Forthcoming Roon API Discussion

This thread is for discussion and announcements about Roon API (Application Programming Interface ).

Brian spoke about it here and Danny advised it is coming in 1.3 here.

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I think this is great news. It’s gonna be open, and I’m sure it will result in a lot of open source based efforts to provide all kinds of ‘add-on’ solutions to Roon.

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This opens Roon for integration with home automation systems. At last a viable alternative for Sonos.

Would the API allow some sort of generic iOS remote to talk to Roon, so that we could add basic transport and volume controls to older iPhones and iPads? I mean really basic like play/pause/skip and volume.

If so, anyone know of such a generic remote on iOS so I can play in the meantime?

Is the api only available to partners? I don’t have any specific plans to write anything, but I’d love to take a look at it (I’m a software engineer). I’d be very interested in using it, if it has support for importing other meta data sources. For example, importing the online databases of live Grateful Dead or Phish shows.

The API is expected to be publicly released in Roon 1.3. I don’t know whether it will permit import of other databases or not.

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Fantastic! I am glad to see you are opening up the API. Can you tell us something about the framework you might be using? If network-based, will you make the wire protocol specification available? (Being an internet protocol guy I like protocol specs for application intercommunications. That means you can easily distribute functionality between platforms and it leaves the framework open to whatever the programmer wants to use.)

I am looking to integrate my home automation system with Roon so that selection of a zone from Roon will automatically activate the hardware for that zone. That way my guests don’t have to know about all the differences between AV hardware in the house and know what boxes to turn on and what modes they need to be set to to play music.

And going the other way, I am working toward my house knowing where people are. Based on that it should be possible to program the zone selection based on a person’s proximity to a zone. I think it would be interesting to have someone’s music “follow” them as they move about the property. Hmm, this also implies the concept of a user in Roon. Roon would then need to know WHO was playing a zone. It suggests to me a level of indirection based on person. If a person takes ownership of a zone, no one else could control that zone unless they had a higher priority. (The latter is probably necessary in a household with kids. I can well imagine Hip Hop, R&B, or Tecno popping up on all the zones in the middle of the night otherwise.)

I use Indigo on the Mac for my home automation system. I like Indigo because it lets me control z-wave, Insteon, and proprietary over-the-net devices. (I am able to control all my A/V devices, i.e. my Sony Bravia displays, my Denon AVR, and even my BADA DACs and Spectral Preamp using an IR plug-in.) It has an open architecture based on Python. There is also a spec for the creation of plug-ins in order to escape the framework.

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The Roon API is now available for use and comment; see this thread in Tinkering.

It remains under active development. Try it out on GitHub and tell Danny what you want.

Closing this thread to keep discussion in the one location.