Monoprice 6 zone amplifier plugin

[upstatemike]

What happens if you set both MP Amp 1 and MP Amp 2 to "Master" but keep the ribbon cable connected to allow source inputs to flow to both amps? In this setup I am assuming each amp has its own USB serial cable and that there is someplace in the plugin setup to indicate which serial port is controlling which amp?

[DaveW42]

Setting both MP Amp 1 and MP Amp 2 to Master but keeping the ribbon cable connected results in the same outcome (HS continues to simply control MP Amp 1 with no changes to MP Amp 2). In that regard it doesn't seem to matter whether MP Amp 2 is set to "Master" or "Slave1." Each amp currently has its own serial cable, and I can control serial ports directly from the plugin management page. I tried all possible serial port connections (1,4,7,8, 9) for MP Amp 2.

[upstatemike]

So basically you are running 2 instances of the plugin with each instance set to a different serial port corresponding to a different amp and only the first instance of the plugin works? Or is it that both instances end up controlling the first amp?

[DaveW42]

I am running three instances of the Plugin, which yields separate settings for MP Amp 1, MP Amp 2, and MP Amp 3. The plugin for MP Amp 3 is enabled and listed as "On" in the Plug In management page, but the amp itself is turned off. I have fixed MP Amp 1 at a given serial port (Com Port 7), and am able to control all sources and outputs associated with MP Amp 1 using the MP Amp 1 plugin settings with that serial port (Com 7).

I have tried all possible serial port connections on MP Amp 2 (i.e., Com 1, 4, 7, 8, 9), using the MP Amp 2 plugin settings on the main plugin management page, with the same result every time. No matter whether I use plugin MP Amp 1 or MP Amp 2, and no matter which serial port I use for MP Amp 2, the result is the same. Both plugins wind up controlling MP Amp 1 (as stated in your post, both instances control the first amp).

[upstatemike]

I think you might be stuck. The developer says he only has one amp so he probably couldn't catch whatever is causing this problem. Unless he can puzzle out what is happening based on what you are seeing it could be challenging for him to fix this. I hope there is a fix though because I am getting close to buying a Monoprice system myself.

[zwolfpack]

It shouldn't be difficult to determine which COM port you are dealing with. When the USB-to-serial cable is connected/disconnected, the device should appear/disappear from the device manager 'Port (COM & LPT)' section. If that isn't happening, check in the USB controllers section. If a device appears there with a yellow warning symbol, its probably missing a driver.

[upstatemike]

It doesn't sound like a serial port issue. It sounds like the additional instances of the plugin are retaining some config info from the 1st instance that is causing all communication to go to the first amp.

[DaveW42]

I think you might be stuck. The developer says he only has one amp so he probably couldn't catch whatever is causing this problem. Unless he can puzzle out what is happening based on what you are seeing it could be challenging for him to fix this. I hope there is a fix though because I am getting close to buying a Monoprice system myself.

Hi, Upstatemike. Actually, I went through these steps to try to help your situation as described in your August 19 post ("I'm assuming if both units are set as Master but the ribbon cable is connected that you would get the shared audio but would use separate RS232 connections communicate between each unit and Homeseer. Would be great if somebody who has 2 units could try it."). I am personally more interested in the paid plugin that Happnatious has indicated he is working on. I was just trying to help out here, since I have more than one unit, and could therefore help in addressing your question. If this worked, then great, but on the whole I'd prefer the paid plugin since it would be designed from the ground up to do what I need.

zwolfpack, I agree with what you are saying. Before I installed the new USB to serial cable, I checked to see which com ports were available, so I would know which one was added to the mix after I added the cable. I was surprised to see that--after adding the cable--no new com ports appeared in Windows device manager. That is why I needed to try all different com port combinations, because it wasn't clear to me which I should go with. I hadn't checked the USB section of device manager before, but i did so just now. There are no entries with yellow exclamation points. There is an entry there for "USB Serial Converter" (manufacturer: FTID), but again no yellow exclamation point.

[upstatemike]

Thanks for doing the tests and glad it won't be an issue for you that additional amps don't work. I guess if I want to use more than one amp I will have to wait for the paid plugin also. Sounds like the existing plugin works well with a single amp though and that might do in the near term.

[DaveW42]

Glad to help! As you noted, the existing plugin does work great with a single amp.

I have some good news. Based on zwolfpack's post (thanks zwoflpack!), just for the heck of it I tried everything all over again with a fresh reboot of the system. The reboot has changed system behavior dramatically. Now when I plug the USB/serial cable in, I see that it is Com9. I changed MP Amp 2 to Master, and now in device management I am able to reliably and accurately control MP Amp 2 via Com port 9. The behaviors I saw yesterday are no longer occurring. In other words, changes to MP Amp 2 plugin settings no longer control MP Amp 1. I also had disabled MP Amp 3 on the plugin management page (not sure if that contributed to the mix).

I can't test the shared audio piece quite yet (the speakers for the MP Amp 2 zones are in bedrooms and everyone is asleep right now except me). I will test that part tomorrow and will let you know what I find.

[DaveW42]

To summarize my post above:

[DaveW42]

I can confirm that I am able to reliably and accurately control MP Amp 2 via Com port 9, and that I am able to have shared audio playing on both MP Amp 1 and MP Amp 2 using the same source input. However, there is one very odd behavior that I can't quite explain. Yesterday I could see in HS device management that I had multiple instances of the zones in MP Amp 2. In other words, I probably had about 5 copies of each of the six MP Amp 2 zones replicated in HS Device Management. At first I attributed to this to possibly occurring because I had enabled and disabled the MP Amp 2 plugin several times as I was troubleshooting things previously. I had backed up my HS configuration prior to working with any of this, and so I restored a prior configuration from about a week ago, and things returned to normal with only one instance of each MP Amp 2 zone appearing in device management.

When I came back to the system today, however, I now have two copies of each MP Amp 2 zone in HS device management. Note that the issue does not extend to MP Amp 1 (I still only have one copy of each zone, with respect to MP Amp 1). Very odd.

[happnatious1]

Hello,

Sorry I've been absent from the conversation but even though I'm subscribed to this thread I'm getting no notifications whatsoever. Not a big fan of the new message board format. When the plugin starts it looks for existing devices, if it doesn't find any it creates them. I can have a look in the code to see if I missed something in that section.

Thanks for testing

[DaveW42]

Thanks, Happnatious1! Happy to give this a try. Over the past several weeks the issue of multiple instances of zones has been recurring (not uncommon for me to have to delete 3 or 4 repeat instances of each of the 6 zones). I ultimately disabled that second plugin so that I wouldn't need to keep deleting these extra instances.

One additional issue that I was troubleshooting separately concerns the dropping of my right speaker channel at the two different zones / speaker locations that I tried. I am not sure if this is attributable to that second plugin, or to a problem with my setup. The latter is definitely possible, since I had just done the wiring to the new locations. The odd thing was that both right and left channels did work at one of the locations for a short time (i.e., after I had deleted the aforementioned multiple instances), but then it stopped working again (coinciding with the reappearance of multiple instances). However, after I deleted the extra instances the right channel no longer played. Again, there is a good chance that this is due to a peculiarity with my setup, but since you are looking at this now I thought I should note it in case it might help you as you troubleshoot.

Also, even if this setup works I think I would still prefer the paid plugin approach you mentioned, as a better long-term solution.

Thanks!

Dave

[happnatious1]

OMG!! I think I finally figured it out. When I wrote the plugin the media API wasn't finished (probably still isn't) and I had set the device type to (hopefully) be automatically usable by HSTouch. The advanced sample plugin appears to be hard coded to a single device type enumeration. Therefore it would never see the existing devices as being found and would recreate them every time. I uploaded a newer multi version at the beginning of this thread. Amp2 and Amp3 are different from each other as I did all the troubleshooting with amp2, but I'm not sure it makes a noticeable difference.