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Some fun with hacking and integration

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mczac
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mczac Posted: Sun, Jan 20 2019 2:26 PM

I had some spare time recently  and spent it playing with my BO gear.

I reversed engineered TuneIN protocol and fetched all the data, as a result I don't need anymore TuneIN as I replicated it with a nicer interface and in-house control panel to control the radio and soon DLNA too.

Attached video is a fun part integration, I love planes hence scan the sky around my house, whenever A380 is flying over it stops the playback triggers an announcement on the selected BO gear and resumes previous playback.

Demo Video

Format: ???
Duration: --:--

mczac
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mczac replied on Sun, Jan 20 2019 3:00 PM

Some other hacks include

1. Remote controls to change Setup Switch input sensitivity level settings on BeoLab 2 without touching the unti itself, with the help of additional tiny microcontroller that I added inside. It also supports source filtering, to enable extra ooopms only for TV source.

2. Thorough integration of BO gear with HomeKit. HomeKit standard app has very little to none controls avaialble for audio/video devices, while it is possible to turn on/off devices. I needed more control. So I have virtual switches in this example last switch at the bottom randomly selects Radio Station from my favourite list and pushes it to the BeoSound speaker

Duels
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Duels replied on Sun, Jan 20 2019 3:03 PM
Loving this, mczac. What fun!
mczac
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mczac replied on Sun, Jan 20 2019 7:15 PM

UI proto.
DLNA/Radio will be having similar design.
Thinking about making selection process easy and intuitive without much clutter.
Later will add ability to populate to multiple sources.
And just for kicks can do EQ bars for real, running second stream and applying FFT to it to get dynamic frequency spectrum.

Below Image is an animated gif, click to see more. BTW it is fully reactive, controls the product and reflects immideate changes made by the product or remote.

AnalogPlanet
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Cool stuff! But how did you create a virtual switch for the Home app that controls/triggers radio in your B&O product?

mczac
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mczac replied on Sun, Jan 20 2019 7:23 PM

in a nutshell for the radio control it is a statelss switch, which goes on and then off again and it send a request to selected BO Gear with a programmed command of a choice.

I have been engineering in my spare time home automation system that includes some BO bits. For homekit, easiest thing to start is to start with say RPi and homebridge and then add plug-ins as they fit

DMacri
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DMacri replied on Sun, Jan 20 2019 7:31 PM
Oh, that’s all. Alrighty then. It’s magic.

Dom

2x BeoSystem 3, BeoSystem 5000, BeoSystem 6500, 2x BeoMaster 7000, 2 pair of BeoLab Penta mk2, AV 7000, Beolab 4000, BeoSound 4000, Playmaker, BeoLab 2500, S-45, S-45.2, RL-140, CX-50, C-75, 3x CX-100, 3x MCL2 link rooms, 3x Beolab 2000, M3, P2, Earset, A8 earphones, A3, 2x 4001 relay, H3, H3 ANC, H6, 2014 Audi S5 with B&O sound, and ambio 

mczac
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mczac replied on Sun, Jan 20 2019 8:13 PM

Just completed text-to-speach module, so I will be tracking important twitter hashtags, follow Man United scores and interrupt music playback on BO gear when permitted with a breaking news on a score or news headlines.

mczac
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mczac replied on Sun, Jan 20 2019 8:18 PM

BTW, there is some cool AI put behind it. Radio images are sometimes not square pictures and have an ugly white stripes inside a round shape frame. So I analyse full cover radio station or music album cover image and complete empty areas which would result in white stripes with an image dominant color. Also Radio playback sometimes isn't perfectly formatted, I am trying to detect right Artist and song name and format it appropriately. Also logs of Played songs is kept in case song needs to be purchase with iTunes or added to Apple Music. The more I dig the more beautiful things can be made to improve BO experience, if only I had enough spare time.

mczac
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mczac replied on Sun, Jan 20 2019 8:21 PM

But the real killer is my BS9000 setup with 6 CDs of a custom printed CD covers of plain colours. I have installed subtle Philips Hue lights on a side. Whenever I chose a CD, say number 2 which has Blue cover, my side lights go Blue as well. I will make a video in a months or so to showcase what has been done so far.

Duels
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Duels replied on Sun, Jan 20 2019 8:48 PM
mczac:

But the real killer is my BS9000 setup with 6 CDs of a custom printed CD covers of plain colours. I have installed subtle Philips Hue lights on a side. Whenever I chose a CD, say number 2 which has Blue cover, my side lights go Blue as well. I will make a video in a months or so to showcase what has been done so far.

Yeah we need a picture or video of this!
DMacri
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DMacri replied on Sun, Jan 20 2019 8:50 PM
Can you share some of these integrations in IFTTT?

Dom

2x BeoSystem 3, BeoSystem 5000, BeoSystem 6500, 2x BeoMaster 7000, 2 pair of BeoLab Penta mk2, AV 7000, Beolab 4000, BeoSound 4000, Playmaker, BeoLab 2500, S-45, S-45.2, RL-140, CX-50, C-75, 3x CX-100, 3x MCL2 link rooms, 3x Beolab 2000, M3, P2, Earset, A8 earphones, A3, 2x 4001 relay, H3, H3 ANC, H6, 2014 Audi S5 with B&O sound, and ambio 

mczac
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mczac replied on Sun, Jan 20 2019 9:15 PM

I don't do IFTTT as it create network lag, I handle everything on my server, but if I make something decent good quality that is capable of a release project quality I will definitely post it. Stay tuned for video. 

Dante
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Dante replied on Sun, Jan 20 2019 9:37 PM

Hi mczac! Have you ever had a chance to study the BL5 data protocol?

I'm trying to figure out how to turn it on and off via PL using a 3rd party processor that has a simple 12v trigger out, but didn't had any sucess yet.

mczac
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mczac replied on Sun, Jan 20 2019 9:50 PM

it is very simple, I have BL anniversary edition myself dusting them off to wake up my village, say tomorrow, or now, why not))).

You need to  get a voltage on Pin1 exceeding 2.5V threshold, to be at 3-5V. to let relay in BL5 know that you are turning them on. that's it.
Enjoy.

mczac
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mczac replied on Tue, Jan 29 2019 11:13 PM

BS9000 hardware control is implemented, now wiring bits to modern interface. First mock-up of what it looks when you choose in the browser which CD will be played.

[click on the image, animated gif]

tigerisak
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tigerisak replied on Wed, Jan 30 2019 8:11 AM

Wither he new beta 12.2 you can now control TVs and more.

mczac
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mczac replied on Wed, Jan 30 2019 11:55 AM

Yep, I have seen this. Assessing wiring BO APIs into the new HomeKit class. 

tigerisak
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tigerisak replied on Thu, Jan 31 2019 9:54 AM

Are you using Homebridge and a customised node?

mczac
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mczac replied on Mon, Feb 4 2019 2:48 PM

yup, exposing BO via Homebridge

w5bno123
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mczac:

Just completed text-to-speach module, so I will be tracking important twitter hashtags, follow Man United scores and interrupt music playback on BO gear when permitted with a breaking news on a score or news headlines.

Since Jose left this might happen more often now! Big Smile
Michael
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Michael replied on Mon, Feb 4 2019 4:14 PM

Any chance you can post your custom node for HomeBridge on Git? Would love to play around with it

mczac
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mczac replied on Mon, Feb 4 2019 7:52 PM

I will, after 12.2 final release to get better TV integration into home.app

tigerisak
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That would be awesome!

connectjunkie
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I'd be interested in too - I've been hacking around with pretty much everything in my house that isn't already supported by Homebridge, and my A9 mk2 is one of them.  I've pushed a very basic plugin for now (look for homebridge-beoplay in the npm repo), but would be interested in feedback and testing. The difficult thing is figuring out what would actually be useful to add into HomeKit as the AV support is sadly lacking. 

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