Control4 vs hai or pc based?

They all can work, none you listed would be my choice, but as I'm an installer I probably shouldn't make a recommendation as the forum may think I'm breaking a rule or something.

PM me if you want specifics outside of this thread.

In that budget range you should probably not try to DIY. The learning curve is way to steep.

I must say, the budget is a bit on the tight side but given that you're interested in doing as much as possible yourself, I think you can likely pull it off.

I'd be more than happy to chat with you further. Please send me a message through Private Message or through my web site or facebook page. I don't subscribe to the AVF threads as and I only check AVS about once every week to 10 days.

My comment on the budget would be, not tight at all! In fact, for what you're doing, more than adequate, but of course, more detail is needed to pin it down. I'll also offer you consultation via PM.

How technical are you? i.e. are you willing to put in the tinkering to bring it all together yourself, or would you prefer a turnkey solution?

I think this could be quite doable with HAI and UPB lighting. If you don't need the security panel stuff you could also consider a platform like CQC or Elve.

Definitely willing to offer my suggestions depending on how dirty you'd like to get your hands.

Actually lots of people use CQC on top of an Elk or Omni panel as well, so it's not an either/or thing. They are fairly complementary, though most of what the panel can do CQC can do. It's just that, if you need a lot of sensors and contacts and such, you have to have some way to get them into the automation system, and if you are going to buy something that can do that, you probably might as well get an Elk or Omni and get security in the deal, I guess?

Yeah, totally agree, was just thinking if all he wanted was lighting/whole house audio then there probably wouldn't be a need for security panel and he could get away with just a software solution like CQC, Elve, Homeseer, etc.

Sure, and certainly with CQC a lot more than that. There's little that CQC can't do really. There's I guess two scenarios. One is you just specifically want to have a hardware foundation for the core stuff, or two you need a substantial amount of sensors and such coming back to the closet, in which case you'd need something like an Omni or Elk to convert those signals and make them available to CQC. Otherwise, CQC by itself would be quite doable and talk directly to all the hardware itself, and often exposes more of the hardware's functionality as well. If you use the Elk/Omni just because you want to have a hardware foundation for the core stuff, it's still a big win to layer CQC over it because it can talk to far, far more stuff than a panel can (two-way I mean, with full feedback), it's inherently able to provide serious media management, and it provides vastly more flexibility to create sexy looking touch screens.

So, anyhoo, there's various arguments for either scenario I guess, just depending on what you want.