CAV6.6 / MC11 link software

hyslopc, I have to thank you for your efforts, and particularly your willingness to share your work with the community! (esp. since you're giving the s/w away FREE!)

As a custom installer, I'm very interested in this s/w ... I hope to be able to demo the app with the CAV in my own home in the next few months, once our remodel's complete and I have the a/v setup completed. If it works, we may consider offering it to our clients as a (potentially cheaper) alternative to the SMS3. However, if we chose to pursue this I wouldn't do so without a) your express permission, and b) some form of payment (call it a licensing fee ) to you!

Thanks again!

Will this also work with Russounds new CAM controller? I believe the CAM and the CAV use the same keypad interface.

Thanks.

Odd behavior from the keypads that I have been struggling with for about a week or more.

As I understand it the keypads SHOULD function like this:
next/prev buttons on the keypad jump to the next/prev track in the playlist, and use the +/- keypad buttons to go to the next/prev artist in the playlist.

However for me the next/prev button jump to a random place in the play list and start scrolling the text by the song name. the +/- keys will jump to the same songs as next/prev but start text scrolling with the Artist.

I had keypad firmware v2.00.2 but did the update to V3.00.01 but the problem remains. My CAV has firmware v2.00.01 which appears to be the latest. Shuffle mode is off in MC11, and my playlist is shorted by artist.

HELP...

** I originally posted this over in the Home Integration Forum **

Hi

Trying to get this interface going.. I am so close.....but its not quite going.

I have upgraded my keypads and controller, ran the serial cable, and installed Media Center 11. My problem is when I try and run cav66.exe - I get the error message "This application has failed to start because the application configuration is incorrect. Reinstalling the application may fix the problem."
Unzipping and running again gets the same result. I am running from com2, so I am running the command line as "c:\
ussound\\cav66.exe /port=com2".

Just to confirm - the serial cable that is used between the CAV66 and the pc is a straight through cable using pins 2, 3 and 5?

Any ideas where I may be tripping up here? I am eager to see this in action!

Cheers

Al

I am running version 11.0.248, just d/l'd yesterday. I see the .250 is now available , I will try that and let you know. BTW, I did run the CAV66 on my work PC and it came up with a box listing all the CAV 6.6 zones, even tho I was not connected to anything - I fear there may be something wrong with my home PC (running XP Pro)

Al

Update: Same issue with v.250.

Same result with a freshly installed version of Windows XP Pro - it must not like my hardware

Hi all,
Count me in as a another successful user of this little app. Great work hyslopc! And more importantly thanks for sharing your work with the community!

I do have a question for you:
In the last thread you said:
"The plug-in is designed to automatically stop each MC zone if no keypads are turned on within that zone. That is, if the music isn't playing anywhere in the house, it will be automatically turned off. This is so that you can just turn a keypad off in the room you are in without having to worry about whether the source is shared or not.

If the plug-in didn't do this, then the music would keep on playing if you didn't press stop before turning off the last keypad. In addition to generating unnecesary PC heat, noise, and hard disk wear, this would mess up MC's statistics (since it would show songs as "played" that have not actually been heard)."

I am wondering if this functionality is tied to the power management funtionality in the CAV6? My hope is that by turning off the Power Management off for Source 1 then it won't shut down my MediaCenter? THe reason I ask this is because I am using the loop-back ports on input number one to send uncontrolled audio signal to the amplifier in my living room which acts independantly from the keypads. Until all the keypads are off - then my music gets shut down as well even tho I want to still play it via the loop back outputs.. My installer is coming back this week to do some other programming and hopefully I will get him to disable the Power management for the 2 MC zones. Can you confirm if this is how your app works? Am I making any sense?
Cheers!

A switch/checkbox would be perfect, and preferred to using the power management option (see page55) as it leaves me in control of this thing and not at the mercy of getting the installer in to change the setting later should I want to change the configuration.

Oh.. and one more thing... Ths is one awesome little app you made! Can I make a donation to the cause?

Cheers!

Sounds like a good solution but I don't think you need to get that complicated. I like your original idea better - that is to just have a flag or checkbox to NOT stop MC when there are no zones active and skip the whole integration with their Power Management.

I'm not sure about the Cav6.6 having a single HT zone but I know it does have RCA pass throughs for each source on the Russound. One global flag that applies to all zones and sources would work fine for me. (But you just KNOW someday someone's going to come to you and ask you to control it on a source by source basis) :-)

for me one global flag would work wonderfully. Either it shuts MC down or it doesn't. Maybe start with that and see if anyone really needs to have more granular control?? No one has piped into this feature debate yet.

hyslopc,

I installed XP Home and now everything is working -=excellent=-.

I am not sure if it was .Net Frame work 1.1 that was causing me issues on the other build, but from my reading it would seem to be the only thing I can link it to.

Anyways, awesome software! I am really enjoying being able to control my audio on the pc remotely. I also got the video portion working very well through the CAV 6.6 using an ATI All-in-Wonder card. I will be purchasing a PC to dedicate to media centre and your interface!

My only request would be the ability to control playlists as has been previously discussed by using an extended push on one of the buttons.

Also the ability to toggle whether to have it turn off with no zones connected could be handy for me in the future as I expand on the functionality you have given me.

Thanks again, great solution!

Al

.
I am a willing tester as well, if needed.

Cheers

Al

hyslopc,

I was excited to see your CAV6.6 integration and am personally interested in adapting it for my own use with Apple's iTunes . I sent you a PM with details.

MMMMMMM... Playlists!!

Any updates on implementing this feature?

How about Fm tuner support? I'd like to setup an FM source using something like the Axife FM tuner software and a USB tuner. It'd be really slick to have the station number, call letters or some other text displayed right on the UNO display.

I've got girder and netremote running on the MC11 machine. Any ideas on how to make your code interface with a tuner?

Ditto on the tuner support!