Nothing Comes On When You Pull In After Dark? What It Takes

It is the question we ask first when somebody describes their house to us, because the answer tells us most of what we need to know: when you pull into the driveway after dark, does anything come on?

In most Control4 homes the answer is no. Not because the system can't — it has been able to since long before the current owner moved in — but because nobody ever asked for it, or the dealer who could have programmed it is gone. The lights are all there. The controller is there. The one line of programming that connects the two was never written.

Here is what that line actually takes, and what we charge for it.

Every automation is three parts

Whatever the behaviour, it breaks down the same way: a trigger (something the system can notice), an optional condition (only when…), and an action (what happens). Pull into the driveway after dark:

Trigger: the garage door opening is the usual one — most systems already have the door on a contact input, or can. A gate, a driveway sensor, or a keypad button by the garage door all work too.
Condition: after dark. Control4 knows sunset for your address, so "after sunset and before sunrise" is a check the controller can make on its own, every day, without anyone updating it for the season.
Action: the path lights, the garage interior, the mudroom and the kitchen to a comfortable level. Not everything — the point is to walk into a house that is ready, not one that is lit up like a store.

Then the part people forget: it has to turn off. A timer that takes the outside lights back down twenty minutes later, unless somebody has turned them on deliberately, is what makes the thing feel finished instead of clever.

What it costs

We price programming per item, by how much logic is in it — not by the hour, and never as a "call us" number.

A scene — $49. One system, no logic: press a button and the room goes to these levels. "Dinner", "Fireside", "Path".
Logic — $99. A trigger with a condition, a timer or a schedule, or a behaviour that touches a second system. The driveway arrival above is this: a trigger, a sunset condition, an action and an auto-off. So is "lights off in the office if nobody has moved for thirty minutes", or "the outside lights follow the sunset schedule and go off at eleven".
A ritual — $199. Several systems in sequence, with delays and exceptions. "Away" that shuts everything down but leaves the media room alone if it is in use, lingers the hall lights for twenty minutes, and turns the music off last. "Movie", which drops the screen, warms up the projector, sets the amp and dims the lights in an order that doesn't strobe the room.
An edit — $29. Changing something that already exists: take the guest room out of the bedtime scene, move the auto-off from twenty minutes to forty.

Two things soften those numbers. For thirty days after any programming job, edits to that room are included (up to ten) — you live with it, you tell us the kitchen is too bright, we change it, no charge. And Care Plan members get 10% off the programming book on everything.

What you need in place

The trigger has to exist. If the garage door isn't on a contact input and there is no sensor on the driveway, the behaviour needs one before it can be programmed — that is a small hardware line on the quote, and we will tell you which one rather than program around a trigger you don't have. Everything else is software, and it is done remotely: the work needs a way into your system, not a truck in your driveway.

If you inherited the system with no dealer, that way in is the first job, and it is a separate, published price. This page covers what that looks like.

The other questions on the list

The driveway is the first one because almost nobody has it. The rest of the walk goes room by room: when the last person leaves the kitchen at night, does anything happen? Does "goodnight" exist, and does it know the difference between a weeknight and a Saturday? Do the outside lights know what month it is? Each one is a scene, a piece of logic or a ritual, and each one has a price on it before you decide.

You can run that walk yourself in the Design Studio — describe what you want the house to do, room by room, and it prices the list — or just start with the driveway in chat and see what you think of the answer.