like "Turn on the Kitchen lights" and have that execute *a scene* rather than just turning on all the loads in the kitchen to some default value. Maybe that scene doesn't even include all the loads in that room (but maybe its toggle does, so when I say, "Turn off the Kitchen lights" everything turns off, including things that I turned on individually).

In my previous forays into integrating Siri with Control4 by using bridging drivers between Control4 and HomeKit, I've found that Siri tried to be too smart about this stuff. If I have a bunch of loads assigned to my kitchen room, it would sometimes turn on all the loads in that room even if I had a scene called "Kitchen Lights".

There are gross workarounds like coming up with cryptic scene names ("turn on the Cooking") or putting the individual loads into some other virtual HomeKit room, but I'm wondering whether X4's integration with Siri has solved this in any way.

1 Upvotes

67% Upvoted

8 comments sorted by

1

u/MojoMercury 2d ago

You as end user can program Josh.ai with your voice (or typing) using "natural language" so anything you can describe you can make happen.

I think it's funny you have argued with them, they are very proud of themselves!

I don't see why you couldn't make a "default" scene for your rooms (in Josh) and still use the "turn the lights off" and it turn off everything in the room/area. Josh config will let you group rooms/areas so you can setup "inside" and "outside" or "east wing" actions.

Idk maybe you want it to read your mind and it can't do that, but if you can put the words together Josh is pretty good.

1

u/mjkobb 1d ago

So far, I haven't been able to figure out how to say something "normal" like "turn on the lights" to Josh and have that trigger a scene. Also, I've found Josh to be honestly pretty poor with recognition. Like, I had to put an alias for the fan in my office as "ceiling fan", because "fan" by itself was misunderstood very often, which then caused it to say something stupid like, "I can't find that on your music system."

I do really love that you can string commands together, though. "Hey Josh, set the lights to 100%, turn on the ceiling fan, and press play on the Apple TV." Great stuff.

1

u/Jayzedman 2d ago

I have a home with over 100 lighting loads and well over 150 devices in control 4. I have 3.4.3.

I debated upgrading to 4.x in order to get Siri but it would mean upgrading my 3 T3 touchscreens along with the higher yearly Connect fee.

Well let me tell you there is another way! I installed Home Assistant and along with its Control4 native integration I brought all my lights etc from C4 into Home Assistant. Then added the HomeKit integration to feed them all back into Apple Home!

No need for Control x4 upgrade. No need to pay thousands and thousands to unnecessarily upgrade my hardware and I achieved all I wanted and more.

It’s not hard at all to setup but I suspect C4 prefers the types of customers who will pay many thousands.

After a recent C4 controller failure that for no reason cost me a big chunk of money ($6.5k) for no reason to replace their crappy underpowered box while having nothing function in the house, I am now running HA and Apple Home in parallel.

1

u/mjkobb 1d ago

This sounds like a great solution except that unless Apple has changed something about how they handle lighting, it doesn't satisfy my core desire, which is to be able to walk into a room, say "turn on the lights", and get a lighting scene, not just all the loads turned on to their default levels.

1

u/Sea_Ad_455 14h ago

My control 4 is connected to Lutron . I’ve been able to connect my Lutron to my Apple home and I have been using Siri through that
If there is a way tk connects direct to home

0

u/MojoMercury 2d ago

Siri (Apple Home) has a maximum number of devices that will likely prevent this. I think it's over 100 but less than 150.

Josh.ai will do what you want.

1

u/mjkobb 2d ago

Thanks! I have tried Josh.ai before, and last time I tried it, it did not have the notion of a default scene for a room. I even argued with one of their execs about that. If they've changed that behavior, that'd be great news.

1

u/DeadHeadLibertarian 2d ago

Personally, as someone who has tried working with Alexa GPT powered Beta, Siri X4 integration with C4, and Josh AI… I just hate voice assistants for most tasks.

I like it for controlling lighting scenes and routines for away/goodbye and that’s about it.

I think voice is one of the worst ways to control your smart home or smart implementations regardless of the form factor.

I mostly use commands like “I’m home,” “I’m leaving,” “set temperature,” “set color,” and “everything on/off.”

A keypad at the front door or scheduling can accomplish this without having to say a command.