MonoPrice 6 zone Whole home amp Driver

no reply on the screen???

nope

serial is no communicating with the amp. I say check the cable connected from the amp to the adapter? if you have a desktop with a serial port on the back close by the amp connect directly to the amp and putty in the amp directly. If you have an usb to serial adapter and a pi check is the Ser2Net work, check if the master/salve1(2) is on the master position.
Im assuming you have one of the old amps Monoprice 6 Zone Home Audio Multizone Controller and Amplifier Kit, NO LOGO - Monoprice.com not the new one?

Yup, that's the one I have.

As luck would have it, I have a usb to serial adapter for my laptop. How would I connect direct through putty?

yep ones you connect the usb to serial you need to find out what com is it, the way I use is open device manager before you plug the device then plug the device and see what comxx show up, one you know that open putty and select serial on the serial line put the comXX tha show up on the speed 9600 then open, test ?10 and see what happen.

Hmmm...Might be cable related. In putty, I can open the command box for com2 (that's the com for usb) but it won't let me type anything.

I used USR app, and used the com port diagnostics (the left side) and it says it successfully sent, but nothing returns.

In the serial option in the putty all the way on the bottom on the left panel check everything is set correctly Speed 9600, data bit 8, Stop bit 1 parity none, then one by one of the flow control the last one.
if both serial connection you try are given the same error I assume: very unlikely but possible the port on the amp is bad, more like it the cable is bad check for missing or bend pins. got to work tomorrow but post here wherever attempts you make tomorrow after work I will check again and keep helping as much as I can,
Because you already have an usb to serial and if you have a pi around try the sertonet approach if you don't have a pi and have a microcenter around the got the w zero for 10$ (you will also need usb otg adapter) the 3b+ for 25 at less on maryland US.

.

Yup, that's the exact setting I had. I'll swing by Fry's on my way home tomorrow and try a different cable. I question the gender bender I'm using.

THANK YOU for ALL of your help!! I ditched the gender bender on picked up a male/female cable. IT WORKS!!!

I'll have to play a little more with it. So far, the only thing I see a little weird is when adjusting the volume from the device page, the volume number bounce around a lot. Example goes from 6 to 32, but the volume doesn't "physically" jump that much.

Thanks to all!!

1 Like

1st thank god it was a bad cable I was running out of ideas.
I don't quite understand what you experiencing on the volumen but the driver manage the volume in percent not in level 100%=38 on the keypad, that is because the dashboard also manage percent not level, otherwise when you move the progress bar on the dashboard the volumen go from 0 to 38 (max) with just a little move on tha bar

if you look on the bottom of the device page there is 3 thing to set up the child device.
disable the debug logging, it should be off that will put extra work on the hub for no reason unless you are trying something.
the other 2 control the volume behavior:

  • (Percent to dec/enc) "maybe the name should change to be more specific, open to suggestion if you have one" control the increment/decrement of the volume when you push the vol up or vol down, so if you put 10 there you will have to press 10 times vol up to go from 0 to 100% volume
  • Max volume allow is the maximum volume allow in the zone, also calculate the percent, so if you for some reason want to that zone to not pass a volume level just put it there and if you click vol up visually will go to 100%, but the level won't pass whatever number you put there,
    Hope that explain it, if you have an specific need for the driever let me know if is not to much work I do it the next time I work on this. got a few add on to work on.
2 Likes

Glad you guys got this sorted out.

1 Like

I'll try and get a video of what i does. As I push volume up it would read 18-19-20-6-32.

Other than that it working well.

I created some Google Home switches for it. I wish Google would get their s____ together and actually allow volume control. The work around for now is assign it as a switch with dimmer and volume control.

new add ons:
1- Parent now save the name of channel/sources to be display on the dashboard
2- (work around one tile) Child device have a new option that override mute/unmute to power on/off allowing to turn on/off from the speaker icon on the dashboard.
any problem post here.

Been a Hubitat user for awhile, but a noob with audio....thinking this might be my solution.

Right now I have a single Sonos that we use for whole house audio plus TTS (frequently). The Sonos is connected to an old multizone amp/receiver that has home-run wired connections to regular in-ceiling speakers all over the house. It works great with one exception--within Hubitat, there is no way to control which zones/rooms receive the audio/announcements, nor can I control the volume.

The solution that my local low voltage guy suggested is that I buy one Sonos Port for each
of my ~12 zones. That seems like overkill to me and a lot of $$$ (think $500-600 times a dozen zones). I don't need different audio in different zones at the same time. I just need to control where a single audio stream goes and at what volume.

Which got me to thinking--why can't I replace the receiver/amp with something I can control from Hubitat? Which is what brought me to this thread! Any reason I can't use a couple MonoPrice 6-zone amps? And then use this driver to select when zone or zones a Sonos TTS message gets distributed to, along with volume level?

Sorry for the long message -- appreciate any guidance.

Technically you could buy up to 3 amps and connect together you could control each zone with the driver but the amps are not cheap look like the have the new version on sale on the monoprice site for 500$ in theory should work without any issue and look like there is a telnet to serial already inside the amp, I don't know anyone that use the driver with the new amp yet im thinking on getting a second one, but im not sure if they are compatible with the old one. is fair to say that unless you trying to use the driver as the only way to control the zones you will have to run a ethernet cable from the zone to the amp. in some point I will be implementing options for the parent device to control all children at the same time so (all children's to one channel or all children to an specific volume) but im not there yet.
If you decide to jump on this im sure everybody here will help to get you where you want and if you need something specific I could change the driver to your needs when I have time.

Wildly grateful for your response and offer to help. Even three of these amps are way less expensive than buying a Sonos Port for every zone! Think I’ll buy one amp and see if I can get it working.

Before I do, can you just clarify two thingsβ€”(1) does the device driver have the ability to select one or more zones and control its/their volume? (2) does the driver have the ability to select one of multiple audio inputs?

TIA!

You will have to add 2 drivers to the hub parent and child driver, the parent will create one child's per zone and you could control the zone wherever way you want, volume increase/decrease/set an specific value, power on/off, set specific input, almost anything the wall keyboard do could do it with the child driver only balance, treble,bass are not implemented yet. obviously control could be done via smart app like Rule Machine, Button controller, maker api, Dashboard, etc. I attach some screen captures.
hope that answer you question

2 Likes

Well, I just took the plunge and bought the Monoprice 6 zone amp product. Arriving next week. Already have a couple RPi's laying around. No doubt I'll be asking for your help soon. Appreciate the guidance so far!

EDIT: Would you recommend a particular USB to serial adapter -- or any will do?

sorry for the late response I was out if town. I don't thing it matters as long is compatible with the raspberry pi.

Received the Monoprice 6x6 and spent half the weekend installing it. For some reason, every time I got a 2nd or 3rd zone setup and turned on, all the keypads would just die (i.e., they'd still light up, but the LED would not show anything, nor would the keypads take any commands). I spent a bunch of time with Monoprice chat support yesterday, at the end of which they said they thought my unit was defective. They sent me an RMA and I dropped it off at fedex today. Hopefully I'll get a new unit in the next week or two and then I'll repeat the process all over again. At least the hardware install is pretty straightforward, especially now that I've done it once. Ugh.

You didn't by chance have the same sort of problems, did you?