Beo-Mac

Re: The ultimate Mac-B&O setup???

burantek — Fri, 05 Mar 2010 10:25:20 GMT

USA iPad dates now firm.

Orders: Friday, March 12th.

Delivery: Saturday, April 3rd.

Re: The ultimate Mac-B&O setup???

Ehlerz — Wed, 10 Feb 2010 14:45:26 GMT

Hi Roy

I have no experience in ML Gateway but i think so yes. As far as i know, you will be able to control everything from everywhere!!

Re: The ultimate Mac-B&O setup???

RAGH — Wed, 10 Feb 2010 13:11:09 GMT

This is great news.

I take it the app will control the equipment on the MLBus. Can it also control control/send commands to the equipment on the other end of the MLGW (homeautomation, ie KNX)?

Kind Regards, Roy

Re: The ultimate Mac-B&O setup???

Ehlerz — Wed, 10 Feb 2010 08:44:35 GMT

FYI Official B&O Iphone and Ipod touch application for ML gateway will arrive soon.

Re: The ultimate Mac-B&O setup???

cooldude — Tue, 09 Feb 2010 13:08:08 GMT

XavierItzmann:

chrisped:

Goal: To have an iPad controlling our B&O system and our vast digital music and video collection?

I can turn on N.MUSIC or N.RADIO from any of my three linked rooms. My server is a Mac Mini running LinkPlayer and iTunes and attached to a BeoPort. The music sits on a 1TB Time Capsule a few meters away.

Whereas Beo4 is able to wake up the Mac Mini and start playing music, it can be problematic to try and navigate through 70GB of music with either no screen feedback or a tiny and dim 8-character display on my BS 3000. It is doable if you have just a few playlists.

Solution: my old, abandoned iPhone original from June 2007 now sits, without a GSM chip, on its dock on a side table. If ever I feel the need for finely-grained control after N.MUSIC has started to play, I can stretch out a hand and pull the old iPhone to do Remote.app duty. This iPhone has been set to never turn off, so that it is able to stay with display on for many hours, showing whatever is playing, and ready for any music searches.

How could the iPad improve on this situation? There are two levels:

1. An even more improved Remote.app on the larger iPad screen should enable navigation, ratings, etc., with less clicks, modes or gestures than it does today on Remote.app. A custom Remote.app with a Bang & Olufsen interface would be even better. I am still mesmerized by the outstanding Bang & Olufsen black presentation Full Screen that Phil created for Link Player. Alternatively, someone could also make an BS5-like interface for iPad Remote.app.

2. A second level would be the ability to use the iPad and iPad only as a complete substitute to the Beo4. This would evidently require at least some additional hardware. Mac Mini is capable of being awakened by network request and by Bluetooth request; and an IR blaster can convert from WiFi inputs to infrared. I am not very attracted to this solution because it involves too many wires.

An improved (and more interactive) remote app for the Ipad would be very welcome. However one problem remains if you want it to be your primary interface : You will need to have the Ipad running this app continuously. As the Ipad is not multitasking, it will be impossible to use it for anything else or you will be missing volume control etc till you close any other app you're using...

Basically what you want is the mac to control B&O which is very hard as the technology used is very incompatible. However it's easier for B&O to control the mac instead.

For now the Beoport is still the better option to connect your B&O with your mac. However, currently you still use the beo4 as main remote with the iphone (later ipad) more as extra controller (or master control panel) when needed. This imo is still the most efficient way in daily use.

Re: The ultimate Mac-B&O setup???

XavierItzmann — Mon, 08 Feb 2010 22:41:18 GMT

chrisped:

Goal: To have an iPad controlling our B&O system and our vast digital music and video collection?

I can turn on N.MUSIC or N.RADIO from any of my three linked rooms. My server is a Mac Mini running LinkPlayer and iTunes and attached to a BeoPort. The music sits on a 1TB Time Capsule a few meters away.

Whereas Beo4 is able to wake up the Mac Mini and start playing music, it can be problematic to try and navigate through 70GB of music with either no screen feedback or a tiny and dim 8-character display on my BS 3000. It is doable if you have just a few playlists.

Solution: my old, abandoned iPhone original from June 2007 now sits, without a GSM chip, on its dock on a side table. If ever I feel the need for finely-grained control after N.MUSIC has started to play, I can stretch out a hand and pull the old iPhone to do Remote.app duty. This iPhone has been set to never turn off, so that it is able to stay with display on for many hours, showing whatever is playing, and ready for any music searches.

How could the iPad improve on this situation? There are two levels:

1. An even more improved Remote.app on the larger iPad screen should enable navigation, ratings, etc., with less clicks, modes or gestures than it does today on Remote.app. A custom Remote.app with a Bang & Olufsen interface would be even better. I am still mesmerized by the outstanding Bang & Olufsen black presentation Full Screen that Phil created for Link Player. Alternatively, someone could also make an BS5-like interface for iPad Remote.app.

2. A second level would be the ability to use the iPad and iPad only as a complete substitute to the Beo4. This would evidently require at least some additional hardware. Mac Mini is capable of being awakened by network request and by Bluetooth request; and an IR blaster can convert from WiFi inputs to infrared. I am not very attracted to this solution because it involves too many wires.

Re: The ultimate Mac-B&O setup???

PhilLondon — Sun, 07 Feb 2010 12:14:11 GMT

RAGH:
Only possibility to get two way communication is MLGW it seems.

Yes. To my view this would be the best technical option but with the limitations mentioned above.

RAGH:
Phil, can a Mac/beoport combination function as an IP gateway for an iPhone app (Linkplayer iPhone app maybe) to control B&O equipment?

No it can't unfortunately. You could only control what is playing in the room where the Beoport is, and only if speakers are connected directly to it. But for that room, it would be 2 way.

Re: The ultimate Mac-B&O setup???

RAGH — Sun, 07 Feb 2010 10:17:14 GMT

So,

Only possibility to get two way communication is MLGW it seems.

Can Linkplayer on Mac control linkroom equipment, or can it just set the "mode" of the Mac. And is it oneway or twoway?

Phil, can a Mac/beoport combination function as an IP gateway for an iPhone app (Linkplayer iPhone app maybe) to control B&O equipment? Either oneway or twoway, we would have a B&O remote on our iPhones.

Kind Regards, Roy

Re: The ultimate Mac-B&O setup???

PhilLondon — Sat, 06 Feb 2010 13:27:36 GMT

Roy, The problem with this solution that I have considered as well is that the Masterlink protocol is not public.

The real MLGW transcodes the secret ML protocol into a publicly documented protocol.

Re: The ultimate Mac-B&O setup???

RAGH — Fri, 05 Feb 2010 17:30:18 GMT

PhilLondon:
Ok, I do not know a Wifi > IR box. The ML Gateway however is connected to the ML bus and can in theory control all the devices in every room.

So from an iPhone app, that would connect to a single ML gateway via wifi, you could control every room, even if you're in a different room... and with 2 way communication ;-)

To answer RAGH/Roy's question, yes I can write iPhone apps (i do not have any on the store yet), but I find the ML Gateway too expensive to buy it myself. Also I find that the number of supported devices is too limited. It only supports the most recent TVs and hifis must be in option 0.

According to B&O there is already a way to control the setup with an iPhone app. From what I understand, the ML Gateway needs to be interfaced with a home automation system, and this home automation system has already an iPhone app.

Lintronic box can be a gateway to a masterlink system, see this link

http://www.lintronic.dk/AppNote_BeoLink.pdf

Only downside is there is no ethernet connection. But i found this in a Lintronic newsletter (rs232 to IP adapter), so the Lintronic can be IP enabled. Page 5.

http://www.lintronic.dk/NewsLetter-2009-3.pdf

Wouldnt it be possible to write an iPhoneOS IP app to control the Lintronic that way?

Then we would have a cheap MLGW surrogate.

Kind Regards, Roy

Re: The ultimate Mac-B&O setup???

RAGH — Wed, 03 Feb 2010 11:34:30 GMT

Hi,

Can you explain how you implemented it?

[Edit: sorry was to quick to reply, didnt read soundproof's message. See text below, i agree with what he said about a gateway solution. Maybe Michael from Lintronic could chime in]

I figure this device is a remote IR blaster the iPhone/iTouch connects to via WiFi/IP, and suppose its one-way only and you point the transmitter to one of the IR-eyes in your ML setup. So no feedback on the touchscreen whether your speaker in the linkroom is on/off and to what source its actually set.

Is this true?

Do you know that if you add the rs-232 adapter to the IRtrans you can send (and recieve?) the IR commands over rs-232 to (for instance) a MLGateway or Lintronicbox, and thus have two-way feedback? I ask because this way the MLGateway/Lintronicbox do the IR-command to MLprotocol conversion instead of the IRtrans just pushing a IR-signal into the ML network.

Is two way communication for device-status even possible for ML? (in other words does the ML protocol just send IR commands to a linkdevice over the MLBus, or does the linkdevice send status-info back somehow?)

PS another way to implement an iPhone/iTouch, mentioned earlier as the reference B&O made about the already available iPhone remote, is that you could use Home Automation packages like CQC or Johnnynine's J9AE, which have iPhone client apps. Downside to me is that they are client/server based. The iPhone is only the client. A PC is the server, and this server would control an interface/converterbox like the MLGateway/Lintronic box. To many steps if you ask me, I'd rather have an iPhoneOS app that controls the converter directly.

Re: The ultimate Mac-B&O setup???

maclife — Wed, 03 Feb 2010 08:07:08 GMT

PhilLondon:
Ok, I do not know a Wifi > IR box.

I’m using this product without any problems:

http://www.tinbert.com/iRed2/iredtouch

And there’s the WiFi device supported by it:

http://www.irtrans.de/en/technicalinfo/wifi.php

Ordering information:

http://www.irtrans.de/en/shop/wifi.php

HTH

Re: The ultimate Mac-B&O setup???

soundproof — Wed, 03 Feb 2010 04:32:48 GMT

The only translator (WiFi-IR) I know of that's compatible with B&O is the one from irTrans.

http://www.irtrans.de/en/

irTrans also offers gateways for network control.

Functions can be controlled using iRed2.

http://www.tinbert.com/iRed2/

I've tested this, and it works well, but the version I tested was the early one, where you had to do a bit of configuring yourself, and I abandoned it for that reason. It's moved on since then, but still requires a bit of configuring in 2.2

http://www.tinbert.com/iRed2/manual/step-by-step

To get Linkplayer to work through this, you'd need irTrans, but I believe you can do without iRed2?

This product doesn't emit B&O IR-frequencies - http://l5remote.com/

I'd actually prefer a gateway solution, where I'm sending control impulses over WiFi, and the B&O hardware receives a translated IR-command (or RS232) from a WiFi>B&O command translator.

Key to all is of course simplicity. The more boxes and intermediate steps there are, the greater a chance that you don't get what you want when you push a button -- which is what B&O is all about.

Re: The ultimate Mac-B&O setup???

chrisped — Wed, 03 Feb 2010 03:59:42 GMT

PhilLondon:
Ok, I do not know a Wifi > IR box. The ML Gateway however is connected to the ML bus and can in theory control all the devices in every room.

Right, but one of the fundamental challenges we face in the "ultimate setup" is how to control our b&o systems using an iPhone/iPad app, correct? And the b&o answer MCL Gateway is too expensive and also lacks in supported systems.

So we are back to the Wifi->InfraRed box, which would receive a command via Wi-Fi from our iPhone app and convert it to IR. I seem to remember an old thread on the forum with links to such a product, but I think it was a little bit expensive and difficult to obtain in Europe. Did this ever make it to Europe and have anyone actually tried it?

Or..

Since b&o is now converting the ML to cat7 would it be possible to interface that way? I suspect it would be still a closed network, and b&o would not support the ML traffic work over your home network. If indeed it needs cat7 (shielding is the reason or?) it would be cabled network anyways. However if a standard hub would act as the ML junction box in this Cat7 architecture one could imagine a mac/pc with an extra network card and cat7 cable to the hub. It might be possible to write a low level network app which could convert the app commands to ML commands over Cat7?? could this possibly work?

Re: The ultimate Mac-B&O setup???

PhilLondon — Wed, 03 Feb 2010 01:39:53 GMT

Ok, I do not know a Wifi > IR box. The ML Gateway however is connected to the ML bus and can in theory control all the devices in every room.

So from an iPhone app, that would connect to a single ML gateway via wifi, you could control every room, even if you're in a different room... and with 2 way communication ;-)

To answer RAGH/Roy's question, yes I can write iPhone apps (i do not have any on the store yet), but I find the ML Gateway too expensive to buy it myself. Also I find that the number of supported devices is too limited. It only supports the most recent TVs and hifis must be in option 0.

According to B&O there is already a way to control the setup with an iPhone app. From what I understand, the ML Gateway needs to be interfaced with a home automation system, and this home automation system has already an iPhone app.