Writing serial drivers

[Meyerssb]

I have limited to no experience with serial, but I am trying to create a serial driver. Maybe someone with serial experience can clear up something for me. In composer when you look up "Guidelines for Entering Serial Driver" it says that it requires a /r to return when programming in ASCII. Is that a carriage return? The reason I ask is this system requires its own carriage return <cr>. Does the \r command only get seen by Control4 or does it pass that on?

Once upon a time I did a little C programming, but it's been too many years and now I remember nothing! Thanks!

Blake

[jamman]

Yes the \r is a carriage return sent to the device. Just insert it in the command line

Ex. "!1SLI10\r" -this command sends a carriage return

ex. "MSSC1,0" 10 -this command sends a line feed(need the space before the 10)

good luck! What driver are you creating?

Jamman

[Meyerssb]

Its for my Zon Audio System. I want to use a C4 MTS to send it out to the Zon Audio router and be able to tell it which zones I want it to play, control the volume, etc. For now it is really just for myself, but I have a couple of clients I would like to use this with - several have expressed interest in Control4 if it can give them expanded control over other systems in their homes, including Zon Audio... so that's where I am at. I have most of the information that Oxmoor gave me entered in for the serial driver, but I am just not quite ready to test it yet. Anyone that has watched Control4's site knows I'm kind of obsessesed with Zon Audio... it's what got me to leave the electrical contracting business. Not necessarily leave EC (my brother does all the EC now) I just changed my focus a little.

Blake

[jamman]

I have writen a serial driver for Matrix Audio Designs, a Canadian Manufacturer. It works great. I had to make sure the audio end points were all pointing to the proper zones and also add a programming command for off under when power turns off for each zone. Most of the commands were done under the macros in the driver. It does work great though. I can also issue a default turn on volume with a serial command as well. ( done off of the power state variable)

Post your progress if you care to. I guess you like the Zon Audio system. That's cool. I like Matrix, cause we can retrofit a home with only speaker wires at the volume controls. The keypads connect to the speaker cable only. They use the 2 negatives of the left and right to send and receive commands and feedback. We can also just use the controller only (up to 64zones in 2 zone inc.) if we have a C4 interface in each room. C4 actually tracks the 3 streams out of the MC. So if one zone is listening to out 1 of the MC, the next zone calling for Digital music will get out 2. On the keypads form Matrix, you can listen in on all 3 streams at once. I'm sure the Russound unit works pretty well the same way.

Anyways, good coding!

Cheers,

Jamman

[Meyerssb]

I have a buddy here that helped get me into this business that is/was a Matrix dealer for a long time. I know he nows controls the rights to Russound for all of East Idaho now... anyway that was a bit random, but I do remember him saying he really liked the capabilities of the Matrix system. As I get further along with the programming I'll post my progress.

While I'm on this topic, it seems like there were several other Zon Audio dealers that responded to a post on the Control4 website that I ran back in October... they may have responded in November (?). Anyway, if any of them are on this site - I remember one of them saying he had done a little with this. I would be interested in hearing from him... email me I have some questions...

Blake