Monoprice 6 zone amplifier plugin

[happnatious1]

HSPI_Marquis_Monoprice_Amp v3.0.0.15.zip A free HS3 plugin to control Monoprice 6 zone amplifiers. 3 amps can be daisy chained for up to 18 zones. HSPI_Marquis_Monoprice_Amp v3.0.0.15.zip

Actions are in a target, command, value structure such as "zone 1, power, off"

It also has 3 virtual actions:

PA_ON , switches all zones currently on to source 1
PA_Off, switches all sources back to where they were when PA_ON was called.

Public_Announcement ON/OFF Saves the current state of power and source for each zone, turns on zones with check marks, switches all zones to source 1.

Private_Announcement ON/OFF Saves the current state of power and source for each zone, turns on zones with check marks, Switches only the zones with check marks to source 1.

Here is a typical private announcement event: Notice the 1 second delay giving the amp time to power up a zone and the wait for speech to finish check mark so that the tts can finish.


Version 3
the only supported version moving forward. Free. 3 amps. 18 zones. Linux compatible. Seems to work as legacy plugin on HS4 as well.

[e1ite]

Hello, when ever I try to start this plugin I get the above message. Any idea's on why it's not working?

Thanks in advance!

[happnatious1]

Restart homeseer and then go to the manage plugins page and enable it there.

[Malosa]

just a question about monoprice , does it to be near homeseer ? and how is it connected to my hs server ?
i cant find no where a video of it how it looks like when its connected to the pc.


because soon i want to buy one , just because of this video i found it yesterday,i was looking very long for a whole house audio... now i found it because of this topic
and use this plugin so it can trigger announcements

[happnatious1]

The amplifier connects at 9600 baud using an RS-232 DB9 cable to a serial port on your homeseer server. If you don't have any available serial ports you could use a usb to serial converter, they are very cheap these days.

Even though my amp sits just above my Homeseer server I use an Antaira STE-501C to put it on my network. That way I can just disable the plugin in homeseer and then connect to the amp from Visual Studio which is running on another computer elsewhere in the house for development purposes. I haven't had any problems running it this way for the past several months.

[Malosa]

thanks for the information , now i know it works trough a serial cable , than the best option for me would be usb to serial , and i put it than on a usb server ,

thanks for the info , when im ready i gonna buy this set and test out

thanks again !

The amplifier connects at 9600 baud using an RS-232 DB9 cable to a serial port on your homeseer server. If you don't have any available serial ports you could use a usb to serial converter, they are very cheap these days.

Even though my amp sits just above my Homeseer server I use an Antaira STE-501C to put it on my network. That way I can just disable the plugin in homeseer and then connect to the amp from Visual Studio which is running on another computer elsewhere in the house for development purposes. I haven't had any problems running it this way for the past several months.

[Guest]

SALE on it!

http://www.monoprice.com/product?c_i...151229_tuesday

[skybolt]

Sorry to resurrect such an old thread.

Is this PI still being supported and/or is the above link the latest?

Thanks

[happnatious1]

I've had no reason to go back and look at the plugin as it's still working fine for me. I would still like to finish adding support for multiple amps however if I were to do that I would probably make it a paid plugin. As it stands now I currently don't have any time to devote to that endeavor.

[skybolt]

I've had no reason to go back and look at the plugin as it's still working fine for me. ... As it stands now I currently don't have any time to devote to that endeavor.

Thanks - I just wanted to see if it was still working or not, or interest had just gone away.

I was going to write something simple to get things going but I don't have anytime either to devote to this. Thanks for your reply.

[jroffey]

How diffucult would it be to ad IP support to this? I would like to control my amp through a GlobalCache iTach Flex, with IP to Serial. It seems all the HomeSeer Flex plugins only support IP to IR.

Cheers!

Jeff

[happnatious1]

How diffucult would it be to ad IP support to this? I would like to control my amp through a GlobalCache iTach Flex, with IP to Serial. It seems all the HomeSeer Flex plugins only support IP to IR.

Cheers!

Jeff

Looks like that interface is like an infra red remote control. The plug in needs to get the current status of the amp to be able to run announcements and stuff and you cant get the status over that interface. You have to have access to the rs232 port on the back of the amp in order for the plug in to work properly. That being said if you were to use an Ethernet to serial adapter such as the 501c shown above you could send commands to the amp using an iTach flex and the status of the devices in homeseer would get updated the next time the amp is polled via the rs232 port.

[jroffey]

Looks like that interface is like an infra red remote control. The plug in needs to get the current status of the amp to be able to run announcements and stuff and you cant get the status over that interface. You have to have access to the rs232 port on the back of the amp in order for the plug in to work properly. That being said if you were to use an Ethernet to serial adapter such as the 501c shown above you could send commands to the amp using an iTach flex and the status of the devices in homeseer would get updated the next time the amp is polled via the rs232 port.

I appologize for my lack of clarity. That is exactly what I have set up. I have my GlobalCache iTach Flex plugged into my network at 172.16.1.100. I have the GlobalCache dongle to connect it via Serial to the Amp. It looks like I'm getting responses from the HomeSeer Software, but nothing on the MonoPrice end.

[jroffey]

Looks like that interface is like an infra red remote control. The plug in needs to get the current status of the amp to be able to run announcements and stuff and you cant get the status over that interface. You have to have access to the rs232 port on the back of the amp in order for the plug in to work properly. That being said if you were to use an Ethernet to serial adapter such as the 501c shown above you could send commands to the amp using an iTach flex and the status of the devices in homeseer would get updated the next time the amp is polled via the rs232 port.

I see in your settings above it says the MonoPrice amp is on COM port 10. Are you running some sort of VirtualUSB to accomplish this via network?

[jroffey]

Got it finally...

Well I got it running after trying about a dozen Virtual Serial port emulators. The one that I got working first costs $250USD ouch. I got it working via VSPE next, but haven't looked into the license cost yet. I already have a license for VirtualUSB for my HTC Vive/TPCast so I will look into whether I can set that up or not, or if my license is valid for other purposes.

What this does is present a new issue. I will need to set up HomeSeer as a Service with autostart, and somehow do the same for whatever VirtualUSB server I chose to go with. What forum would you recommend for hashing out those issues?

Cheers, and thanks for the plug-in! Working 100% now.