Hi,
This is just a note to let others know what I hope to achieve with
freevo in these areas, to generate interest and discussion and maybe
some help.
Having recently bought a house for the first time (and with it needing
full rewiring) all things home audio, home automation and home control
have come to the fore. I've been using Freevo since 2004 and it isn't
going anywhere so I'll need to add a few functions that aren't supported
yet. The two big areas that I need which aren't already addressed are
whole house audio and an ipod/iphone interface which could control that
and provide an interface to my media library and the TV guide and TV
recording interface.
A bit of research has shown that this should quite possible. The
following are (some of) the components that will probably be needed:
An 8 channel amp - will provide stereo to 4 rooms [1][2][3]
A sound card with 4 outputs [4][5]
Some mplayer magic to pipe the music to one/all rooms [6]
iui built iphone/ipod touch interface [7]
Some speaker cable [8]
Some wall/ceiling mounted speakers [9]
I've got very basic functionality working already for the iphone/ipod
interface. I've hacked the freevo webserver to work with iui. Currently
I can use the TV guide, view (and remove) scheduled recordings and
browse individual channels TV listings on my ipod touch. There's no
ability to set a recording. I can also browse through my library (music,
video, images) having hacked freevo's old library interface
(library1.rpy) a little. Curiously clicking download on either an mp3 or
a video causes my ipod to lock up hard. After about 5 minutes it reboots.
This really is just rough and ready stuff but it's a semi functional
proof of concept. What I want to do it have this functionality properly
coded and use iui correctly as what I've done so far is to just strip
out the head and body tags and some other code and pass back tables as
required by iui. The other part is to make the interface aware of
multiple locations. With this it should be possible to choose your
current room then browse the library and start a song playing, this
would then launch a mplayer process pointing to the corresponding output
on the sound card which in turn would pipe it's way through your multi
channel(zone) amp and cables and on to the room you're in. If you want
to hear the music in all rooms for a party apparently all that's needed
is the right entries in a .asoundrc. Anyone living in the house with an
iphone or ipod touch can play their own music in their own room from
your freevo box at any time.
Due to budget constraints some of my rooms will just be done so that we
can listen to online radio streams when we wake up and the odd bit of
music, audiophile sound reproduction won't be the goal. However in the
two sitting rooms I'd like to achieve the best sound possible.
The links below are just a sample of some of the sites I've come across
while looking this up recently. If anyone has any input or experience on
any area here I'd love to hear from you. If you'd like to help with the
development that's even better. I'm off from late next week and won't be
able to get back to look at any of this until the end of June so don't
expect to see much from me before then but maybe others will step in. I
might have some email access though so if you have any questions or want
to know about any of the kit I have already drop me a line.
John
[1] http://www.outdoorspeakerdepot.com/irprroco.html
[2] Rotel seem to be one of the two recommended multi-zone amps
http://www.hometheaterstore.com/Rotel_RMB_1048_High_Current_8_Channel_Amplifier_p/rmb1048.htm
[3] Arcam are the other http://www.hdtvuk.tv/2009/02/arcam_launches.html
[4] A 4x4 sound card http://www.m-audio.com/products/en_us/Delta66.html
[5] Or use 4 USB DACs instead, here's one example
http://www.audio-magus.com/product_p/109109.htm
[6] http://lists.mplayerhq.hu/pipermail/mplayer-users/2007-May/067148.html
[7] http://code.google.com/p/iui/
[8] I'm looking into using CAT5e/CAT6, not sure if it's any better/worse
or more(or less)expensive
[9] A low cost option http://www.letsautomate.com/12180.cfm?
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