Integration at Last: Sonos Wireless Audio and Control4 Automation

[tebery]

http://www.cepro.com/article/control_a_sonos_wireless_audio_system_with_control4_automation/?utm_source=RC&utm_medium=module

[pharmdsmith]

Wappinghigh is going to pee in his pants

[tebery]

+1

[thecodeman]

I told him good things will come to those who wait

[dgbrown]

They certainly do. Understanding that a guy's gotta eat ...... I do have to say those guys from across the pond are a bit high (pun intended) with their pricing. $349 for the driver, and what about the ATV driver, the driver's the same price as the device hardware.

There's something funky in the water over there.

[ILoveC4]

I hope the $349 isn't in pounds, that would make it damn near $700! That wouldn't surprise me though.

I also agree that the price of the ATV driver is insane...adding the driver doubles the price of the unit!

[dgbrown]

I'm actually a little scared of the extortion the 4store will bring ... just saying.

[ILoveC4]

I'm actually a little scared of the extortion the 4store will bring ... just saying.

Could be interesting.

I can't believe we haven't seen anything from Wappinghigh yet. He probably saw the post and dropped dead in his chair...poor guy. One can only handle so much excitement.

[thecodeman]

I'm actually a little scared of the extortion the 4store will bring ... just saying.

Could be interesting.

I can't believe we haven't seen anything from Wappinghigh yet. He probably saw the post and dropped dead in his chair...poor guy. One can only handle so much excitement.

He's seen the information, he just emailed me on his way to go surfing. You know, the outdoors activity.

[thecodeman]

I hope the $349 isn't in pounds, that would make it damn near $700! That wouldn't surprise me though.

I also agree that the price of the ATV driver is insane...adding the driver doubles the price of the unit!

It's not in pounds, that's in USD and the suggested MSRP of the driver (not including dealer's time).

[ILoveC4]

I'm actually a little scared of the extortion the 4store will bring ... just saying.

Could be interesting.

I can't believe we haven't seen anything from Wappinghigh yet. He probably saw the post and dropped dead in his chair...poor guy. One can only handle so much excitement.

He's seen the information' date=' he just emailed me on his way to go surfing. You know, the outdoors activity.[/quote']

Are you suggesting I don't enjoy "outdoors" activities Cody?

I hope he has a good time. You'll have to let us all know how the integration goes.

[thecodeman]

Could be interesting.

I can't believe we haven't seen anything from Wappinghigh yet. He probably saw the post and dropped dead in his chair...poor guy. One can only handle so much excitement.

He's seen the information' date=' he just emailed me on his way to go surfing. You know, the outdoors activity.[/quote']

Are you suggesting I don't enjoy "outdoors" activities Cody?

I hope he has a good time. You'll have to let us all know how the integration goes.

No, I'm just saying that between the two of us, we spend a lot of time here doing the surfing that doesn't require a wetsuit. Maybe we both should take a vacation.

[wappinghigh]

I told him good things will come to those who wait

..Hey guy's what's all the fuss about? ...

Now don't you worry about that ...I'll be one of the first to give it a go.

Initial impressions having read the blurb..

1/ How are they going to deal with the lack of Sonos static IP?

The IP addresses sometimes change....I've got 8 zoneplayers....

2/ Why are they charging such an outrageously cheap price? :lol:

3/ There really is a bit of life left in the "old Dart" yet! :D:D

Congrats to Extra Veggies...you are about to change the world :cool:

[jberger]

The driver is in very early beta right now, so don't expect it to be released any time soon.

I have no doubt these guys will get it right, and charge accordingly.

I'll be adding it to my test system this week!

[akg4y]

I think 4store will reduce prices, as long as competing drivers are allowed. Once a few people see the potential to make some money writing drivers if we have 2 or 3 options for say ATV control then prices should drop. 100 people buying an ATV driver at $100 each would be $10000 with unlimited potential income and little to no recurring cost or time if the driver is done well initially and the hardware or C4 software stays consistent.

[RyanE]

Just to point out again, the 4Store is *not* where these drivers are being sold.

The 4Store is limited to Flash applications that run within the upcoming OS 2.0 Flash Navigator interface. They may, at some point in the future, also include drivers or agents that would go along with the Flash UI application, but for the time being, they do not.

These are drivers offered for sale by a 3rd party. Not 4Store items.

In this case, what is 'allowed' is that anyone who wants to make a driver and sell it in competition to Extra Vegetables could, with the DriverWorks SDK.

RyanE

[wappinghigh]

The driver is in very early beta right now, so don't expect it to be released any time soon.

I have no doubt these guys will get it right, and charge accordingly.

I'll be adding it to my test system this week!

...Ah the delights of being an "early adapter" ....please check out the Sonos Dynamic IP issue for me. You can't easily allocate Sonos zoneplayers a static IP (to my knowledge). There is a workaround (I'm told), but's it's complicated and risks turning a zoneplayer into an expensive little brick. If this driver needs Composer to enter all the zoneplayer IP's manually, then lets hope you can do this using Composer HE. Having to get a dealer to do it everytime there is an IP re-allocation would be a bit of a pain..

When I first got Sonos, I had all sorts of problems with IP allocation by my router and jumbo frames with my switch. It's how I found out you can't easily use staticIP with Sonos. It's one of the reasons I moved to An Apple router/Linksys switch network. Those clever guys at EV need to make it very clear just how they intend to make this work..

[thecodeman]

I think they have that issue covered with some kind of automatic detection but I can't say since I don't have Sonos or the driver. Just wild speculation.

[dgbrown]

I'll take a stab Wap ....

Option 1 (Programming) I hate to use MS as a source but head here http://support.microsoft.com/kb/821371 and go down to SSDP. In combination with UPnP this is essentially how it's done in a perfect world (there's obviously a little more to it).

Option 2 (Infrastructure) - Set a DHCP reservation for your ZP's so they always get the same IP address.

Edited to add:

These are your two basic technical options. Depending on the complexity involved with setting up the driver option two may be realistic albeit with limitations.

[wappinghigh]

I think they have that issue covered with some kind of automatic detection but I can't say since I don't have Sonos or the driver. Just wild speculation.

I'm sure they have thought about this I know they seem to understand the issue...here is a quote from the above initial release.."The dealer will have complete freedom on how the zones are named. This is quite important because Sonos uses DHCP and the IP addresses may change,” Scotland says. “There should be no confusion on what player you are controlling.”

But I've also read something that there is an "application" included in the package that scans your network for the Sonos IP's. Now I'm going to wildly speculate that this will not be automatic....I hope I'm wrong.If I am, then lets hope a simple "rescan" can be manually done (without a dealer)..:cool: I don't want to put the "moz" on this by any means..

[dgbrown]

Wap - Don't get to crazy about this. I don't know this as fact, but I'd say your ZP's are safe and won't be touched or cracked to make this work. There are a number of viable standards based options out there to solve this issue - I gave you two above.

There are better minds than mine out there, so certainly there are more than the two that came to me.

[wappinghigh]

No problems I'm a vegetarian

[ExtraVeg]

Hi everyone, thought we'd better get on here and give you some more bits of information about the Sonos driver and what we are about.

Firstly just to clarify that these drivers are written on a commercial basis and are independent of Control4 and in this case Sonos. We have no special information from Control4 to do this as RyanE says we just use the Driverworks SDK which is available to all dealers.

On the commercials side we expect the driver to retail for around $349 - the same price as one handheld controller. The final price is down to the dealer and they may charge varying amounts for installation. No doubt it will depend on whether it's installed as part of a regular client visit or its a special truck roll. That $349 a one off charge per project regardless of the number of zone players you may have. There are considerably more costs to running a business than some people seem to think. Whilst I'm not going to post up our business plan online I can tell you that it doesn't include new sports cars all round every year. Sure anyone else can compete, but if they add things up properly and intend to be around for the long haul supporting and developing new products they are probably going to end up at a quite similar figure. It ain't freeware and it doesn't break!

Now that boring bit is out of the way let's move on to some of the other tech questions.

One of our first thoughts when writing the driver was the fact that the Sonos units are DHCP and this can change. In fact one of the pitfalls of the Sonos system is that if you reboot your router and not all of the Sonos ZPs at the same time you can get IP conflicts on the network. We have found a quick, easy and simple way around this problem. No hacking or changes of any kind, whatsoever, at all, never are made to the Sonos or its software. We can keep track of all the ZPs and if their IP addresses change, Control4 will adjust to it within a matter of seconds. dgbrowns ideas are good but we've done something a bit different. Can't say what trade secret don't you know.

There is an helper application used by the dealer when the system is first set up. It is merely a time saving application that speeds up the installation process as it saves the installer having to physically find all the ZPs in your house. As an end user you don't need it and it plays no part in the operation of the system when it's set up.

The driver will be available to dealers worldwide from 8 Feb 2010. We are showing at a trade only show in Amsterdam next week.

There are a few new features that are going to be available over and above those announced in the press release:

Sonos Radio Favorites - These stations will now appear under 'Radio' on the Control4 touchscreens.

Local Sonos Inputs - These will now in true Sonos fashion be available anywhere on the Sonos network. A CD player (or whatever) plugged into the Sonos input in the Lounge will now appear on the Control4 touchscreen for selection (AND control remember) in the bedroom. Trust me when I say that this is very clever stuff :cool:!

So that's a bit of an exclusive for you.

There won't be searching or selection from online services such as Pandora or Rhapsody from the Control4 interfaces at present. This is mainly because C4 doesn't allow us to display a keyboard as part of the Driverworks proxy we need to use. However if you select these from the Sonos controllers they will display on the Now Playing screen. That Now Playing screen doesn't show cover art at the moment. This is also down to a limitation of graphics formats within C4 that I won't bore you with.

However come the release of Control4 2.0 and the 4Store we will have an application that complements the driver. This should provide access to those missing elements such as the keyboard and cover art. This will be an optional add on which *if* you already have the driver installed can be downloaded and installed by the user. At least that what we think at the moment. The driver however will need your dealer to install, Remember just like everyone else's AppStores the host i.e. C4 will take a percentage of the sales price to cover their not inconsiderable costs of hosting the service.

If you have any more questions please post them on this thread and I'll try and answer them in as much detail as I can.

Simon Scotland

[wappinghigh]

Simon. All my "fears" turn to fabrications! A big thanks

Not only is the integration fantastic, but a great internet radio solution! :cool:

As an obvious Sonos user yourself, you are no doubt aware of the lack of Sonos IR control of connected devices. Might there also be a work around using the C4/Sonos combo?...that is if a zoneplayer is plugged into an amp (which has IR control)...and that zoneplayer is selected to stream by your app...a C4 IR "ON" command could also be sent to the amp? Would certainly sort one of THE major Sonos bug bears of all time!

Also what you said about a connected CD player. This really IS clever . Does this mean I could connect my cable box into Sonos and play that sound input in any zone?...Now this would really be cool...as all my peripheral TV's have crappy sound.

Simon..once again Congrats. Your efforts are worth every cent IMHO

[VinceC]

Hi Simon,

Nice work on this Sonos driver!

You do not mention any functionality for linking / unlinking. If zoneplayers are linked through sonos desktop controller how does the control4 touchscreen react?

I suspect the intended use for this integration is to use 1 single zoneplayer which would get distributed through C4's multiroom audio distribution and not to overlay a control wrapper onto an existing sonos multi-zoneplayer setup.

I have quite a bit of experience working with the Sonos uPNP commands and I understand it's limitations. If you are controlling multiple linked zones directly via IP and you send a command to a zone is not the master zone it can cause all sorts of problems.

Add coverart, Subscription Music (or at least Napster/Rhapsody), Searching, and linking/unlinking and this will be a kickass addon to any C4 system.

Best of luck!

-Vince