Posts Tagged ‘whole house’

• Tuesday, August 3rd, 2010

  Russound RNET to Sonos Bridge (Arduino MEGA) – Part 2

  

  While it was possible to use an Arduino duemilanove (Atmel 328 chipset) for this project (See Part 1), I was really limited due to the 2K of RAM. It was fun trying to optimize code to get things to run in that amount of memory, however, it caused me to not be able to expand on functionality and features. I have upgraded the project to an Arduino MEGA (Atmel 1280 chipset). This platform gives me up to 8K of RAM — which should be more than enough memory (famous last words).

  A lot of people have asked me to explain what exactly I’m doing with the Arduino. It’s pretty simple. First, I’m using a RS232 shield (not shown) to capture RS232 commands from the Russound Controller. When a key is pressed on the Russound keypads I read the RS232 data and either ignore or react to the events. Currently, I’m looking for +, -, Next, Previous, Play/Pause, Menu events. I plan on using the Menu button to offer deeper content browsing menus (need to sniff the RS232 or wait for Russound to publish protocol). The + & – buttons will allow to scroll playlists and the rest of the transport buttons are self explanatory.

  1 2	// Example RNET Next Track Event: F0 0 7D 7 0 0 7F 5 2 1 0 2 1 0 E 0 0 1 7 0 1 2A F7

  Since the Sonos is a uPnP based system there is no IR or way to traditionally control it. Everything needs to be done via HTTP calls. I’m using an Ethernet Shield to translate the RS232 events to uPnP messages. The biggest challenge has been parsing the huge amounts of VERY VERBOSE SOAP-based notification messages. I parse the data real time, looking for strings that I want to store (things like playstate and metadata).

  To make matters worse, Sonos is URL encoding XML data inside of an XML structure. So writing a simple XML parser is not possible. You have to look for things like &amp;lt; for a less-than bracket (<). There were times I wanted to scrap the whole project because of this due to the limited RAM and string utilities — it really makes things a lot harder to deal with.

  // Example of nested URL encoded XML:
  <e:property><LastChange>&lt;Event xmlns=&quot;urn:schemas-upnp-org:metadata-1-
  0/AVT/&quot; xmlns:r=&quot;urn:schemas-rinconnetworks-com:metadata-10/

  …

  
  

  Tags: arduino, audio, ethernet shield, hai, Mega, myro, myro control, myro:home, rnet, rs232, russound, sonos, uPnP, whole house
  Posted in DIY, Electronics, Hacks & Mods, Home Automation, Home Theater | 24 Comments | Read On

• Saturday, August 15th, 2009

  UNBOXING: TED 5000 – Whole House Energy Monitor

  Here is the unboxing of the new TED 5000 Whole House Energy Monitor by Energy Inc.  A full review is in the works… enjoy!…

  
  

  Tags: energy, monitor, power, TED 5000, Unboxing, Video, whole house
  Posted in Home Automation, Videos | 8 Comments | Read On

• Friday, April 24th, 2009

  Russound Collage – Powerline Media & Intercom!

  

  Russound has released their new line of whole-house audio/intercom system. What makes this special is that it doesn’t require anything more than a power cable to get it working.  The Collage system relies on HomePlug technology to stream the audio to each location from the Collage Media Manager.  Each zone features an capacitive touchpad, click wheel and quarter VGA display with  a 30-watt amp.  In addition each zone includes a built-in FM tuner and 6-month free subscription to Rhapsody with three independent streams of music.  There is also an optional iPod dock.  This is a pretty interesting play for retrofit/remodel jobs.

  For more information check out: Russound Retroquick

  This can be purchased via our parent company MAVROMEDIA which is a Russound Dealer.…

  
  

  Tags: audio, automation, home, homeplug, retrofit, rhapsody, russound, whole house
  Posted in Home Automation | 5 Comments | Read On