Whole house stereo

[Chuck]

I am finishing up my project by adding in individual room control for the entire house music system. The components I use are:

Fosi Audio TB10A class D amplifier
Airport Express for each room (A1392 preferred, A1084 or A1088 will not work)
Ethernet access
Remote app from Apple
My Mac Mini with Xtension and my music on it
Some scripting

I have to say that it has exceeded my expectations and is nothing short of spectacular. Both my wife and I love music and listen to it constantly.

So here is the setup.

A Fosi amp is connected to an Airport Express via a stereo plug to RCA cables. The music comes in via Ethernet to the Airport Express to the amp.

Once every thing is hooked up physically then each Airport Express has to be configured to allow AirPlay. Then iTunes in my music sever has to be connected to the Airport Express (every Airport Express is password protected)

Then each iPhone and iPad has to be connected to the Mac Mini music server via verification number. We have several iPads through out the house that are all connected to the music server.

Once the system is set up then any registered iPhone or iPad can use the Remote app to control volume in every room or in just certain rooms.

The cool part is that the whole thing is scriptable in Xtension. I have a scheduled event that resets all the volumes every night, another event that turns off the outside speakers at 10PM so we don’t disturb the neighbors and have a set up that turns the volume to 0 when my wife presses a button on a Palm Pad to text her so she can find her phone (which she loses often).

Here is a screen shot of the Remote app and some of the code I use to reset the volumes on all the units each night.

The volume on iTunes will affect every unit equally.

I also have a Fosi BT20A amp that has bluetooth in the guest loft. This way guests can connect to the sound system with an iPhone/iPad (via AirPlay), an aux cable, via bluetooth or listen to whatever the rest of the house is listening to. Lots of flexibility in this set up. Our guests love it.

I have been thinking of having a Z-wave switch on each amp so that they can be turned off when not in use. The problem is that it takes several minutes for the Airport Express to fire up. The Fosi will come on line in a matter of 10 seconds which is acceptable. If there wasn’t anyone in the house I could have them all turn off. But we use the stereo for making noise when we are away. If there is motion outside during the day I have the volume go up near that sensor but I don’t need all of them on all the time. The amps have a energy saver mode and I don’t think I would save much on energy costs shutting them off.

This is what home automation is all about. Turning lights on and off is so last century. Many of us on the list have been turning lights on and off for decades.

Chuck


tell application "iTunes"
	set sound volume of AirPlay device "Bedroom Airport" to 25
	set sound volume of AirPlay device "Basement Airport" to 25
	set sound volume of AirPlay device "Kitchen Airport" to 25
	set sound volume of AirPlay device "Living room Airport" to 25
	set sound volume of AirPlay device "Shop Airport" to 25
	set sound volume of AirPlay device "Craft room Airport" to 25
	set sound volume of AirPlay device "Loft Airport" to 25
	set sound volume of AirPlay device "Computer" to 10
	set sound volume to 5
end tell

tell application "iTunes"
	set my soundVolumeShop to sound volume of AirPlay device "Shop Airport"
	if soundVolumeShop is greater than 0 then
		set sound volume of AirPlay device "Shop Airport" to 0
	end if
end tell

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