Ah I think you may be conflating two different concepts:
A “zone” is an area (often but not always a room) that has speakers that the Monoprice distributes the audio signal to. I think there are 6 zones per Monoprice amp. So, if you daisy chain multiple amps, amp #1 has zones 1-6 and amp#2 has zones 7-12, etc. You can change zone labels but I don’t believe you can adjust zone numbers (short of rewiring).
Separate from zones are “inputs”. An input is a source of audio that the amp distributes to zones. Example inputs could be a Sonos, a TV receiver, or an 8-track player. Okay, kidding about the last one.
Does this resonate? My instructions above were about inputs not zones. Which are you struggling with?
Got it.. I was trying to rename the inputs.. But I have 3 systems (soudavo master + 2 slaves).
I've been successful on my first 2 devices. But the 3rd doesn't seem to update (i might have just forgotten the correct naming syntax).
All the inputs are the same (i'm using the soundavo extenders), so I'd like them to read the same.
I've tried using Controller number 3, Input 1 , New name: sonos, and it simply won't update. I can try from scratch in case i screwed it up but am hoping not to have to do so.
Not much help here for you because I use Google Home, but the Google Home Community integration allows me to assign drivers to match Google. So I set the Child Devices as Media Devices and used toggles to allow me to change the input.
I'm not sure what is available for Alexa, but if there's something out there for that, it may help.
@curtman3, thanks for the description of how device mapping works with Google Home. No such luck with the Alexa integration. My guess is that the developer of the integration app/skill chooses how the device will map over or there is some typical or even fixed list of mappings.
What are people doing for Dashboards with this? I just want a dashboard where I can set the volume, and the source for each zone. What's the best way to go about this?
As a side note, this thing has been alright. I've had it for almost 10 years. There is some bleed over between inputs... Like if I'm playing something in the basement on input 1, and I have a zone upstairs set to input 2, I can faintly hear it in the speakers. And I get some buzzing when no audio is playing but the zones are set to medium volume or higher.
Anyway, I just need to figure out dashboards. And then I need an automation that I can run to set everything back to where I want it after the power goes out because it doesn't remember.
Here's what mine looks like -- boring, I know. It's just a media player tile for Sonos and then the same for each individual speaker device (the child devices created by the MonoPrice 6 driver). I also created a virtual speaker device for the whole house so that I can control all the individual speakers with one click.
There's also that grey box toward the left side of the dashboard a little ways down from the top. This is a place any member of the family can type in a brief message that will be played ad hoc from all the activated, unmuted speakers. This is handy when I'm traveling, urgently need to speak to someone at home, but the wife (or teenager!) isn't answering their mobile phone.
Again, nothing too sophisticated but it seems to meet our needs.
Yeah, this is awesome. I don't seem to have the Sonos templates though. Can you show a screenshot of the config for one of the widgets?
Ah, I found the music player template, that works fine. I haven't been using dashboards much, I use voice control for as much as I can...
So when I expose the child devices to Alexa, they show up as a switch, not speakers. So I can't tell Alexa to set the volume or change the source. Is there a way to fix this?
Is there a way to do a master source? In some situations I might want to switch everything to source 1, or source 4, or whatever. I tried create a virtual device for this, but I cannot seem to get it to work.
Not elegantly, but yes. If I recall you can assign a source based on a hub variable. So you can create a Hub Variable for source#, put it on your dashboard, and write a rule that changes the source of all the individual audio devices when the master source variable changes.
Agree with Mike. Think of the Monoprice as a distributor of the audio (music or TTS) from one or multiple sources to multiple speaker devices. The driver gives you speaker devices, but you still separately need a source device to input the signal to the Monoprice.
For audio source…many of us, including me, use Sonos for TTS. I also use Spotify to stream audio.
I noticed that my connection stops working to the audio controller sometimes, and the widgets can't control it anymore. If I reset the hubitat, or click Force Poll or Initialize, it fixes it.
No firewall between the controller and hubitat, and everything is wired ethernet.
You guys have no idea how much this made my day. I bought the Monoprice amp 6 years ago when I bought the house - and just finally hooked it up a couple weeks ago with 5 Echo Dots as inputs plus a bluetooth connection to my Office TV (it plays youtube music videos all day). But the way the house was wired, only 3 zones have keypads so while I have the app on my phone, my family can't control it. This will make it super clean for everyone.
One area I'm stuck on - my zones all say Unknown for the source and if I tap it, it just powers off that zone - am I missing something - how do I set the source for each zone? I'll keep tinkering but a kick in the right direction could help.
