Hi there,
Recently integrated a Nucleus+ with a Crestron system using the official modules on a variety of end-points and it works great.
In addition to browsing his music library using the Crestron Media Player Smart Graphics object, my client needs the ability to directly select an album, playlist or internet radio station from his Crestron touch panels.
Are these commands available in the API? How can we send such commands to the Nucleus+ from Crestron?
Thanks in advance,
Fred.
Fred, was there anything odd about the Crestron implementation as we had some issues. We were using Android tablets and had issues controlling multiple zones.
I asked the same question that you did and there are no plains to make a join code version of the selection. My understanding is that we can use the join code version for metadata and transport with the smart object selection screens
Here is what I was given by roon
"For the moment, we don’t have any plans to build join based support for browsing or selecting content. It’s not clear what the joins on the device module would have to be to make it function well, and we’re not confident we can make a good product this way.
We believe it’s possible to use the browse section of the Crestron generic media player without the now playing and transport control sections, so that would be our recommendation for now."
Fred, was there anything odd about the Crestron implementation as we had some issues. We were using Android tablets and had issues controlling multiple zones.
Yes, we had to move the Roon modules to another 3-series processor as it kept crashing our main A/V program although I don’t believe this to be symptomatic of Roon (we were pushing our CP3 to it’s limit). We have two end-points - a Sonos:Connect and an Auralic Aries Mini, works absolutely fine at the moment via MediaPlayr object.
I’m not after join-based browsing. Give me a single string input into each end-point module and a command to directly select any album, playlist or internet radio station whether on a NAS or streaming service.
Simple, right?
Were you using the Crestron app or traditional touch panels?
We’ve a mixture of TSW-760s and Crestron App on iOS (iPad & iPhone) - MediaPlayer SG object throughout.
Using the Crestron App on Android devices should be no different.
Ensure all your Crestron firmware and software is up to date. I’ve run into problems elsewhere if it is not.
Good luck.
Hey @Fred_Vessey – sorry for the delay here. We are working on functionality to do exactly what you’re describing here.
It’s currently being designed, so obviously there’s more work to do before it’s built, tested, and shipped, but it is something we are actively working on.
I can’t commit to any kind of time frame yet, but this is coming. Hope that helps!
@mike, that’s great news! I’ll keep an eye out.
Will you be offering the chance to beta-test the new modules to any Crestron programmers?
We’ve done some very limited pre-release testing with people in the business, and useful feedback has come out of that. I’ll make a note about your interest and when we’re a little closer I can reach out if it makes sense.
What would be the most helpful right now is more information about your use cases.
Specifically, I’d love to know more about what your customers are looking for here – the more details, the better:
Thanks Fred!
As you probably know, each Roon end-point has its own device module in Crestron. I’m assuming you already have a basic understanding of the various Crestron signal types. It would be great if you could provide a string input on each of these modules that would allow the programmer to send a command directly to the end-point to select and album, song, playlist, internet radio station, etc. without having to navigate the menu hierarchy.
The format of the command could be: :: where indicates the location of the media (NAS drive, TIDAL, etc.), is the ID of the album, song, etc to play and indicates whether to play now or add to the existing playlist.
I’m assuming each media item has a unique ID and if so, you will need to provide an easy way to grab these IDs from the Nucleus+.
Essentially, my client wants the ability to select his favourite music quickly and easily - the best method would be to have a bunch of preset buttons that can be triggered from his Crestron panels or any other device that is integrated with Crestron (e.g. Lutron keypads, Amazon Alexa, etc.)
Hope that helps!
Fred.
@SteveSilberman +1 for this function. We use this frequently with Sonos and Autonomic to allow a client to walk up to a Keypad and push “Rock” or “Jazz” and have it start a favorite playlist or artist radio station. It is a big deal for us and would definitely increase our ability to sell more Nuclei.
In Sonos, you just set the desired media (Playlist or radio station) as a “Sonos Favorite” and then you can recall the favorite. It is assigned a dynamic UID such that if you deleted and re-added the exact same favorite you would break the programming, but it’s better than having no favorites at all.
It really makes the system super user-friendly. They just walk up to a keypad and push one button and music starts playing. Grouping and other stuff requires a phone/tablet, but at least grandma and the kids can easily get music.
Any more news here? This is the one feature that is needed for a successful Crestron home automated system to compete with other competitors IMHO.
With Sonos/Crestron, for example, they give you the ability to choose your favorite stations (called favorites) from 20 or so. These are setup on the Sonos app, but can be selected from the Crestron UI. They can be Tidal stations, albums, tracks, playlists, etc.
The most important thing is playing music quickly with a touch of a button (not needing to browse through menus).
Hey @mike
It’s been a while since this post, but I feel like filling in a bit more information that our clients expect, regarding Home Automation and how it applies to Roon would still be helpful for the Roon team.
The beauty of Crestron / Control 4 etc, is that you have tons of flexibility in how you control devices. But, this of course means the device you are controlling needs to be just as flexible to make things work well.
Everything in Home Automation is one button press (or one Alexa command… etc) drives discrete control of many things. Our clients usually do not want to wrestle through a bunch of menus to simply get music playing in a room, or group of rooms.
Instead, they are used to one button press bringing up exactly what they want. For example, they would have a lighting type wall keypad, with a button labelled ROON (and XM etc) and OFF. With that one Roon button, you could POTENTIALLY do a lot with ROON, but currently it’s just not up to snuff yet for me to fully recommend.
Ideally, the Roon zone would turn on to a previously saved volume level, and ROON would start playing the desired playlist. Some of this is possible now, but not all of it. Let’s break down each factor.
Volume turn on - Yes! this can be done currently and works great. I have my Roon Zones turn on to a default volume for that room and its perfect. Roon already supports a discrete volume command from Crestron.
Playing Music - Now we have our first issue with Roon and Crestron. Sending the Crestron “Play” command to Roon, As long as there is something in the queue for that zone, the play command works fine. But if the queue is empty, the play command is ignored. This is an issue, as it breaks the “one button turn on” expectation of the client.
Desired playlist - Since Roon will only play, on the play command, if something is in the cue.This works somewhat, but there is MUCH room for improvement! If there is at least one song in the queue, the play command will play music. To make sure it will not stop, I also send a “Auto Radio on” command, to make sure that Roon will do its magic and play similar music to what was in the queue. But it would be much cooler if Crestron did not rely on a song in the existing queue, and could instead set that queue.
SONOS handles this by having a list of “favorites” that can be stored, and recalled when desired. For example, a client always wants the Bathroom Music button to fire up music, and select an internet Radio station called “Radio Paradise”. It doesn’t matter what music was in the queue, or if the queue was empty. On the one button press, we are able to recall FAVORITE1 which is saved as the internet radio station that is desired.
How far you take the options of selecting music would certainly be up to the Roon design/development team.
I hope this helps in your development, and I look forward to the functionality expanding to fit these needs.
Thanks Chris – this is indeed super helpful, and in line with some ideas we’ve discussed internally in the past.
I don’t have any news regarding timelines for these changes, but these examples are really helpful as I try to get some of this work on the front burner. If you have others, please keep them coming.
@noris Can you read over @Chris_Heilig’s post and let’s talk? I want to make sure you and I are on the same page about these use cases so you can make sure similar feedback is tracked.
@Joe_Hebert please take a look and comment as well. I still think roon is the Rosetta stone if it is done right
Any word on this type of upgrade for automation systems?
I would love to start specifying Roon over Sonos for my company but until some of these points I brought up are addressed, I cannot do so.
Is it in the works??
Hello @Chris_Heilig ,
Thank you for your interest in this feature request here!
At this time, we are not planning further changes to our API, and our Crestron module relies on the API for this kind of functionality.
As @mike mentioned earlier, we cannot specify any timelines on this since it is a feature request, but thank you for the feedback here!