Best Practices for Room Control Driver "Listen" Presets

[cnicholson]

I'm about to implement Room Control driver with the Domosapiens "Keypad Audio" driver.  I'm starting to think about how to set up the presets and am worried about "source contention" issues.    I have lots of rooms, but take the example of just three rooms.   Suppose I want the first preset (for each room) to be Sirius Channel 1, second preset to be Sirius Channel 2, etc.   I go to Room 1 and select Sirius Channel 2.  They I go to Room2 and select Sirius Channel 3.  What happens?  I assume each Sirius driver can only do one stream.    Does Room 1 switch to Channel 3?  Does it get turned off?  See what I mean?

I believe I read here that some services allow multiple drivers and simultaneous streams.   And I think some (Tidal?) have "family plans" so I suppose I could install multiple drivers, each with it's own credentials.   But is there an automated way to have C4 play Sirius Channel #3 from any available Sirius driver in Room #3?   If not, it seems like I would have to have a dedicated set of Listen drivers for all services for all rooms, which seems a bit rough.

So my question is: how do people deal with this issue?    I would like the user experience to be: walk into any room and click Music and, with every subsequent click, rotate through a list of genres like Current Hits, Classic Rock, Alternative, Country, Classical (whatever, you get it).   And for the rooms to not "step on each other."    If they want to listen to specific music or playlist, they can use Tidal or ShairBridge to C4 from phone.

Any thoughts/advice?

[eggzlot]

2 minutes ago, cnicholson said:

I'm about to implement Room Control driver with the Domosapiens "Keypad Audio" driver.  I'm starting to think about how to set up the presets and am worried about "source contention" issues.    I have lots of rooms, but take the example of just three rooms.   Suppose I want the first preset (for each room) to be Sirius Channel 1, second preset to be Sirius Channel 2, etc.   I go to Room 1 and select Sirius Channel 2.  They I go to Room2 and select Sirius Channel 3.  What happens?  I assume each Sirius driver can only do one stream.    Does Room 1 switch to Channel 3?  Does it get turned off?  See what I mean?

I believe I read here that some services allow multiple drivers and simultaneous streams.   And I think some (Tidal?) have "family plans" so I suppose I could install multiple drivers, each with it's own credentials.   But is there an automated way to have C4 play Sirius Channel #3 from any available Sirius driver in Room #3?   If not, it seems like I would have to have a dedicated set of Listen drivers for all services for all rooms, which seems a bit rough.

So my question is: how do people deal with this issue?    I would like the user experience to be: walk into any room and click Music and, with every subsequent click, rotate through a list of genres like Current Hits, Classic Rock, Alternative, Country, Classical (whatever, you get it).   And for the rooms to not "step on each other."    If they want to listen to specific music or playlist, they can use Tidal or cast to C4 from phone.

Any thoughts/advice?

Not a direct answer - but with Pandora I have a driver per room so I do not step on any toes

for your situation, maybe some variables?  You can do it with T/F variables, lets say you put on Sirius in Room #1, in Room #2 when you go to put on Sirius the command will be, if Sirius is playing then join rooms, if Sirius is NOT playing, randomize what channel goes on?

Because if Sirius only has 1 stream available(which I think is the case but I could be corrected easily) then your options are to either join the other room, or steal from the other room (or I guess just nothing happens but that seems like an odd “action”)

[BY96]

8 minutes ago, cnicholson said:

I'm about to implement Room Control driver with the Domosapiens "Keypad Audio" driver.  I'm starting to think about how to set up the presets and am worried about "source contention" issues.    I have lots of rooms, but take the example of just three rooms.   Suppose I want the first preset (for each room) to be Sirius Channel 1, second preset to be Sirius Channel 2, etc.   I go to Room 1 and select Sirius Channel 2.  They I go to Room2 and select Sirius Channel 3.  What happens?  I assume each Sirius driver can only do one stream.    Does Room 1 switch to Channel 3?  Does it get turned off?  See what I mean?

I could be wrong, but I think you can have multiple streams of SiriusXM playing in different rooms simultaneously (as long as you have a source that allows for multiple streams, like the EA or Core 3s or above). 

[cnicholson]

17 minutes ago, eggzlot said:

if Sirius only has 1 stream available(which I think is the case but I could be corrected easily) then your options are to either join the other room, or steal from the other room

Right.  That's the issue.  If multiple rooms are on the same source, joining makes sense, but what do I do if I want each room to listen to a *different* stream from Sirius or Pandora or Tidal (or whatever).   What is the best approach there?   Maybe the first question is: which services will allow me to have lots of concurrently active drivers/streams?  

It's kind of ironic that the "old days" of dumping a bunch of MP3s in a directory and building playlists off those files would probably work automatically in C4.  I assume it has no problem playing a different playlist/stream per room off a common set of files (until it runs out of audio-out ports).   But this brave new world of streaming sources seems to make it harder to simulate this.

[cnicholson]

28 minutes ago, BY96 said:

I could be wrong, but I think you can have multiple streams of SiriusXM playing in different rooms simultaneously (as long as you have a source that allows for multiple streams, like the EA or Core 3s or above).

This doesn't work for me.   If Sirius is playing in one room, and you go to diff room Listen->Sirius, it just joins the other room immediately (before selecting a station).   If you change station in Room 2, Room 1 follows (because they are joined).   I have added a second Sirius driver (Sirius Feed 2) and that works for independent streams.  I've been told that two is the limit, but I have not checked.  But AFAIK there's no smart/automatic way to say: Play Sirius Station #33 from *any available Sirius* driver in Room #4.    So the alternative (I think) is to have a dedicated Sirius driver PER ROOM.   I think.  I don't know.

To be clear, it doesn't have to be Sirius.  That just seems easiest to implement in a preset list (versus creating a duplicate playlist in every instance of, for example, Tidal, in each room).  I just want each room to be able to scroll through a common set of presets and not step on each other.

 

 

[BY96]

7 minutes ago, cnicholson said:

This doesn't work for me.   If Sirius is playing in one room, and you go to diff room Listen->Sirius, it just joins the other room immediately (before selecting a station).   If you change station in Room 2, Room 1 follows (because they are joined).   I have added a second Sirius driver (Sirius Feed 2) and that works for independent streams.  I've been told that two is the limit, but I have not checked.  But AFAIK there's no smart/automatic way to say: Play Sirius Station #33 from *any available Sirius* driver in Room #4.    So the alternative (I think) is to have a dedicated Sirius driver PER ROOM.   I think.  I don't know.

To be clear, it doesn't have to be Sirius.  That just seems easiest to implement in a preset list (versus creating a duplicate playlist in every instance of, for example, Tidal, in each room).  I just want each room to be able to scroll through a common set of presets and not step on each other.

 

 

Guess my assumption was incorrect. I know I am using multiple Tidal accounts, but I do have the Tidal driver duplicated in each room for each account. For example, in the kitchen, where any one of us might listen to Tidal, I have my account, my wife's account, and my daughters, but in the master bedroom, I only have mine and my wife's. However, since I am wanting access to each family member's playlist, having different Tidal accounts set up in each room (which I didn't know I could do until told her) is ideal. (Before, I was having my wife and daughter send me their playlists for me to include under my account, but then they couldn't make changes to their playlists.)

[eggzlot]

1 hour ago, cnicholson said:

Right.  That's the issue.  If multiple rooms are on the same source, joining makes sense, but what do I do if I want each room to listen to a *different* stream from Sirius or Pandora or Tidal (or whatever).   What is the best approach there?   Maybe the first question is: which services will allow me to have lots of concurrently active drivers/streams?  
 

well its simple to test sirius on your end - add in two drivers, manually execute them to play in different rooms and see if it works, or if the world explodes

pre C4 I was a Pandora person and just of habit have never left.  Turns out you can have lots of Pandora drivers with no problem so its never been an issue for me.  8 audio zones, 8 pandora drivers named like Kitchen Pandora, Dining Room Pandora, etc...each keypad in the room is to control that specific room Pandora driver, though I can always link any of them up with the add zone feature.

[South Africa C4 user]

1 hour ago, cnicholson said:

This doesn't work for me.   If Sirius is playing in one room, and you go to diff room Listen->Sirius, it just joins the other room immediately (before selecting a station).   If you change station in Room 2, Room 1 follows (because they are joined).   I have added a second Sirius driver (Sirius Feed 2) and that works for independent streams.  I've been told that two is the limit, but I have not checked.  But AFAIK there's no smart/automatic way to say: Play Sirius Station #33 from *any available Sirius* driver in Room #4.    So the alternative (I think) is to have a dedicated Sirius driver PER ROOM.   I think.  I don't know.

To be clear, it doesn't have to be Sirius.  That just seems easiest to implement in a preset list (versus creating a duplicate playlist in every instance of, for example, Tidal, in each room).  I just want each room to be able to scroll through a common set of presets and not step on each other.

 

 

I think that the Domosapiens Source Pooling driver may help in this situation.  Admittedly, it can’t help you get more streams than the limit (2 for Sirius per your post above).  I must admit that I have never used Sirius and I have never used the Source Pooling driver so cannot comment further on this.  I use Tidal and have a lot of programming doing what you want to do but I suspect that the Domosapiens Keypad Audio Control driver and the Domosapiens Source Pooling driver would make my programming totally redundant and the outcome better… One day I will test this theory.

[cnicholson]

1 hour ago, South Africa C4 user said:

the Domosapiens Source Pooling driver may help in this situation

Once again, you come through with a great recommendation.  The driver seems like it would help.   I am on Pandora Premium Family plan so I just installed six Pandora Premium drivers. 

Every time I have a crazy idea and my installer looks at me like I'm crazy, you have already done it!

Thanks!