best way to link audio in two rooms for both music and video sources

[Cranky Oldman]

I have three instances in my house where there are two rooms in Control 4 that we use as if they were a single room when it comes to audio.  For example, my kitchen and family room are just opposite ends of one large room.  The family room area has a TV and two sets of speakers, wired in parallel to a single output from a Triad 8-zone amp.  The kitchen area has one set of speakers wired to another output from the 8-zone amp.  The kitchen does not have a TV, but the family room TV is positioned to be viewable from the kitchen.  When we watch the family room TV, we always manually add the kitchen speakers to that session.  When we initiate a pure-audio session from either room, we manually add the other room to the session. 

I am trying to eliminate that manual step by automating it in Composer, such that whenever either a "watch" or "listen" source is selected in either room, it will create a session that includes all the speakers in both rooms.  I took a shot at achieving this with Media Scenes, and it works exactly the way I want with audio sources.  But if I select a video source for the family room, the kitchen speakers do not get added to the session.  

I see a note in the Composer Media Scenes agent that may point to the problem:  "If Selections are linked between rooms, any room that is part of the scene but cannot select the source will be issued a Room Off command".    In my case, the Kitchen cannot choose any video sources, so that seems like the probable explanation for my media scene not working with video sources.   Is that correct?  And if so, is there any workaround, or do I need to use something other than Media Scenes to make this work?

Additional info: 
-my audio is switched by a Triad 16x16 AMS V2, which feeds two Triad amps
-video sources go through an AVProEdge 4x4 matrix switch that sends video by HDBT to TV's, splitting off audio to the Triad 16x16
-Controller is a Core 5, running 3.4.1 OS

Thanks in advance for any assistance

 

 

 

[South Africa C4 user]

I’m pretty sure you can do this with the room control driver.  

I used to use Media Scenes for connecting rooms (and still have this active in some areas of my main residence).  In the last few years, all of my programming of this nature has been done with the Room Control driver.  It is a free control4 driver that your dealer can install from the driver database and it is easy to use.

[Cranky Oldman]

2 minutes ago, South Africa C4 user said:

I’m pretty sure you can do this with the room control driver.  

I used to use Media Scenes for connecting rooms (and still have this active in some areas of my main residence).  In the last few years, all of my programming of this nature has been done with the Room Control driver.  It is a free control4 driver that your dealer can install from the driver database and it is easy to use.

Thanks SAC4 user -- I have the Room Control driver installed but haven't played with it yet.  I guess it's time to check it out!

[Cranky Oldman]

SAC4 -- you were right, the room control driver seems to be working.  I now have the synchronization of audio and video sources working between the two rooms.  

I still have some work to do to get volume control and on/off control working the way I want it to, but I expect that will fall into place as well.

[South Africa C4 user]

11 hours ago, Cranky Oldman said:

SAC4 -- you were right, the room control driver seems to be working.  I now have the synchronization of audio and video sources working between the two rooms.  

I still have some work to do to get volume control and on/off control working the way I want it to, but I expect that will fall into place as well.

I set this up so long ago that I am rusty.  From memory, you can create multiple room control drivers (and each instance can control multiple rooms) and then link (bind) your volume control to one of them.  I also think that on/off linking is an option on the driver (assuming you have chosen multiple rooms).  

[Cranky Oldman]

Thanks again SAC4 for your pointers... I've also benefitted from many of your other posts spanning many years that have turned up while searching this forum -- so thanks for the help as I climb the C4 learning curve!

After getting the initial two-room control sorted out, I moved on to a three-room situation, and was surprised by a little glitch that I'm wondering if you've ever encountered:  when adding two rooms with "Sync Source Between Rooms", only the second room in the list is successfully being added to the session.   After testing many permutations of settings, I found I could get it to work by adding the rooms with separate programming steps, but only if I put a 1 second delay between adding the two rooms.  Attached screenshot shows the single step that doesn't work (grayed out) and the two-step-plus-delay combo that does work.  Seems like the controller or maybe the matrix switch needs some time to process the addition of the first room before moving on to the second?

In case it's not obvious from the screenshot, the intent here is if someone initiates a Listen session in the study, then we want to automatically add the dining room and office to the session.   Also fyi I tried variations adding between 3 and 8 rooms with a single line of programming, and it always resulted in only the last one of the listed rooms being added.  I also was curious about how long the time delay needed to be for this to work, so I varied it in 100 ms steps, and on my system the code didn't work unless the delay was at least 900 ms.  I decided to round that up to 1 whole second for the code in the screenshot.

[South Africa C4 user]

That is strange!

I have a number of places where I sync multiple rooms in one go using the room control driver.

Are all 3 of your rooms going through the same matrix or do you have multiple matrixes.  I have had various issues on Os3.4.1 (and I understand from my dealer that he has other clients with similar problems) with linking zones across different matrices.  My problems have not been room control driver specific but it wouldn’t surprise me if I would experience the same problem with the room control driver.  Fortunately (for me), most of the zones that I tend to link are across a single matrix (despite having multiple matrices / amps at both my residences).

[Cranky Oldman]

I only have one matrix switcher for audio.  There is a separate switcher for video but the three rooms I was trying to link are all audio-only.  I think for now I'll just put this issue aside.  Maybe at some point down the road the root cause of the problem will become apparent.

Meanwhile I'm realizing I need to be really careful about interactions between my various automations -- my programming above unintentionally triggered a separate "entertaining" automation linked to the dining room audio that I created a few weeks ago.  I might have to start documenting some of this stuff!    

[Neo1738]

Wondering if the "video wall" driver would be best for this? Dealers input?

[Topfox]

I do your exact scenario in my home. I use a combination of Room Driver and then programming. For me I activate it with pico remotes. One button press turns on pandora for the room. Two button presses and if the tv is on in the family room the kitchen speakers play whatever is on in the family room, 3 button presses turns on all the first floor audio to the source in the room I’m in, 4 button presses opens my drive way gate. Other buttons on the pico audio remotes does what their labels are. Play/pause, volume up/volume down, skip forward. Works great. 
 

Instead of using a pico I’m sure you could use like an experience button or a c4 keypad or whatever. 

[Cranky Oldman]

8 minutes ago, Topfox said:

I do your exact scenario in my home. I use a combination of Room Driver and then programming. For me I activate it with pico remotes. One button press turns on pandora for the room. Two button presses and if the tv is on in the family room the kitchen speakers play whatever is on in the family room, 3 button presses turns on all the first floor audio to the source in the room I’m in, 4 button presses opens my drive way gate. Other buttons on the pico audio remotes does what their labels are. Play/pause, volume up/volume down, skip forward. Works great. 
 

Instead of using a pico I’m sure you could use like an experience button or a c4 keypad or whatever. 

Thanks Topfox for the reference to Pico remotes...  that might be just the ticket for a couple of rooms in the house.  To make that work, it looks like I would need a Lutron hub, correct?  Does a single hub cover a whole house? 

[Topfox]

38 minutes ago, Cranky Oldman said:

Thanks Topfox for the reference to Pico remotes...  that might be just the ticket for a couple of rooms in the house.  To make that work, it looks like I would need a Lutron hub, correct?  Does a single hub cover a whole house? 

Yeah. I have a single hub that’s covers my 7100 sqft house. It is centrally located though. 

[Topfox]

1 minute ago, Topfox said:

Yeah. I have a single hub that’s covers my 7100 sqft house. It is centrally located though. 

Here is a pic of one. If you don’t have a deep wall plate you can also slide the remote off the wall mount. 

[Topfox]

Here is how I did the programming. Mix of variables, a timer and then button press event on the remote. 
 

 

[Cranky Oldman]

9 minutes ago, Topfox said:

Here is how I did the programming. Mix of variables, a timer and then button press event on the remote. 

Thanks Topfox... those pictures are going to be really helpful getting me started on the right track.  Appreciate you taking the time to post them

[South Africa C4 user]

i use a very similar approach but using C4 keypads.  Great example @Topfox