AV Distribution suggestions, PLEASE!

[tblackmon9599]

I am new to HS so i need a little direction from some of you experts out there. My set-up is pretty straight forward, HSPro, HSTouch, IPhone, in-wall touch pad. (various lighting throughout)

I would like to control my whole house audio and i'm looking for suggestions for how to do this.

Current set-up is 3 receivers and 3 amps located in the basement "equipment" room. All servers, switches, coax and video is terminated there. I had a Crestron system installed when the house was built to control audio distribution to all 3 levels of the house as well as the theater (basically i have one receiver/amp for each floor of the house). Crestron system controls the receivers and amps through one Crestron remote and 3 basic in-wall touch pads located throughout with what i believe are IR blasters. Basically they turn on/off the receiver and amps and select the audio source.

I would like to replace the Crestron all together with new touch pads and control it all through HS. I'm having trouble understanding how to control the equipment in the basement with HS. I am very unfamiliar with IR blasters and the interfaces that would be needed. How do they learn the codes, can I just use one receiver/amp with an interface that will distribute the audio to all/different levels/zones of the house, etc....

I have read many threads and have looked at GC-100-12 and USB-UIRT but i don't fully understand how they would work to replace/suppliment what i already have.

Very excited about the possibilities but a little overwhelmed as well. Any advice is GREATLY APPRECIATED!!!

[Stef]

Hi,

Nice setup. I think you should keep your 3 receivers/amp. I don't say how many speakers you have installed, but I may be to much for only one of the amp.

I have a small setup. Only one receiver and 4 zones all on the same source. I control the receiver with an Ocelot - Secu 16IR with stick-on emitters. If I had 3 identical receivers, it would allow me to send command to only one of them at a time.

The Ocelot can learn IR. I would stick the emitters of the first receiver to the ocelot IR input window and use HS to learn each keypad keys.

There are lots of other solution than the Ocelot on the market today. If I had to start over, I would base my choice on IP solutions. All my stuff is RS232 and I'm tied to where all the cable go in my office. I want to exchange my office with my son bedroom. I will have to put lots of cable for RS232 when I could have use only one Cat5 with an IP solution.

[tblackmon9599]

Thanks Stef.

I have quite a few zones currently. Pretty much each receiver/amp controls 6 or 7 zones with 2 speakers each. I appreciate your advice. I really don't know how much power these amps will push so i tend to agree that i would rather err on the side of caution and use them all. I have a ton of cabling as at least i thought ahead a little (i even have fiber but can't find anyone willing to terminate it for less than a small child!) but i'm at a loss as to how to utilize it best.

I'll check out Ocelot and see if that will work. I assume this is a "module" that I can plug in to the network and then control with HS. Will i be forced to write scripts to control Ocelot or is it pretty much pnp?

Thanks again for the reply and advice.

[Stef]

The Ocelot is not IP control but rather RS232.

[donstephens]

I haven't used this myself, but HomeSeer sells this which looks pretty nice and seems to interface with HomeSeer well.

http://store.homeseer.com/store/BC4-...s-P605C47.aspx

I'm assuming that your three receivers are identical, so an IR blaster might not be the best thing... The BitWise can output IR in zones, is controlled via TCP/IP. Also attractive is the fact that it has a big IR Library. If I had it to do all over again, and my receiver did not allow RS-232 control, I'd look into the BitWise.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YfSban_m_Kw

Good hunting...

[tblackmon9599]

Thanks for the help and suggestions. I plan to spend a little time researching this weekend. I appreciate the input.