Reciever plugin

[borax]

For anyone interrested I'm currently making a reciever (controller) plugin for us happy people with a bit more highend recievers. Right now I'm implementing the support for the NAD 763 / 773 but it will be quite easy to add support for other brands i.e. Marantz, H/K, Denon and so on. I have serial support and thinking about adding TCP/IP support (wondering if Denon 4306 can be controlled via TCP)... Well, I will keep this thread updated as my progress goes along. Including a devshot from the config screen.

- Update: just made some small progress on the UI screen(image attached). Currently mapping features from the reciever to the UI (just beta and that's why the listbox mapping looks so poor)...

- Update: Implemented the following features of the AMX protcol in the reciever "core":
DEVICE_ID, POWERMODE, BRIGHTNESS, VOLUME, MUTE, AUDIO_SOURCE, VIDEO_SOURCE, ZONE_VOLUME, ZONE_MUTE, ZONE_AUDIO_SOURCE, ZONE_VIDEO_SOURCE, TAPE_MONITOR, TREBLE, BASS, SUBWOOFER_LEVEL, CENTER_LEVEL, SURROUND_LEVEL, LEVEL_PRESET, AUDIO_INPUT_TYPE, AUDIO_SIGNAL_TYPE, SURROUND_MODE, VIDEO_INPUT_TYPE, LATE_NIGHT, TUNER_BAND, AM_FREQUENCY, FM_FREQUENCY, TUNER_STEREO_MODE, FM_MUTE, ZONE_POWER_MODE, CURRENT_INPUT, ZONE_INPUT, INPUT_NAME, AM_PRESET, FM_PRESET, SPEAKER_A, SPEAKER_B, TONE_DEFEAT and QUERY_ALL.

Now I "only" need to fix some UI / integrate it into the MP volume management... If anyone wants to help out any help is welcome ...

[MrSensitive]

Great!

I own a marantz 5600 with serial port cotrol.

what really would be nice is to interecept the volume up / down commands in mediaportal and translate these to the commands for the receiver..

I'm connecting my htpc via digital, so the volume controls on the htpc do not work..

[knutinh]

Hey great!

Just what I was asking for in this thread:
integration with surround receiver


So this will give "hooks" into the state of MediaPortal for controlling/reading stuff like volume, mute, surround vs stereo etc? Then one can add a "template" for every supported surround receiver by studying the proprietary rs232 implementation? Really cool.

-k

(Sony srt db 3200 ES here)

[lampie]

This is MASSIVELY cool I own a Arcam-AVR300 (quite a popular higher end receiver). It also has serial port control. Would be awesome if i could control this using my MP

Product page:
http://www.arcam.co.uk/prod_diva_AVR300_intro.cfm

Appendix: Serial programming interface (PAGE 37)

http://www.arcam.co.uk/downloads/DiV...20handbook.pdf

The protocol for RS232 is described here in detai, so should be easy to implement

Is there any chance on implementing this, that would totally rock my socks off

Greetings xander

[knutinh]

Originally Posted by lampie

Is there any chance on implementing this, that would totally rock my socks off

I think that the best use we can make of borax is him developing a general plugin that features a superset of the needed functions, and reading commands/feature-set from an xml-file.

Editing that xml-file for supporting any receiver should then be simple and not something that borax has to spend precious time doing?

-k

[borax]

Originally Posted by knutinh

I think that the best use we can make of borax is him developing a general plugin that features a superset of the needed functions, and reading commands/feature-set from an xml-file.

Editing that xml-file for supporting any receiver should then be simple and not something that borax has to spend precious time doing?

-k

At first I used an XML file for configuration but I later noticed that somethings maybe a bit to hardware specific (i.e. protocol layout etc). I will study some more of the protocols too see if they have something of a standard. Some parts of the protocol (i.e. calculating the checksum) differs A LOT. One thing I where thinking about though is that C# has it's own scripting language (which would supply enough functionality to make it dynamic without needing compilation).

Currently I have made the configuration of the plugin (and it works nice enough) and I have made a very basic "Reciever" option in MediaPortal (just as a proof of concept) where I can increase/decrease volume... So my next steps are:
- Check if I can hijack the volumecontrols etc when using a plugin or if I need to take a chat with one of the main developers to integrate the whole thing.
- Fix protocol scripting
- Make a "MediaPortal" setup (for i.e. changing the surroundmodes, bass etc directly in mediaportal).

The first steps has been taken and the actual IO is working, now it's just a matter of making all the other stuff .

/ Ola

[lampie]

I agree A superset would be the best. There is also a standard called AMX? And arent brands using the sam protocols for all there receivers (only the cheaper ones have less options)? I think this is a great ad-on to MP

Hope this plugin grows to its full potential.

Lampie

[borax]

Originally Posted by lampie

I agree A superset would be the best. There is also a standard called AMX? And arent brands using the sam protocols for all there receivers (only the cheaper ones have less options)? I think this is a great ad-on to MP

Hope this plugin grows to its full potential.

Lampie

I currently do have an abstract class that all recievers inherits from and overrides some predefined methods. I have found this to be working quite well and I think I can manage to load the classes for this in realtime (there is an internal compiler to create the binarycode on the fly) so the classes who inherits the base can just implement the functions they need.

Comparing the Arcam, Marantz and NAD(which I have/test with) protocols then I can only come to the conclusion that they differ a lot. I tried to Google for some info on the AMX stuff but I couldn't find any info about it, so if you have any/can find any info about it then I would be grateful. As for anyone who wants their reciever supported, please post a link to the manual(where I can find the serial protocol). I mainly need this just to see that I get all the support for different functions that could be needed. I currenlty can change
- Volume up/down/mute
- Bass up/down
- Treble up/down
- Toggle speakermode (A/B)
- Poweron/off/check state
- Get version
and right now I'm working on switching between different modes (DVD etc etc) and get which signalsource they have(will also add so that you can force the source).

// Ola

[lampie]

I will take a look for some AMX info

A handy feature set will be:

- Start receiver on MP start
- Close receiver on MP close
- Hibernate receiver on MP hibernation
- Switch receiver to e.g. AV when MP starts (so it selects the source where the HTPC is connected).

More will come...

[borax]

Originally Posted by lampie

I will take a look for some AMX info

A handy feature set will be:

- Start receiver on MP start
- Close receiver on MP close
- Hibernate receiver on MP hibernation
- Switch receiver to e.g. AV when MP starts (so it selects the source where the HTPC is connected).

More will come...

Yepp, that would be great(and is most likley performable as long as the plugin API don't restrict me). Found some info on AMX now(and NAD supports it so it will hopefully be "easy" to test if it works ). For anyone interrested here is the link to NAD's AMX software package: http://nadelectronics.com/software#amx

Update: It where even easier than that: http://www.amx.com/