RE: X10 speaker control ???

["David Claxton" <UKHA@xxxxxxx>]

I am going to use one set of speakers per room for everything so the proble= m
I was thinking of was more along the lines of not wanting to listen to the<= BR> music in a room but still have the speakers available for announcements. Maybe I am looking at it at the wrong end? Maybe I should be looking for th= e
ability to stop the music going to certain speakers. Not sure how to do tha= t
remotely. Can you get remote controlled speaker switchers? Or maybe I shoul= d
just go for the option of fitting separate speakers for announcements
(didn't really want to do that though)

On the point about sending announcements to different places is it not
somehow possible to tell a system to send certain announcements to the one<= BR> room where the person who the announcement is for is in. For example, you mentioned CallerID. If a certain number rings and you know the person that<= BR> number belongs to is only going to be interested in talking to a particular=
person in the house, if your set-up knew where they were it could just send=
a message to that person/room rather than disturbing everyone in the house.=
Or would that be causing more problems than it solves.

I only joined the list just over a month ago, after finally deciding (about=
two months ago) to do some Home Automation, so if I'm annoying/boring
everyone with some of the ideas/questions I'm throwing around in my head, sorry 'bout that.



-----Original Message-----
From: Paul Gordon [mailto:paul_gordon@xxxxxxx]
Sent: 29 November 2002 16:59
To: ukha_d@xxxxxxx Subject: Re: [ukha_d] X10 speaker control ???


>Hi,
>      I'm going to fit speakers to all the roo= ms in my house and I was planning
>on having a speaker switch or volume control in each room. I was just >wondering if it's possible to also link up an X10 MS13 sensor to the >speakers to switch them on when someone is in the room and then switch = them
>off if they leave the room.
>


You are of course, referring to occupancy detection, which is *notoriously*=
difficult to get right...


>My thinking is along the lines of sending announcements to the speakers= . If
>someone is in one of my bedrooms listening to music and someone is in t= he
>kitchen not listening to music, the person in the kitchen would still w= ant
>the ability to hear any announcements over the speakers. So that would = mean
>if the phone rang I would want it to announce who was calling in all th= e
>rooms where people were, therefore I need a system that would auto swit= ch
>on
>the set of speakers in the kitchen, the announcement would be heard, th= en
>switch them back off (also to be able to mute the stereo while the
>announcement was in progress and then un-mute it would be nice)
>
>Also the ability to override the system and say if someone leaves the r= oom
>leave the speakers switched on would be nice.
>

one thing: If a tree falls in the forest, and no-one is there to hear it, does it make a sound?....

.. which is an airy-fairy way of saying, why bother going to all that
trouble to do what you've described? - what does it matter if announcements=
are broadcast into empty rooms? - no-one's going to complain are they!!
(no-one will even know about it!)

Seriously though, I appreciate that there *are* good reasons for wanting zoned announcements with some intelligentce, but I don't think the scenario=
you've mentioned is one of them... :-)


>I am also planning to buy Homeseer, it looks powerful enough to help me= on

It is. Also checkout Autom8it, which is currently free AIUI...


>my way to do this sort of stuff, it was just the connecting the X10 sys= tem
>to the speaker system that I can't figure out.
>
>Any ideas ????
>

Do you intend to use seperate speakers for TTS, or are you planning to shar= e
them with the AV devices in the rooms in question?

My thought would be to leave the TTS speakers turned off all the time excep= t
when announcements are actually being spoken, and don't try to do too much<= BR> with occupancy detection (its too unreliable) - rather, deduce some of the<= BR> announcement message routing in advance, - for instance, certain messages will want to go everywhere - CallerID messages for instance, while other messages will only ever be required in certain rooms (morning alarm message=
for instance).

I find that a large proportion of the announcements I ever want to make in<= BR> my house fall into one or other of these groups. I don't worry about
messages going to unoccupied areas (like, who's going to care!), I only car= e
about NOT having certain messages going to areas that ARE occupied, and
where the message is not required/relevant, etc.

=A30.02

Paul G.

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