ZMC v2.0

[AshaiRey]

I am using a selfmade audio system for more that a year now
I am very pleased with it but it have some drawbacks. These drawbacks made me start to work on a new audio system.
More ambitious and more possibilies - Zoelen Media Center v2.0

My goal was:
- Have audio in every room, garage and garden.
- Each location must have it's own volume control
- Each location must be able to select an audio source
- A Plugin to control it all

ZMC v2.0 is operational now. The system consists of 4 amplified stereo channels and 4 amplified mono channels
with volume control. These amplified channels drive a speaker directly in the room. In addition to that it have also 4 switched stereo channels and 4 switched mono channels (not amplified . All is controlled by motion sensors, HomeSeer and a Velleman K8000 IO board which was kindly donated by Digit on this forum. The system can switch between 2 audio source so each location can have it's pick. The system is able to place announcements to any single location or combination of locations without corrupting the audio stream to the other locations. I've created a basic plugin to controle the volume and the option to mute each channel. At the moment i am adding more functionality to the plugin.

ZMC v2.0

zmc03.gif (14.12 KiB) Viewed 8568 times

This schematic is just 1 channel. The volume is controled by a selfmade analog opto-coupler http://members.home.nl/b.vanzoelen/2011.htm#10. The complete system have 12 channel like these and another 12 without an amplifier. I just needed the first 12 and those used up all my DAC ports to control the volume. However the board have another 8 I/O ports left with is use to control the other 12 channels that are not amplified. They are very suitable to connect to another media center, amplifiers or any other device that just need line level input. At the moment i have no need for them so i consider as them a nice bonus for now.

Here are a few images of the complete system still on the test bench.

ZMC01.jpg (52.31 KiB) Viewed 8568 times

ZMC02.jpg (48.05 KiB) Viewed 8568 times

[TFL9]

Really cool features!
I'm first gonna start with something that looks like your 1.0 audio system. But control the speaker switch with a IPpower module.
The possibilities you have with your ZMC 2.0 is what my girlfriend wishes as well. But with all the modules I have to solder and program it is a bit to complex for me now. Maybe you have some more detailes on how you made it and want to share the scrips/software you use?

[AshaiRey]

ZMC v2.0 is up and running fine now. Everything is tuned and WAF is at peak levels so thats fine too. I had a lot of work in writting a plugin for it to control it all. It's a specialised plugin just for my situation, the K8000 card and my wishes so it isn't that usable elsewhere. As a bonus this version is also using less energy then v1.0

What are the possibilities this far:
Every room can select audio coming from up to 2 sources
Each room have it's own volume control.
I can have events for each room like
- Only play audio within a time frame say 09:00- 22:12
- Mute / Unmute
- taking a room out of the schema
- Volume control (absolute and relative)
- save/load/backup/restore settings
- Radio station selector
- Extended speech control

The extended speech control is nice.
You can announce a message through out all rooms or a single room. Use a fixed volume for each room are a relative one to the volume level that was playing there. It's possible to play a .wav file first so you can do things like a clock control in speech and/or clock in CooCoo style each hour for example. I can switch between voices so that Dutch and Englisch texts will be pronounced nicely.

Another example is the bathroom. When you enter it the music it turn on. But when you take a shower the humidity will go up and a fan will turn on. Because of this the volume wof the music will go up also so you still will hear the music nicely. If there is any announcement to make, for an appointment and your late for example then the music will go away, a chime is sounding for the so called Pavlov reaction and the announment is spoken. After that the music comes back at the same sound level as it was at before.

[pservais]

Looks very impressive!
I was searching for something like this, but always found some very expensive audio switchers.
Having read your posts I've got really excited to build one myself.
Is it possible to have a look at the complete scheme?

Patrick

[AshaiRey]

Actually that's the complete schema. It's just multiplied for each extra channel you need. The I/O control board i use is an old Velleman K8000 but that one need to be connected to the parallel port. You can better use the more modern K8054 (or K8051 i forgot the number) That one uses USB and there is also a plugin available for it. But nothing is stopping you to use an Arduino for it.

[pservais]

Thanks! My skills aren't quite up to date but I will try it anyway.
Which board do you recommend? Parallel or USB?
I saw that the USB board has far less in/outputs, could this be a problem?

[AshaiRey]

Depends on how many rooms that you want to have audio. You need 1 I/O for each channel no matter if it's mono or stereo. Many rooms don't need the possibility the have the volume controled there so you can keep that room on a fixed volume level which saves you another analog output. For example you can put the wasroom, clothingroom and the attic all at fixed volume levels. Just set the soundlevel of the PC (soundcard or so) to the highest level that you need and place a variable resistor inline near the speaker in the other rooms where the volume must be lower. Just trim down the resistor in that room to the desired level.

For me a parallel based card was the way to go because i've have it and the plugin i wrote is for controling it via the parallel port. I didn't try it yet via USB so no experience yet. However i had a hard time already to find a atom based motherboard for my domotica system that utilize a parallel port. In the future this may be even harder to find.

[pservais]

At this moment I live in a rental appartment, so unfortunately I can''t route cables to all rooms.
We are planning to buy a house but at this moment I don''t know how many rooms.
I found a PCI card that supplies a parallel port, sweex.com/nl/assortiment/connectivity/p ... s/pu005v2/
So I think that I go the same way you did, the parallel way.

Thanks again!