ARCHIVED FORUM -- March 2012 to February 2022READ ONLY FORUM
This is the second Archived Forum which was active between 1st March 2012 and 23rd February 2022
Hi all,
My friend and I are working on a solution (actually two separate solutions, for flexibility) to voice-control a stand-alone datalink-controlled BeoGram.
You may have seen this solution: a BeoGram (obviously), a BeoMaster to connect it to, a BeoLink converter 1611 to convert DataLink to MasterLink, a NL/ML converter to convert MasterLink to NetworkLink, and a BeoLink Gateway to integrate it with Khimo+IFTTT+Google Home/Alexa.
That's a big bunch of boxes for a relatively small task, if all you want to do is to voice-control a BeoGram. And the 2 converters are obsolete, meaning that you would need to find it second hand.
What we want is to simply connect the BeoGram sound output (either from built-in or external riaa preamp) directly to line-in of a product, and then connect "something" to the data-pin of the DIN plug on the BeoGram.
What we have in mind is:
a) A solution where you need a BLGW, a Global Cache IP2IR, optocoupler and remote access (Khimo) + a special DIN plug - quite easy to set up - but also a bit more expensive than solution b (but nowhere near as expensive as the one mentioned above).
b) A much cheaper solution with a developer board where you don't need any other hardware than a resistor, an optocoupler and a NodeMCU board + a special DIN plug. But it requires a little more work, although I'd say it isn't difficult at all.
We are still working on the documentation, but here's a demo of the end-result (solution b) recorded on a late night in my basement (sorry for the bad light quality).
https://youtu.be/33PdBND2O_A
We will of course share all the documentation once its finished (hoping for end of July).
Best regards Maurizio and Christian
I am very impressed, love the way you integrate old tech with new. Keep us posted on how you get on
Very cool, seems like it works pretty smooth.
Thanks, yeah the whole idea is that a solution like this should be accessable for 'everyone', and of course, there is also the gimmick-part of it; people get quite impressed when they see proper smart home integration of products from the 80's.
One of my morning automations reads me the news, turns on the coffee machine and starts the beogram... Nice way to start the morning :)
Documentation and link to video guide here:
https://github.com/cklit/smartbeogram
Super cool! Well done.
Thanks :) If anyone dares to try this project, please let me hear about the result :)