I am looking at setting up a whole house audio system for the wife, she requested it. I would like to put individual volume controls in each zone/room. I would LOVE for Vera to be able to control these zones.
What I am looking for is a volume control that works with zwave. Basically something like this that I can convince Vera to use.
Any suggestions?
I have been toying with the idea of trying to develop a lua/luup plugin for the sonos system. The zoneplayers are based on UPnP. I have heard that they arent completely compatible with the standard though…
Vera controllable or not, I love my sonos system… best investment I ever made and it is one system i can truly say “just works”, never had a problem.
Sometimes a good old physical volume knob would come in handy, I guess.
My system isn’t quite as complete as Sonos, but is incredibly easy to set up. I use the iPhone app “Remote” to control iTunes which gives me complete control of volume, speakers selection, music selection, playlists, etc. via the Airport Express attached to each audio system. The only thing missing from the iTunes implementation is the ability to control the volume of each set of speakers independent of the others. I’ve been hoping to install an IR transmitter in each room so I could do that with Vera.
If you’re like me, you keep your iPhone with you all the time anyway (for phone calls, email, and reading), so eliminating additional remotes is a wonderful thing.
Airfoil will let you individually set the volume for each Airport Express, as well as send audio to AppleTV, and even to your iPhone. Downside is you cannot control audio volume individually from the iPhone, only from your Mac.
What is Airfoil? I have an Airport Express based whole-house system…
http://www.rogueamoeba.com/airfoil/mac/
Allows you to use more that just iTunes and to adjust volume individually for each zone in addition to other features.
Great 
I checked out the Sonos, but I would be looking at $2000 just for the 4 rooms I want to setup. I was looking into hard wiring everything anyways and don’t really need it to be wireless, plus i’m not super fond of the idea of having to have something plugged in in a bedroom, my whole thought is to keep it as simple yet usable as possible.
Anyone have any suggestions for a hard wired system?
I am looking at adding the Russound Collage system in my house. Russound - missing page
sonos is not the cheapest option… but the way i did it made it a little more economical
I hardwired my entire house, and then bought a 6 channel denon amp, i added just 1 non-amplified sonos box to it to supply the music. i then used that sonos box on all six channels. as i saved more money, i added more sonos boxes to each channel so that i could play different sources in the different zones.
the denon amp was kind of expensive, you could probably get a russound or something cheaper. i think the sonos system is just great for its versatility, easy of use, controller options, and multitude of music inputs(mp3,sirius,pandora,last.fm,etc,etc,etc). i also did not need the wireless since i hardwired my house, all of my sonos boxes sit in the same closet…
personally i think this is the best route… since the house is hardwired for future options and versatility, but u get the features of the sonos system for now, it can always be swapped out for another music source. the best thing about the denon amp i have is that it has an ethernet port and has a local webpage where you can setup the source input settings and you can also set the amplification level of each particular zone on your laptop remotely. (this only needs to be done once upon installation)
if someone decided to go the amplified sonos route… you may also want to keep in mind that the sonos amplified boxes can be wired down stable to 4ohms, so u can run 2 drivers off of each channel if u needed to save money and combine zones…
If you check out the Russound Collage you will not have to run CAT5 cable. It runs off your existing house wire using homeplug 1.01. It has this really nice feature where if someone is listening to something in another room you can choose that room from the keypad and stream it in to the room.
Squeezebox line of products IMHO is the way to go. They all can be synced (optionally) to play the same thing, with the same volume on all devices, at cost significantly lower then Sonos.
Quality wise they are good enough to sit in the systems costing tens of thousands.
Server is open source product supported by Logitech, with active community, and it runs on all platforms I can think about.
Ive always wanted to try squeezebox, but logitech is always a hit or miss brand for me. Some of the products are great and some are just abysmal. Once I tried sonos I was hooked… its a shame they are so expensive. Its the only device/system I own that I honestly think a grandmother could hook up and use.
I have nothing but good things to say about Logitech. A button wasn’t always registering on a Dinovo mini I purchased. I described the problem in an email and Logitech sent me a brand new Dinovo. They didn’t even ask for the old one back. I wore out the pads on a mouse within warranty. Sent them a picture, they sent a new one. I love those guys.
Squeezebox devices aren’t designed by Logitech.
Three generations of Squeezebox were designed by Slim Devices (later acquired by Logitech) with unusual attention to details with regards to sound reproduction accuracy and anything that could distort the signal - electrical noise, feedback circuitry, isolation, power supply design, etc. - so these devices are widely accepted in audiophile community, where rest of the gear costs 10 to 100 times more. Their latest design was $2K Transporter, but the price was this high because of exceptional engineering, not the fancy screens, shiny plastic, or thick cast aluminum front panel. http://www.logitechsqueezebox.com/products/transporter.html.
well, i must admit, every logitech product I have bought has been exceptional EXCEPT the harmony remote that has the zwave chip in it… that remote ticked me off and i ended up sending it back because of poor implementation and NO support.
keyboards, speakers, and even the rest of the harmony remotes have all worked great, that one zwave remote really left me with a subpar feeling for the company though :-\
Does anyone who is using the ipod touch and airport express speakers know if you can select which rooms you want to listen to from the ipod touch? When I walk from one room to the next, can I select the next room from the ipod, or whole house?
Even better can itunes or other app support streaming different audio to multiple ipods, as in the kids rooms…can they each stream different music at different volumes to their individual airport express units?
I realize there could quickly be bandwidth issues, but it should be able to handle 3-4 connections which would be fine for the average house. Also, if that were not possible how about streaming straight to the individual ipods, eliminating the need for airport express units. I guess until someone comes out with an app you could jailbreak the ipod to enable ‘backgrounding’ and run the app that streams the audio to the itouch in the background while you used Apple Remote to select music, but I still think there’d be problems with multiple simultaneous logons and streams??
Anyone have any thoughts…I’m about to jump in on this one and try some things, too.
You can select from the iPod Touch Remote App to turn on and off different AE speakers. You cannot separately adjust the volume from the Touch, only turn them on and off.
Each instance of iTunes you run can control one, or more AEs, so you can have different music playing on different AEs if you have iTunes running on more than one machine. It was suggested in an article that you could have different IDs running instances of iTunes to play different music on each one, but I have not tried that.
The new version of Airfoil, not only can also stream to other Macs running their speaker app, but can now also stream to your iPhone or iPod Touch as well, so you could dock your iPhone/iTouch and use it to wirelessly extend your audio network as well, just like an AE. I do use Airfoil, but have not tried this feature yet, but I plan to and will report back if anyone is interested.
Thank Chimpware,
I’m about to buy a couple used ipod touches and start playing around with this.
Thanks for explaining, that is nice that you can at least select speakers using the ipod. So when you change volume over the ipod it is global. Can you setup ‘scenes’ to have certain rooms activated by one zone selection on the ipod, like a party scene would send audio over the living room and outside airports?
Or do you just scroll through a list of indivdual airports and turn them on and off, so if you wanted whole house audio then you have to turn each airport on manually…no all button?
Is the performance good or are there things to watch out for when using the airports, I don’t have any distance issues.
Echoing previous sentiments, SqueezeBox platform allows individual volume control of each SB from one remote if you get the Duet Controller. As stated, you can also “sync” the streams (content and volume) amongst multiple SB’s if prefer…
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