TTS/S5 pairing

[Stevieboy]

Hi Dirk

Have read through help file and surfed Forums.

I have taken delivery of my S5 this weekend. It seems to want to pair with other single players on TTS annoucements when only the living room TTS is selected. It then unlinks the zones back to whatever they were set to before. Screenshot attatched, and will E mail ini file and HS log. I have read about the Pair/unpair button on the appropraite page but only the pair buttons shows. The drop down list does not appear (thought I may have paired it somewere without knowing!)

Cheers

[dcorsus]

Hi Dirk

Have read through help file and surfed Forums.

I have taken delivery of my S5 this weekend. It seems to want to pair with other single players on TTS annoucements when only the living room TTS is selected. It then unlinks the zones back to whatever they were set to before. Screenshot attatched, and will E mail ini file and HS log. I have read about the Pair/unpair button on the appropraite page but only the pair buttons shows. The drop down list does not appear (thought I may have paired it somewere without knowing!)

Cheers

Steve,

do you have only one S5? I believe you can only pair an S5 with another S5, maybe with another S3 but I'm sure you can't pair it with any other player type. Just to make sure we use the same nomenclature, pairing means that one player output only left channel and the other only the right channel. Grouping means they play the same on both channels.

Dirk

[Stevieboy]

Hi Dirk

I just want to confirm that I only have one S5. This I do not want to pair with anything, it is now what I use in the living room for my Sonos component . You are correct, the word should be grouped . I just want to use it as I do with the other players, ie for announcements etc. if you look at forum screenshots you will see what I mean. It just seems to want to group with one of the other players that are not in the Sonos config page.


Cheers

[dcorsus]

Hi Dirk

I just want to confirm that I only have one S5. This I do not want to pair with anything, it is now what I use in the living room for my Sonos component . You are correct, the word should be grouped . I just want to use it as I do with the other players, ie for announcements etc. if you look at forum screenshots you will see what I mean. It just seems to want to group with one of the other players that are not in the Sonos config page.


Cheers

The S5 should work exactly the same like any other type of player wrt TTS/Announcements. Look at the announcement itself, what "device" is it routed to. If you intercept announcements that are generated by all kinds of other plugins or scripts and that target device = 100 then it will always use your TTS linkgroup. Make sure the event/action targets $SONOS$Living Room$ to be only heard on the S5.

Dirk

[Stevieboy]

Hi Dirk

Yes I have been driving it like I do with thew other players. For some reason, if you watch the grouping on the sonos desktop controller while you run the Speak time event it links with the bathroom player, annouces, then reverts back to the state before annoucement was carried out.

It works fine, it just seems to want to link to the bathroom player for some reason.
I managed to be pretty quick at hitting the print screen button while the annoucements plays and caught it on a screen shot. As you can see, it shouldn't be linking with anything but it's taken a shine to the bathroom player

Screenshots below

[dcorsus]

As you can see, it shouldn't be linking with anything but it's taken a shine to the bathroom player

DUH .... (self)

I overlooked it in your first screen capture but you should set the source zone for Linkgroup "Living room " to the Living room player, else both will participate in the announcement. Are you using the Bathroom player's audio input to play the announcement or are you using the "speak to file" option? If you are using the Bathroom player as audio input, then you should check-mark the TTS flag and make sure you have not set the default of "speak to file" option in the setup page.

Dirk

[Stevieboy]

Hi Dirk

I am using the "speak to file option"as I do with all of the others. I was under the impression that it didnt matter about selecting the source player, I thought this would only make a differance if you were using the line in method. However. I have changed it to living room and it seems to be ok now. The only thing is it had a funny 5 mins after it linked back up. It started playing the bathroom playlist in the summerhouse !!.

Just checked the log for errors and have posted a screenshot that occured this evening (nothing to do with what I was experianceing earlier)
I have added todays log for you info really, you may be able to see something parculiar going on.

P.s I have not got the ISspeaking plugin enable, not sure what it does to be honest. Would that have any bearing on my chopped speech that occurs when I play back scripts?. Just a thought.
Cheers

[dcorsus]

Hi Dirk

I am using the "speak to file option"as I do with all of the others. I was under the impression that it didnt matter about selecting the source player, I thought this would only make a differance if you were using the line in method. However. I have changed it to living room and it seems to be ok now. The only thing is it had a funny 5 mins after it linked back up. It started playing the bathroom playlist in the summerhouse !!.

Just checked the log for errors and have posted a screenshot that occured this evening (nothing to do with what I was experianceing earlier)
I have added todays log for you info really, you may be able to see something parculiar going on.

P.s I have not got the ISspeaking plugin enable, not sure what it does to be honest. Would that have any bearing on my chopped speech that occurs when I play back scripts?. Just a thought.
Cheers

Looking at your log file now, think there is still something messing with your network. Take this excerpt from the log file:

24/07/2012 07:39:00 ~!~BLRadarLastEcho~!~diffMinutes = 1
24/07/2012 07:39:49 ~!~ECHO~!~Echo for Living Room Living room Motion sensor; No Echo (2 mins, 38 secs)
24/07/2012 07:39:49 ~!~ACTIVE ZONE~!~Sandalwood Sandalwood has changed to Active Zone On; Active Zone Off (2 mins, 48 secs)
24/07/2012 07:39:49 ~!~ACTIVE ZONE~!~BLRadar Last Echo has changed to Active Zone On; Active Zone Off (1 mins, 38 secs)
24/07/2012 07:39:50 ~!~X10 Received~!~H1 ( BLRadar Sandalwood) H On
24/07/2012 07:40:00 ~!~BLRadarLastEchoOn~!~diffMinutes = 2
24/07/2012 07:40:54 ~!~NO ECHO~!~No Echo for Living Room Living room Motion sensor; Echo (1 mins, 4 secs)
24/07/2012 07:40:54 ~!~SENSOR RECOVERY~!~Sensor Recovery has occurred for Living Room Living room Motion sensor
24/07/2012 07:40:54 ~!~ECHO~!~Echo for Living Room Living room Motion sensor; No Echo (0 secs)
24/07/2012 07:40:55 ~!~NO ECHO~!~No Echo for Living Room Living room Motion sensor; Echo (0 secs)
24/07/2012 07:40:55 ~!~ECHO~!~Echo for Living Room Living room Motion sensor; No Echo (0 secs)
24/07/2012 07:40:58 ~!~ECHO~!~Echo for Kitchen Motion sensor; No Echo (4 mins, 8 secs)
24/07/2012 07:41:00 ~!~BLRadarLastEchoOn~!~diffMinutes = 3
24/07/2012 07:41:11 ~!~SonosController~!~ZonePlayer Bathroom ping failed for 1 time. Ping Reply = 11050
24/07/2012 07:41:15 ~!~SonosController~!~ZonePlayer Kitchen ping failed for 1 time. Ping Reply = 11050
24/07/2012 07:41:15 ~!~SonosController~!~ZonePlayer Master Bedroom ping failed for 1 time. Ping Reply = 11050
24/07/2012 07:41:15 ~!~SonosController~!~ZonePlayer summer house ping failed for 1 time. Ping Reply = 11050
24/07/2012 07:41:17 ~!~SonosController~!~ZonePlayer Living Room ping failed for 1 time. Ping Reply = 11050

At around 07:41:00 your network goes belly up because 10 seconds later (the PI ping period), all pings to all players start failing. Do you have any idea how this BLRadar works? Is it using pings by any chance? It could be that it, or something else on your PC tries to ping an entity that is not there and times out. Do you use any of these other monitoring plugins (like Jon's network monitor?). Not sure that the windows IP stack would allow multiple consecutive pings maybe that causes the PI to think it has a failure. Maybe you should change the "# pings failing" to a higher value from 3 to let's say 10 and see what happens.

On further analysis, there is something still NOK with the network. I see the Kitchen player crapping out and coming back and nothing to do with PINGs. Same with living room at another time. You wrote that the PC also doubles as CCTV capture, do you see any issues with that? Do you know if any peer-2-peer protocols are used like bittorrent (notorious to use every bit of bandwidth). Could it be that the PC goes off and process the images and packets get dropped on the Ethernet port because queues are not depleted fast enough?
One thing to note is that the network was rock steady during the night but seem to have issues between 7:40 and 8:37, than for the rest it is again rock steady. Maybe something you do on that PC during that period, perhaps some program that you run?

Now with respect to the Summerhouse playing. What I see is that the your summerhouse player is turned on, I'm 100% convinced it is manual, because subsequently the player is set to shuffle and repeat and the volume is adjusted. And this is left to play for a long time. However, then at noon an announcement happens and something goes wrong

24/07/2012 12:05:04 ~!~SonosController~!~ERROR in PlayURI for zoneplayer = summer house with UPNP Error = UPNP_E_INVALID_ARGUMENTS . URI=x-rincon:RINCON_000E581357FC01400, MetaData=<DIDL-Lite xmlns:dc="http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/" xmlns:upnp="urn:schemas-upnp-org:metadata-1-0/upnp/" xmlns:r="urn:schemas-rinconnetworks-com:metadata-1-0/" xmlns="urn:schemas-upnp-org:metadata-1-0/DIDL-Lite/"><item id="-1" parentID="-1" restricted="true"><upnp:albumArtURI>http://192.168.1.106:86/SonosController/Announcements/Announcement.jpg</upnp:albumArtURI><dc:title>HomeSeer Announcement</dc:title><upnp:class>object.item.audioItem.musicTrack</upnp:class><dc:creator>Dirk Corsus</dc:creator><upnp:album>SonosController</upnp:album><r:albumArtist>Dirk Corsus</r:albumArtist></item></DIDL-Lite>, Error =System.Runtime.InteropServices.COMException (0x80040208): A user-supplied component or subscriber raised an exception (Exception from HRESULT: 0x80040208) at UPNPLib.IUPnPService.InvokeAction(String bstrActionName, Object vInActionArgs, Object& pvOutActionArgs) at HSPI_SONOSCONTROLLER.HSMusicAPI.PlayURI(String URI, String MetaData)

From the trace, I can see that this player did not participate in the announcement so it continuous with its repeat/shuffle state of play. However, the Sonos player is returning a wrong queue-id when instructed to save its queue. It returns the queue-id of the bathroom player and that's why it ended up with the wrong queue information. I thought I had fixed this in a previous release by adding a small wait but in your case that .25 sec doesn't seem to be enough, I'll have to increase that wait or find another way around this Sonos issue.

Dirk

postedit: see you lost Kitchen player around 2pm

[Stevieboy]

Thanks Dirk

Informative, quick response as usual. This perhaps could explain why I am having issues with the chopped speech if it keeps losing the players ???? .

It is interesting that you should say that it goes belly up in the mornings, because that may expalin another ongoing issue I have. I am so frustrated with it that I even opted for the paid support option Still not heard anything in three days!!!!).

This error occurs in the morning EVERY weekend and I cant resolve it. This could be linked to what causes this problem ???

See here http://board.homeseer.com/showthread...33#post1025033

I do not use Jon00 log monitor as I am not 100% sure what it does, but appears that It may be of use to me.

Dirk, the only thing that I have running on PC it teamviewer, if this is found to be causing issues, I will not hesitat to uninstall it (not sure if youre familiar with it but it's sort of a vpn software thingy)

I dont use Bittorent (not sure what that is, sorry)

I did have the pings set to three (as default) but reading youre help file I decided to change it to one hoping it may throw up some issues, It showed no issues when set to three, shall I still change it to ten ???

BLradar I am led to believe is not netwoked based, it just uses the rf received from the X10 sensors to detect movement. Blade would be the one to clarify that. I also recall that BLradar is a new plugin and was experiancing the chopped speech before this was installed.

I use Blue Iris software for the capture of CCTV. I now only do night recordings to cut down on CPU usage. These are controlled by homeseer using a bat file triggered at sunset til sunrise which over here is about 21:00 to 05:00 hours at present. Thats the only time that CPU usage would be a little higher.

I dont run any other programs (to my knowledge) that would cause any problems


You are correct Dirk, the Summer house zoneplayer does not participate in the annoucements, I only use this on it's own for other things.

Dirk, if it helps with trouble shooting I am quite happy for you to have a nose around my computer using some form of vpn and would be more than happt to pay for your time if that helps.

I hope I have answered your questions, I will increase the ping to 10. Do you thinks its woth me uninstalling Team veiwer ?

I would love to resolve this as I think that your plugin is what makes home seer so special

Help as always Muchly aprreciated

Cheers

[jon00]

Do you use any backup programs that save to NAS or other PC's over the network?

[Stevieboy]

Hi Jon

Thanks for your reply.

No, I have no other pc's connected to it or NAS. I am just stummped and dont know where to go from here. I have a funny feeling that this is also what may be causing the other issue I have, althouigh saying that I am no PC expert by far. I just want it all to work .

Please ask me any other questions you may feel relavent and I will endevour to answer them.

Cheers

[dcorsus]

Steve,

I would set the # ping to 10.

I cannot open the homeseer link you posted, I think only the owner can open it.

We're going to have to figure out whether it is the PC or the network that craps out. Without sending me your logs, you can leave the debug flag on and on a daily basis search it for the word "disconnect", if they typically happen around the same times, we should start thinking about either an application or some event (on your network) that triggers it.

If you open a windows dos command window (go to start and type in cmd) you can use the command "netstat -e" (http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/l.../bb490947.aspx). Would be interested whether it shows discards or errors.

Other thing to try is to turn all firewalls off for a day and see if that improves.

Could you describe your network, like I have a router, use switches, wireless access point, 10/100 or GE connections. Own made cables or bought cables, any long cables? Any specific QoS, VLAN settings on the router? Which devices are wired connections and which ones are wireless. No sure you have an easy way to draw a network diagram.

Do you use any file sharing SW, music download programs that use bittorrent? I'm not sure which are today the popular sharing programs but in the days it was Kazaa. Again, the reason is that they use bittorrents which when not set properly (limited in # parallel sessions) will take any bit of BW and way back when my kids were still at home, they more then once managed to mess up my network or have my router go belly up, requiring a reboot of the router.

I seem to remember you wrote that the Sonos staff looked at your diagnostics and they saw something or did something, what was it?

If you go to task manager (ctrl-alt-del), check tab performance, click at bottom at resource monitor, you get a nice view of what is happening on your network port. I wonder if there is a way to keep it logging so you can look at it on a daily basis and see if you can correlate "disconnect" in your log file with network port utilization. Maybe in the mornings you should let it sit and watch it or start it up when you see issues with your players.

I noted Jon responded, I think he has some monitoring tools and a wealth of knowledge, perhaps he has some ideas what to look for.

Dirk

[jon00]

I'm not sure I can help really.

You could set up my network monitor to ping each Sonos for a testing period (maybe a day or two). The latest version does allow logging of the ping times per device and would confirm if it is a network issue or not?

[dcorsus]

You could set up my network monitor to ping each Sonos for a testing period (maybe a day or two). The latest version does allow logging of the ping times per device and would confirm if it is a network issue or not?

Thanks Jon. The Sonos plugin pings all players every 10 seconds so I guess that would do the same.

Steve, just to clarify to my previous post. When I asked about p2p file sharing programs, I wasn't referring to the HS PC per se but to any PC or device on your network. Do you have mobile devices that come and go into your network? How about fixed devices like TVs, or AVreceivers that are networked that get powered on/off and come on/off your network. It is important that you list all devices that are on your network. Are all of those using DHCP to get an IP address or are some static? If some are static are you sure they don't clash. Is your wireless network encrypted or is there a chance your neighbors are tapping into your network? Do you have devices that have 2 ethernet ports, like a NAS or perhaps your HS PC, a network diagram might help to spot network loops.

Another thing to look at is the Sonos setting. You can instruct it to re-index its music library, what time is that set to? Mine is at 2am. Do you have a large collection of tracks and where are they stored? Do you have file sharing on on your windows PCs or perhaps XBOXs or XBMCs? Any file server in your network that might go out on your network and re-discovers music?

If all of this info is way to proprietary to post, just email it to me in private!

Dirk

[Stevieboy]

Thanks Dirk/Jon

I would love to get to the bottom of this.

Here is the link I posted in the open forums, it may or may not be of some relavence.

http://board.homeseer.com/showthread...shutdown+error


I will draw a picture of the network and E mail to you in private (along with some answers to your questions, this may take me a day or so to reply.

Thanks a million

Cheers