[Feature Request] Control4 Interface

[hp98173]

Having the ability to fully control CMC though the control4 system (remotes, mobile app, programming, etc) via network commands(instead of having a mce remote and a ir receiver for each pc would be nice), allowing me to finally roll out CMC to my multiple media center pc's though out my homes. Currently using Kodi has caused so many head aches it would be nice to get back to the cleaner interface (i miss mce lol)

[Pauven]

Hi hp98173,

This is an interesting idea. I've never heard of Control4 before. I did a quick google and it appears to be a more high-end solution, which is probably why I didn't know about it.

Does Control4 work with any media players?

I ask, because CMC is a front-end GUI that offloads playback to your preferred media players, with current support for PowerDVD, DVDFab Player, MPC, VLC, JRiver, and PotPlayer. MPC-BE is also the hard-coded player for movie trailers.

My concern is that even if CMC supports Control4, what happens when you start playing a movie? Could it be that you lose control and have to pull out a regular remote? If any of these players support Control4, that would be a good solution, but if none support Control4, then baking Control4 support into CMC wouldn't solve everything.

I did some quick searches on Control4 for those media players, and did not come up with any solutions. I did find the following post, and one of the suggestions was to have the Control4 IR emitter outputting commands to the HTPC's IR receiver, emulating a MCE remote. This makes a lot more sense to me, as that would then work with any external player and other apps, not just CMC.

https://www.c4forums.com/topic/33524-co ... ent-263689

Paul

[hp98173]

Currently they only support Kodi and wmc (though ir)

In theory it could be coded to control the 3party player by use of keyboard commands. Maybe even a custom list of commands that cmc would understand and could translate and forward to the 3rd players. This way we could use all supported players and have an easily updated list of they change anything

[Pauven]

Correction: I did find a Control4 driver for VLC. I know some users here really like VLC, but it is among my least favorite players for CMC.

Not sure how much you like VLC.

I also stumbled onto a 2-year-old thread asking if it was finally time to seriously consider a JRiver driver, and the answer was a solid NO. To be fair, I don't have any experience with Control4 to understand why there is such resistance to these types of solutions, but it seems that the knowledgeable folk are against this pathway.

https://www.c4forums.com/topic/27239-is ... er-driver/

But that last link did lead to a MCE Controller thread: https://www.c4forums.com/topic/26589-co ... c4/page/3/

Considering that CMC is designed to be controlled with a standard MCE remote, perhaps that MCE Controller might provide a solution.

[Pauven]

Maybe even a custom list of commands that cmc would understand and could translate and forward to the 3rd players. This way we could use all supported players and have an easily updated list of they change anything

That's an interesting idea. CMC can send commands to external apps, but hasn't needed to up to now (except for sending some to Internet Explorer / Edge for opening URLs).

I was originally thinking this wouldn't work with apps like PowerDVD, since they intercept all remote input commands, but now that I've thought about it some more I think I understand this might actually work. Control4 would send a network command to CMC, and CMC would send a Windows message with keyboard commands to the running app, be it PowerDVD or MPC or whatever.

I would appreciate input from other CMC users (and potential future CMC users), is this something the community wants?

[Caudio18]

I run a business and am a very large Control4 dealer and am an old My movies user. There is currently a driver that can control a PC through sending IR commands or emulate any keyboard shortcuts. It does need MCE controller installed on the PC though. This is just one way control, but anything you can do with a keyboard or MCE remote you can do in Control4 through this. So in reality this can be used to control CMC and no matter what program is actually playing the movie it can control that too.
There is also a My Movies driver, this one is much more complex it reads the my movies library stored on a PC on your network, actually downloads cover art, synopsis, actors, genre, etc and displays this info inside of the Control4 interface so you can browse your collection and play back directly from Control4 onscreen interface, touchscreens or app. (Similar to how the my movies app use to work). The caveat this driver was designed for playing back the movie on a Dune device, because this device has an API for automations and 3rd parties to control it (basically it just send the play command and network location of the file picked form the Control4 interface) but can then control the Dune and knows when the movie stops, info, etc. Chowmain software have written drivers for Control4 and other control systems for KODI and PLEX that are very similar to this and allow browsing of all kinds of things such as Movies, Musics, Pictures, etc. for control system browsing. Those programs basically have a control API that sends and receives info so basically any 3rd party can interface. If you wrote some sort of backend with an Open API then that could possibly be used for a remote control Iphone/android/Control system app.

[Pauven]

Hi Caudio18, welcome to the neighborhood.

I'm glad you commented on this, your input is incredibly valuable, thank you.

I didn't realize that there was a MM driver, and I had no idea that the Control4 could do all that - amazing. Can you point me to a youtube video of the MM interface on Control4? I'd like to see how that works in action.

It certainly seems possible to write a back-end API. I'm wondering, would it be better to start from scratch, or to emulate an existing API? I can't help but think there is already an API out there that Control4 is programmed to handle that would be a good fit for CMC. The MM API comes to mind - I know that one pretty well, and since most of the movie data comes from MM then it seems like a natural fit.

Is there some driver code I can review?

Thanks again!
Paul

[Caudio18]

This is a good overview of the interface. This video is older and the newer Control4 interface cosmetically looks different but concept the same, I forgot it used to be able to play the movie on the mce interface directly too.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dO_lhey ... e=youtu.be

The driver for Control4 is written in Lua and unfortunately encrypted, the company that wrote Control4 My movies driver was actually bought out by Control4 and their main programmer is now in charge of all drivers for Control4.

Here is another reference that shows the newer interface of the 2 way Kodi driver.
http://www.chowmainsoft.com/kodi-xbmc-f ... r-control4

My programming in Lua is pretty rough I can do some basics but nowhere near what is needed to program something like the above Kodi driver.

[Pauven]

That's very helpful, thanks Caudio18.

So does the Control4 My Movies interface still work, including the latest enhancements to MM v5.30? The big changes to v5.30 are support for exporting discless movies and the new Movie Collections feature.

Watching the video, it occurred to me that if the My Movies interface still works, you could still use that solution to feed My Movies data to Control4. That is the same data that is loaded into CMC, so it shouldn't need to come from CMC directly, but could come from MM.

Then, Control4 could issue a very simple command to CMC: Play Title ID 123 Disk 1. Or Play Title ID 78c3b4ca-8b1f-48d1-9afe-d8df2c9e6b68 Season 3 Episode 8. That's all that CMC would need to know in order to begin playback.

And the existing control solutions for WMC PC's should still work to manage playback after it has started, including stopping playback and returning to CMC.

Does that sound like I've grasped the concept, or am I missing something? Obviously CMC is capable of much more than just starting playback, so a more fully integrated Control4 solution would be nice, but based upon the video it seems that this might be the single most important feature. This might make for a nice first step. hp98173 I'm interested in hearing your thoughts too.

Also, with you being a Control4 dealer, can you give me any insight into the market size for this type of solution? While it's nice that hp98173 is interested in using CMC with Control4, for all I know he could be the only user with this need. Obviously CMC's user base is still pretty small, so I don't anticipate you know any CMC users, so I'm thinking more of Control4 users who use My Movies and need a modern solution to replace WMC or something better suited to MM than Kodi & Plex.

Regarding Lua, I took a brief look at it and while it looks like a language I can adapt to fairly easily, the syntax reminds me a lot of Python which I do not enjoy. Perhaps somewhere between Python and C#. But I guess enjoyment of a language is not a prerequisite to using it...

[ScareDcrow]

Just want to note my interest in this topic. When I retire next year, I'll be heading back to my permanent home that has a Control4 system installed