Multiroom audio Via Touchscreens

[Raptor]

Hi,

I am trying to distribute music around my house.
All the songs are on my WHS server so what i would like to do is get some CE based touchscreens like this:http://cgi.ebay.com/DT-Research-WEB-...3A1%7C294%3A50

As I can get them as low as 90usd.

Ideally i would like to use an Interface like HStouch so you don't have to have a different GUI.

This would give me the possability to have music in everyroom there is a touchscreen.

Any ideas would be greatly appreciated.

Raptor

[markus.bergvoll]

Hi,
you can probably use the J.river plugin for this, since J.river suports multizone music. But you need speaker wires and amps for each zone. (as far as i know..)

Id like to get this to work with Squeezebox, and there is already a nice plug in, but it doesent fully support HSTouch (yet!) I think pcp is on the case.

But until then I use a workaround (not ideal). I have the Media Player plug in so i can play music on my HS server. Here i have installed a program that generates a mp3 radio stream. I have made a playlist with this mp3 stream on slimserver. And then i have one HS Event for each zone that starts playing that stream. So i i just trigger that event for my living room, and then select music on HSTouch with the MediaPlayer plugin that is working with HS Touch.

What i can not do now is play different music on different zones. I hope the Squeezebox plugin will fix this


For general radio listening i have about 10 events for each zone, so that is working like a dream, and my GF is for the first time really impressed by HS.

[edamweb]

music

Hey that is great Markus,

I want to start to install the same thing as you did, but first, I want to know how I can play music in one room and not in the other room ..

Example i have 5 speaker in the house, bathroom, entrance, master room, living room and 2nd Floor.

Let say I want to play music only in the entrance... What do I need for that, is there a splitter.....plugin ??? I just dont know.. Could you explain what you did?

Thx for your time.

have a nice day Homeseerer.

Danny

[markus.bergvoll]

I have 4 Squeezeboxes (zones)and use them with the Squeezebox plugin. For use with HSTouch i have made a lot of events that stops, starts, and adjust volume in each zone. And also for radio i made a lot of playlists in Squeezesenter that i made events for in HS so i could trigger them in HSTouch for eache zone.

BUT for music, i use the Media Player plugin with HS Touch. As i said in the earlier post, this is a work around, as you can not chose diferent music in each zones, but only where you would like to listen to it. I can use all 4 zones if i like.

Here is what i found on a Spotify forum( For use with Squeezebox)
And this works fine with Mediaplayer as well..

1. Download and install the Windows version of Icecast2 from www.icecast.org on the PC that you use for running Spotify. This does not have to be the same computer that are running the Squeezecenter, I use a Netgear NAS box for that.

2. Start the icecast GUI using the "Icecast2 Version 2.x" shortcut on your start menu, and select the Edit Configuration menu option. If your icecast server will be available outside the firewall you should change the default "hackme" passwords to something a bit more secure. (I only use it on my own LAN so I left them at the default values.) The default port number is 8000, I did not change that either.

3. Start the server. (It can be configured to start as soon as Windows starts which is convenient.)

4. Download and install Edcast Standalone 3.1.21 from http://www.oddsock.org/tools/edcast/.

5. Due to licensing issues edcast is not allowed to redistribute the LAME encoder to be able to encode mp3 streams, so you have to get it separately. It is only officially distributed as source code, but compiled Windows binaries can easily be found, for example from http://www.free-codecs.com/download/L.... Extract the zip archive (I think I used the lame3.98.2.zip one) to C:\Program Files\edcast.

6. Start edcast and click Add Encoder, right-click the newly created encoder and select Configure. Change the encoder type to "MP3 Lame", server ip "localhost", server port 8000, and the encoder password to the one you set in step 2 above. Click Ok to close the config dialog, and then Connect to start streaming to the icecast server.

7. If everything is working properly, edcast is now encoding whatever sound that is entering the soundcard and streaming it live. Since we want the music from Spotify to stream, we need to make sure that it is looped back using the soundcard. This can differ somewhat depending on Windows version and your sound hardware. On my system, I can bring up the standard Windows volume control, select Properties from the Options menu and select Recording. Make sure that the source called "Mixer" is included in the checked items, click Ok to bring up the recording control, and make sure that the "Mixer" is selected as recording source.

8. Start Spotify and start playing some music. Mute the speakers on the PC if you like, since the purpose of all this is to use your Squeezebox to play it.

9. Go back to edcast and click the Peak Meter. If things are working, you will see a meter moving. Adjust the volume by dragging the slider or using the recording control if you still have it open.

10. On the squeezebox (or using the Squeezecenter web interface which is more convenient), go to Internet Radio and Tune in URL, and enter the following URL, but change the IP address to whatever your computer is called you your network: http://192.168.0.3:8000/stream.m3u (You can of course store this as a Favorite or playlist.)

11. You should now hear the Spotify music on the Squeezebox!

12. To make it work even cooler, you can go into edcast and click the Edit button at the top to configure the metadata for your radio station. I set the Metadata field to "Spotify" and checked the "Grab Metadata From Window Title" and set the Window Class to SpotifyMainWindow. This will make edcast fetch the current artist and song title from the Spotify window and send it as metadata so that it displays on the Squeezebox's display - how cool is that.
Quite a lot of steps, but it works great once you complete them all, so good luck!