malelan

I picked up a trial of this driver yesterday but noticed that you can only use this with device variables, not the variables you set yourself with the variables agent.  Is there any plans to add this functionality?

Members,

I have a Samsung Terrace tv on an outdoor deck, this deck already had two L/R speakers in optimal spot for tv audio that was used for music.  This speakers are wired into the Analog audio amp/matrix combo.

I ran a 3.5mm stereo cable from the TV to the input on the matrix, and connected it via AV Path Setter driver.

I do get audio off the tv into the speakers for some things (running an android tv source).  But things like Plex continue to pass digital over my 3.5mm i think? and because the amp cannot decode it, i'll get like Left/Right channels, but i don't get a center channel, so I have no voice.  I turned passthrough off, and I modified all settings on the android tv box to not use surround.  Is there anything I can do to pass only LPCM over my audio out?  Unsure if this setting is on my android tv box, my tv itself etc.

Does anyone have a similar config?  I really don't want to force a dedicated soundbar for this when the speakers are already fit in a nice spot.

1 hour ago, eggzlot said:

So a few questions mixed in here:

Situations:

1. I fry an IT-100 just about every year, maybe x2 a year with a lighting storm.  I've swapped out the surge bar that the alarm itself is plugged into (A standard Belkin one) and the EA5 on the other end is plugged into a Panamax power conditioner/surge protector thing.  They were frying way more often until I put that new Belkin surge bar in and I think this is my first one lost in maybe a year
2. Yesterday there was certainly a very close lighting strike to my house - literally almost fell off my office chair
   1. IT-100 fried
   2. a Nvidia Shield seems to have fried too - though it powers on, it cannot detect ethernet so I put it on wifi and 2 streams stalled then failed after less than 10 minutes each.  I've replaced the Shield with a Fire TV and with early testing the Fire TV seems to work fine on Ethernet in the same port so thinking the Shield got messed up
   3. 1 IP camera was powered a 16 port Texas Wifi Midspan - everything else on that midspan and subsequent Cisco switch seem fine but 1 camera I had to move to another PoE source to get it to work

Questions:

1. Is it possible to fry a Shield - I read 1 thing on another forum where someone said they heard lighting can go through an HDMI cable and fry a streaming box?
2. Can 1 port of 16 on a midspan go out?
3. Is a whole home surge protector worth it?  Quick search on Amazon shows devices ranging from $150-$300 but I assume I need an electrician so basically double the cost given the $150/hr cost to get anyone to my house these days...
4. Do Panamax or Belkin (or other) surge bars/power conditioners, etc go bad?  Like after ~8 years for some of the Panamax stuff (Which is how old it is) should I be looking to replace them?

 

End of day - the Shield was just plugged straight into the wall so I can always put something small just on that outlet.  It is the constant frying of the IT-100 + now 1 potential port on my Midspan that has me wondering if I need to update anything, rethink my strategy, etc.

Your issue here is not on the surge suppression on the high voltage (power lines) its on the low voltage.  Once the surge is in your house, it can run up cat5/network/hdmi and any other low voltage you have.

You need to find a way to keep the surge outside of your house, or protect any low voltage lines that leave your house or run near/parallel to high voltage lines that leave the house.

There are whole home surge solutions, as well as methods to properly ground and protect low voltage applications.  this is a pretty big problem that doesn't get talked about a lot.  I've lost a lot of equipment like this too.

40 minutes ago, lippavisual said:

That’s what the AV Path Setter driver is for.  You can tell the system whether the audio path is viable for other rooms or strictly for that room.  Hasn’t been a logic issue for some time now. 

Hey, that's pretty cool,  I was not aware of this driver, thank you.

17 hours ago, zaphod said:

Are you sure the TV does not have audio out?  Pretty much all TVs that I have seen have various types of audio out - headphone jacks, RCA audio out or SPDIF.  I have a few instances where I run the audio out from the TV into a matrix amp to distribute.  The other option is to buy a Roku and use the Roku rather than the TV's apps. But then you will likely need an HDMI audio extractor.  The Roku cost is pretty insignificant compared to dealer futzing around costs.

The TV DOES have audio out, we used to run this configuration in the past, but there were some problems with it in C4.  I.E if multiple tvs are connected to matrix with TV OUT, Control4 wasn't intelligently linking that particular tv's output to that room, this may have been fixed (this was years ago).  the scenario was something along these lines.

TV 1, 2, and 3 are all wired on audio out back to matrix.

TV 3 is watching Source 1, but the speakers in the room with TV 3 are being fed by the audio out from TV 1 or 2 (because those are considered viable paths), however if TV 1 or 2 are not on, or on any other source, everything broke down.

If i use the audio out directly to a dedicated amp for yard speakers, that could work (no matrix switching) but then i can't bring in music audio easily.

Thank you, that is helpful.  Assume you are using some type of digital-analog convertor, to pull the audio out of the hdmi cable and pipe it into your existing analog amp.  Does this not create any sync/delay issues for you?  Any idea where one you're using?

Another thing i didn't put in my post up above, but there is still a requirement/need to be able to route music through these speakers, so if we do use a dedicated amp model, we'd need to be able to get a 2nd input into that amp from our matrix to access the standard music sources.

What type of configuration are people using to bring Outdoor TV Audio to landscape speakers.  Assuming that traditional landscape speakers are in place, and wired appropriately, how are you pulling the audio off the tv?  Prior to the smart tv generation,  we would pull audio off the source, and run it through a matrix into the standard amp and then through the speakers.  But this only works if the source physically exists separate from the tv, and has separate audio outputs.

We are running into the following problems (not at the same time)

1. The TV is a smart tv, client is using apps on the smart tv, so we need to get audio off the tv, and into our amp.

2.The source no longer has audio out, so we cannot get it into our amp (cable boxes, etc)

3. We can get the audio out of the source or tv, but only in digital, and all these landscape amp setups are analog.  We can convert, but then there are sync issues.

Is there a product on the market we are missing here? a small dedicated amp specifically for this, that potentially could take a digital signal without creating a sync lag?

On 1/25/2022 at 8:17 PM, Amr said:

For Xiaomi M3 or M4, Only works on WiFi not LAN as it disables LAN totally when invoking Zank or even the newer method! So what is ur hardware used?

I apologize for the late reply,  My tests were done on an nvidia shield, hardwired in.

i also use a similar configuration, i use the vera hub that looks like a leaf (green top, white bottom) available on ebay fairly cheap, it uses a very old firmware and i never upgraded, c4 database driver works fine.

I know I'm a bit late to the race here, but I've been playing with and testing this driver for a few weeks now and have some feedback that may answer some questions and may help.

- with the zank (advanced) mode this driver works very well, very fast, no noticable difference for me between irusb and this driver, so that is pretty sweet, and if latency was a concern i wouldn't really worry about that going in.

- this driver supports mini-apps, but only its own mini-app library,  it is not compatible with the universal miniapps (of which C4 has released 100's int he last few months) .  It is possible to create your own custom miniapp so that isn't bad, if there is something missing, you can create your own with a bit of elbow grease.

- this driver does not support passthrough mode.  (hiding the core device behind the app name in the remote/navigator menus)

- this driver supplies a standard android keymap, but only lets you configure the usage of the 4 colored buttons.  If you wanted to re-map guide, or info, or menu or anything, that wouldn't be possible without a 3rd party app on the device itself.

Overall the zank app was easy to find and very accessible.  the whole experience was very painless.

I've had no issues with this fan/driver combination since my original post, that being said, it is used in a room that doesn't get a ton of usage.  so ymmv

8 minutes ago, ejn1 said:

many thanks, was just curious as would think that's the primary reason anyone would pick that model.   Thanks again.

yeah i understand that,  in spots where we wanted art, we bought art,  the tv was a purchase because of the aesthetic of the frame and the location its in,  i regret the purchase haha

26 minutes ago, ejn1 said:

Thanks,  I'm going to run the connect cable behind the wall and maybe in a conduit,  i just don't see the risk at that voltage / wattage but if someone has a different opinion then please share.   I can fit the XL versabox just not sure it's worth it at this stage.  Can you please elaborate on why you never ran art mode?  

not a different opinion,  its just that i'm an installer so i can't like willingly break code there...  if its in your own house, i don't thinkt here is a massive risk there.

art mode just isn't for us,  maybe because the tv is in a bedroom, so it doesn't have a lot of foot traffic, or maybe we just aren't into it.

a few things,  versabox is fine, but any flushmount box would work.

i have a samsung frame,  for the money, i do not think it was worth it,  its a clean look, i never use the art mode.

one thing you should consider is that the samsung frame (atleast the one i have) is a one connect single cable device, which means you need a giant box connected to the tv,  this cable is not wall rated, so you need to hide that giant one connect box behind the tv, and it DOES NOT fit in a standard versabox,  snapav have released an extra large versabox specifically to fit this device in it (i do not have this, and endeed up cutting a giant hole in my box)

hope this helps

1 minute ago, am350z said:

If you only have one Sonos Port connected to the matrix, is room specific playing handled on the backend through c4 programming?  Replacing my C4 matrix and adding a Port might be preferable to 8-10 stacked ports.

yes, correct, this is handled on the control4 end.  as long as the sonos device is available to every room in control4, it will be intelligently routed when the command goes through josh.

I haven't gotten my core/nano yet, so i cannot speak on any of that stuff.

What i can confirm is that i have a Sonos Port hooked up to a c4 matrix and that works fine.  "Hey Josh, play metallica" uses the sonos port to the room i'm in.  If i'm somewhere else i use my c4 touchpanels to use c4 music services.

as far as i'm aware this is not possible today.

you can force josh to say things, but he isn't going to be aware of the differences with responses.

2 hours ago, videostorm said:

It's possible.  That is a feature of the new mini driver functions released a year back or so that allows the mini drivers to forward the key commands down the chain.  Our driver is written with the "hijack" the source selection method that was the only way prior to that update.  Backwards compatibility for existing installs would be the only real issue....

Other than seeing the app name instead of the Fire stick name as your selected source, what is the advantage you see with the new method? 

I think thats the only advantage,  It's just cleaner for the end user to understand what source they are in by looking at the remote.  It makes programming a bit easier if you want to fire commands when certain devices are selected  i.e Red button when Room Media Device = Netflix etc.  This should still be possible either way, but a bit more work the other way.

The pulled driver is unreliable anyway,  Amazon released a new FireOS shortly after the driver was written.

On 5/13/2021 at 5:05 PM, videostorm said:

You can also use our IRUSB driver to control FireStick.   It is fast IP control for any Amazon device, but you do need to purchase the hardware for it ~$40.

https://www.video-storm.com/proddetail.php?prod=IRUSB

Full free C4 driver.  

Or you could wait......   Depends on your threshold

Apologies. Wrote passive. Meant pass through. 

4 hours ago, videostorm said:

https://www.video-storm.com/downloads/NetPlay_protocol.pdf

Just the section on "NetPlay Video virtual matrix command set"

The commands can be sent from our C4 driver command (which uses the TCP socket).  You can also send via http as:

Virtual matrix control via HTTP GET

http://ip_address/vm_request.php?cmd=PROTOCOLCMD

Note PROTOCOLCMD must be URL encoded properly

Thank you, some great options in here.  I'm setting up my overlay stuff and I'm a bit confused where I define the video OSD Overlay templates,  I have the option for "Video OSD Formats Config" in the Video Matrix Options but this looks like the legacy stuff.  Is there something else I should be looking at to define the new formats?

On 5/13/2021 at 5:05 PM, videostorm said:

You can also use our IRUSB driver to control FireStick.   It is fast IP control for any Amazon device, but you do need to purchase the hardware for it ~$40.

https://www.video-storm.com/proddetail.php?prod=IRUSB

Full free C4 driver.  

Or you could wait......   Depends on your threshold

I have an IRUSB somewhere else and it works great,  I'm a huge fan of this device.  That being said, the one thing that makes me want to use the native Amazon/Shield drivers, is the ability to run apps in passive mode (where the mini driver displays as the source instead of the IRUSB device)  i think its a much cleaner end user experience.

Is there any ability to enable passive for IRUSB or future plans?

On 5/28/2021 at 3:09 PM, videostorm said:

Send_Serial QRESTART002\r     (\r is the required terminator)

This works perfectly,

is there a full list of all these API commands in one of the docs?

59 minutes ago, videostorm said:

Yes, use the "send_serial" command on our Netplay driver to send any Netplay protocol command.   Probably should rename that command as the "serial" part is just legacy.  Everything is IP now of course.

Would this be Send_Serial QRESTART002 for sink 2?

On 5/25/2021 at 11:18 AM, videostorm said:

We do have this capability built into NetPlay.  On the Sink Setup page (NVMM), you can see the REBOOT buttons for all sinks.  You can also reboot via the API command QRESTARTxxx  (xxx being the 3 digit sink number).

For VRX devices, that is all you need.  For other Android devices (Fire Stick etc), you will first need to enable ADB on that device and then send a test REBOOT command which will trigger the ADB permission screen on the stick.  Select allow always on the stick.  After that you should be able to remotely reboot that device via the methods above.

Sweet,  I tested this via NVMM and it worked great,  is there a way to pass QRESTART via control4 driver?