RE: IR and SLIMP3

["Kevin Hawkins" <lists@xxxxxxx>]

Hi Chris,



Ian and Stuart have both chirped in here for the xAP/xPL
communities and quite right so as this is a great application for the
protocols - let me comment a little on the SliMP3 server capabilities. This
has a slight xAP slant on it as that is my choice but exactly the same
could
be achieved with xPL with appropriate connectors.

`           The SliMP3 server has two control interfaces available - one is
via http meaning that you can embed control commands in the url and use
that
to direct the operation of your SliMP3 players. The second and more capable
interface is via a socket level command line interface. With this you have
a
greater range of control and reporting available along with a far more
suitable interface for automation - as it is truly bidirectional, and
effectively instantaneous.

Both Stuart and Patrick have created SliMP3 xAP connectors,
however the approach so far has been in communality of features to a
general
mp3 player - effectively meaning that you could substitute say an Audiotron
or ExStreamer and the results stay the same. Stuart has additionally
provided full support for the display of the SliMP3 (to be used for xAP
display messages) although as you will appreciate his is a feature not
available in all players (eg the Exstreamer).

SlimDevices actually have included at my request full event
reporting via the CLI of received IR commands - their recognition is done
internally to the SliMP3 players by a small PIC processor which means they
recognise a fixed range of IR code formats - quite extensive but certainly
not universal. Thus the players can never act as universal sources for IR
reception. However using a large single remote you could effectively map
recognisable commands to other commands that were sent by a distribution
system. There is no current hardware product that can send universal IR
commands from either a xAP or xPL message but again both protocols could
carry such information - sounds like a great idea for a product - each
SliMP3 would of course carry source info, and destination targeting and
broadcast is a feature of both xAP and xPL.. We could do with a consensus
on
how to actually describe the desired IR received/transmitted code. Maybe
Dan
has some ideas. Alternatively we would have to send codes from a library eg
RC5 or as named 'learned' codes.

So state of play:

Scenario A)- could easily report recognised IR codes out from the existing
xAP connectors for SliMP3's - Patrick's may already do this I'm not sure.
But we have no way to retransmit this - although maybe Patrick has support
for an IR interface (??) can't remember and his site is down again at the
moment so I can't check.

Scenario B) - yes you can control the SliMP3 fully via the CLI



Kevin





-----Original Message-----
From: Chris Langridge [mailto:chrisl@xxxxxxx]


Those of you who have a SLIMP3 player have possibly thought about using the
IR in a couple of different ways so as to reduce the number of remotes
around the house.

SCENARIO 1
The idea is to place a slimp3 in every room and use that as a general IR
receiver rather than having an additional standalone IR receiver in
every room. So is there a way to get the IR codes off the SLIMP3 server and
on to a more conventional IR gateway/distribution system.

SCENARIO 2
A different approach would simply be to NOT use the SLIMP3's IR reciever at
all, and use instead a standard whole house IR distribution system. In this
'mode' you would need to get the IR codes from the IR distribution system
into SLIMP3. Is there a way to do this without sticking an emitter onto the
front on the beautiful SLIMP3 player?