Another Whole House Audio Question

[upstatemike]

You can connect a local source to each zone player that can be streamed to all of the other players, but as far as I know it will stream it only, there is no ability to control it through Sonos.

The controllers show the current song informat, but are also used to contol the system, such as volume of individual players or all them, determining what sources go where, picking songs for queue, managing queues, etc.

OK, how about this... Can I use the Homeseer plug-in to switch all zone players to the input on a particular zone connected to the Homeseer PC sound card? (In other words use Homeseer to interrupt the program and make an announce ment).

 

[ctwilliams]

I have not done this, just have seen it on the Sonos forums. It sounds cool. Here is the quote from MichaelD over there:

HomeSeer control of SONOS

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For any users of HomeSeer home automation software, I'm finalising a set of scripts that will allow HomeSeer to control SONOS Zone Players.

They will allow HS to:

Control each Zone Player using commands such as play, stop, pause, volumeup, mute etc.
Control zones separately, or all at once, with commands such as all:stop
Use the zone names that you have chosen for your ZPs
Build an alarm clock function, to switch on each Zone Player at a pre-set time
Create a sleep function that will turn off a ZP at a pre-set time
Stop all ZPs when you go out
Play your favourite music when you arrive home
Mute all players when the phone rings (needs HS modem)
Manage HomeSeer output

Use the SONOS system for announcements from HomeSeer
Choose which Zone Players (ZPs) make each announcement as easily as you switch lights. If the chosen ZPs are playing music, this will be paused, the HomeSeer announcement made, then the music will restart.
Set the volume of HS announcements independently of the volume used for music.

Manage Zone Groups
Link zones together to form a Zone Group
Drop a zone from a Zone Group

That's all the functionality I'd planned, in particular, I haven't built in anything to let users choose what to play. The SONOS controller, Desktop Controller, or one of the web-based controllers seem to do that very effectively.

My target date for first beta release is the end of February, but I thought I'd give an early indication that its on its way


The thread is at:Homeseer Thread

 

[upstatemike]

This looks pretty nice. I guess apart from price, the only flaw I see is that there is no way to manage a tuner from the Sonos remote control. Maybe the answer is a lot of small local tuners on the local input of each player? Anybody seen a tuner that would be a good match? Maybe a Parasound Z series or something?

 

[TCassio]

I am using this setup. I have 3 zones. I also use Sirius Sat radio as an input. I also have a 250 gig NAS which contains all my music that is in the FLAC format. I run HS with the Sonos addon. I am able to control my Sirius and Sonos from any computer on the network. I have HS start Sonos, turn on my Sirius radio, tune to Howard 100 at 6AM every morning so when I get up, the radio is already on and tuned to my favorite station. The Sirius radio is being controlled by IR. The Sonos addon works well, it is using the UPNP protocol, and has been super reliable. The only drawback is that you cannot control which Sonos input to use for a music source, this has to be preset befor automatic operation. (my zone player source has to be set for Sirius radio). The icing on the cake is the Sonos wireless full function color remote control.

 

[upstatemike]

The only drawback is that you cannot control which Sonos input to use for a music source, this has to be preset befor automatic operation.

Do you mean the HS plugin cannot choose the Sonos input? I assume the wireless remote can select any source?

Any way to use the "full function" Sonos remote to trigger other things in HS through the Sonos plugin?

 

[Stinger]

Upstate-

Did you ever decide to go with the Sonos.. I've decided to give up my homebrew system and get the Sonos. It arrives Monday. Was just curious how you made out with the decision, or if you just moved on to other HA projects.

 

[upstatemike]

Upstate-

Did you ever decide to go with the Sonos.. I've decided to give up my homebrew system and get the Sonos. It arrives Monday. Was just curious how you made out with the decision, or if you just moved on to other HA projects.

I just moved on. I am pretty well invested in Slimserver/Squeezebox and could not meet the cost/benefit requirements to switch to Sonos.

I think the last issue I was looking at before I dropped it was that you could choose a source from the Sonos remote but if that source is a tuner there is no visual feedback of station/frequency info. Not sure what info it gives for internet radio either. (Probably not an issue for most Sonos users but it was something I needed to think through some more).

Let us know how your system works out for you.

 

[Stinger]

Thanks for the update. The Sonos that I bought from Amazon (using 20% off dealpass giftcards- Not for the risk adverse, but I saved over 10k this year on purchases from Home Depot, Lowes, Sunoco, Amazon and Staples) should be delivered this afternoon. I haven't had a lot of time for home automation lately, or even checking in around here, however I'm off today, so I'm going to try and get everything installed.

In case anyone is interested in reading up on dealpass, check out the FW thread at: Fatwallet.com

It was very confusing at first (READ, READ, READ), but for those of us who are remodeling a kitchen, or just tend to buy a lot of things, an automatic 20% discount before adding coupons or rebates is a no-brainer.

This message is sounding more and more like spam, sorry! However, getting a discount on a Sonos system of $200 is very hard to do any other way as they fix their price pretty solid.

 

[DavidL]

Mike,
Alex of the Cinemar forum posted back that he verified that MusicLobby 3 works great controlling the slimserver via a 3rd party J. River to SlimServer app.

 

[Stinger]

The Sonos system is now partially installed, I did a quick write-up on it on my site:

Intellishack.com Link

I still need to get some integration finished, but I absolutely love the upgrade over my previous implementation of whole-house music! A couple minor complaints, but it's well worth the money.

 

[upstatemike]

Stinger-

I am taking another look at Sonos... how about an update on your recent installation?

Also... is it true that the Homeseer Sonos script does not work with Homeseer 2.x ???!!!