Remote C2 Turn on and Source Selection???

[jprafter]

I recently bought a SONOS system to distribute my digital music throughout my house. Most zones have speakers directly connected to the SONOS zone players. They turn on and play by control from a wifi controller.

My Home Theater zone is a little different. I use a connection to my C2. I did some reading and see there is no 12v trigger to power the C2 on. :cry: I noticed the P3 has one, so I guess it was possible. What my plan was, buy something like a Parasound Scamp, which can generate a 12v signal based on auto sensing audio signal. Connect it to the outputs from the zone player. Have it trigger the C2 to power on. This plan was not without flaws, one being what if the C2 was not on the correct source. However, I soon realized that there was no trigger on the C2 to turn itself on.

I currently use the com port to control the C2 through main lobby, and can use this process, but was looking for something more automatic with use of the SONOS controller, because the SONOS system does not provide a built in method to turn on a controller/preamp/receiver.

I was wondering if anyone knows of any other way to remotely trigger the C2 power on and change it to the correct source such as using the IR in? or some other method that could be triggered by a 12 v supply? The goal would be to do this without interaction from myself each time.

All ideas welcomed.

Thanks,

John

[Peter Nielsen]

That's an easy one. You can do "power on" and source selection through the RS-232 interface. The command codes can be downloaded here

Any capable home automation controller with RS-232 interface should be able to do this for you with a little programming...

I'm not familiar with Main Lobby, but I would think it would be fairly easy to program it to send out the correct codes to the C2 when it triggers on an event...

Peter

[jprafter]

I know I can use mainlobby to do this manually. The SONOS controller has no place to enter commands, and I do not want to have to use an additional controller, such as the remote or main lobby manually. I want an AUTOMATIC switch, such that when signal from the zone player's RCA jacks is sensed, then the C2 could be powered on and source chnged to SONOS(Audio4).

Now that I'm typing this I have an idea...Maybe I can find a device that can auto sense signal from the zone player, relay this information to my HTPC, and then use mainlobby commands to turn on the C2. This would require a device that does auto sensing and that can communicate to the PC. I'm not sure I saw any hardware out there that does this. I'll have to look for something that can translate a 12v trigger impulse to a USB or com signal to the PC, then I could still use the Parasound Scart.

Got me thinking, thanks for the reply.

[Peter Nielsen]

Well, you could use (for example) the Printer Port in your PC for detecting a 12v signal. Or you could for instance use the CTS or DTR pins in an unused COM port for this... There certainly are a lot of alternatives...

Or you could route the audio to a soundcard that will detect a signal... (You could probably add a cheap second soundcard just for this purpose).

The options are endless...

Peter

[jprafter]

I'm not an electrical engineer. I really don't want to build something. I want an easy, off the shelf, solution. I've been looking on the internet and haven't found one. Should be a device that I can route the audio signal through, RCA(x2)(in and out), that would do auto-sensing of the audio signal and send some RS232 command when signal is detected and when it it not. It should also have a configurable delay time so you don't get unintended switching. If you know of such a device, or a combination of devices that would do this, please let me know.

The Parasound Scamp does the first portion (audio sensing), it can then either turn on an outlet or send a 12v trigger signal. But, I need to get the message to the computer, so I can trigger mainlobby to turn on the C2 via serial communications.

[Chris D]

Wow, that's going to be a tough one, to truly get that kind of operation that's really "easy and off-the-shelf".

Peter mentioned Main Lobby. Mario is a very helpful person, and I bet if you talk to him he can configure Main Lobby for you to do exactly what you need it to.

[Peter Nielsen]

Peter mentioned Main Lobby. Mario is a very helpful person, and I bet if you talk to him he can configure Main Lobby for you to do exactly what you need it to.

I agree... I would not be surprised if Main Lobby already includes a signal monitoring feature through a sound card... If it doesn't, then that's a good feature request to send Mario!!!

The cables you need should be easy to find. Your best bet is to look for a stereo pair of RCA Y-splitters and a RCA<=>3.5mm cable or adapter. These two are commonly available cables that lets you hook up everything the way you described.

For example, Parts Express 240-525 combined with 090-294 should work fine, and costs you less than $5. Plug the 240-525 between your zone player's RCA jacks and the 090-294 to the line input of your PC's sound card. Now all that's needed is for Main Lobby to be able to monitor your sound card...

Peter

[jprafter]

Cool ideas. Last night I found sound monitoring software on the net. Nothing that great but I was able to use an RCA output from the SONOS subwoofer jack and attach that to my Line 3 inputs of my Audigy card. I set the software to monitor the line 3 input and send a mainlobby command to turn on the C2, switch the input to SONOS and set the volume to the correct level.

This works OK, however as in most auto-sense systems there can be dropouts in sound. The software I was using did not have any delay parameters so it then triggered again when the sound picked back up. When changing sources, my C2 does drop volume for a few seconds. This gave some annoying results. I found another software that monitored for silence to be used to turn the C2 off. The whole set up worked but was buggy.

I will take a better look in the mainlobby forums, maybe they do already have sound monitoring. Thanks for the suggestion.