Hello all, I have a Harmony Elite Remote and use the Harmony Hub Extender to allow integration of all my audio-video equipment into my Z-wave network. I have a manual turntable and hate the loud noise one gets from the speakers when the album is over and the stylus clips the end of the run-out groove over and over until the tonearm is lifted. It’s especially annoying if one happened to be playing an album at a fairly loud volume. So I bought the Tru-Lift auto tonearm lifter from Integrity HiFi.
It works great but because, unlike the Q-Up tonearm lifter, it lifts the tonearm slowly and smoothly it’s impossible to get the tonearm lifted before getting at least one or two of the run-out bumping noises from the speakers. If I’m paying close attention and know that the last song of the side has just completed I can just tell Alexa to “mute stereo” and easily avoid the dreaded sound from the speakers. The problem is I’m not always paying close attention or may not realize the song that just completed was the last one of the album side.
I was thinking if there were some way to add some sort of sensor that would tell my z-wave network that the last song has completed then I could add a scene to mute the stereo at that point. My first thought was if there were any kind of small device that worked similar to a garage door beam detector that I could set so that when the end of the tonearm reached the beam, and broke it, it would trip the switch, that might work. Another idea was any kind of device that measures short distances, and reports, I could use that along with the counter-weight my table uses for anti-skate correction. As the tonearm swings across the playable portion of the album, the counter-weight rises so that its distance from the table increases.
Also, if you look at the Tru-Lift here, TRU-LIFT you can see that it gets activated when the tonearm comes into contact with, and trips, the antenna that extends vertically from the unit. If there were any way to detect motion of just that antenna, that would work also. Too bad they don’t make a motion detector that concentrates on just one small area. Anyone have a great idea??