Hassio Monoprice 6 zone amp

Configuration
1

I am working on setting up my monoprice 6 zone amp with HA. I initially had the incorrect RS232 cable, but have replaced it with the correct cable with the FTDI chip. When I add the component to my config file I get the following errors.

2019-02-20 19:53:20 ERROR (SyncWorker_8) [homeassistant.components.media_player.monoprice] Error connecting to Monoprice controller
2019-02-20 19:53:55 WARNING (MainThread) [homeassistant.helpers.entity] Update of cover.house is taking over 10 seconds
2019-02-20 19:53:58 ERROR (MainThread) [pymyq.api] Getting device states failed: 19:53:45.011989 Constant timeouts while requesting data from api/v4/UserDeviceDetails/Get

Here is my component within the config file.

media_player:
  - platform: monoprice
    port: /dev/ttyUSB1
    zones:
      11:
        name: Living Room
      12:
        name: Kitchen
      13:
       name: Back Porch
      14:
        name: Bedroom
      15:
        name: Bathroom
    sources:
      5:
        name: Chromecast

Any ideas on what could be the issue? I am running hassio 87.1 on a RBPi 2. I have tried rebooting both HA server and the amp over and over to see if it will clear up. I have seen others that have had to restart HA several times to get the monoprice component to start up correctly.

2

I should note that when I comment out the monoprice component, I have no other errors on boot. The cover.house is my myq garage door component. It only errors out when monoprice errors out. Not sure what order HA uses to load the components, but the myq component is immediately above the monoprice component.

AKA no: 2019-02-20 19:53:55 WARNING (MainThread) [homeassistant.helpers.entity] Update of cover.house is taking over 10 seconds

3

Is the USB port correct?

Look in Hass.io, Host System, Hardware

4

It is correct (I missed that initially). When I changed cables the port id changed from /dev/ttyUSB0 to /dev/ttyUSB1.

5

I went through several iterations, finding small things here and there. It’s a let down to find a problem that you think you’ve fixed, only to have it not work. Another thing I found (before posting the question) was that the amp/controller was set to Slave1. You can connect up to 3 of these units together to expand to 18 zones. I was hoping that in slave mode the RS232 port on the unit was disabled. However, setting it to master, didn’t seem to help. I have rebooted, pulled power, etc. from both the amp and raspberry pi several times. Good news is that I have gotten rid of the issue of the myq error. Although, I have no idea what I changed that affected that… I did have an issue with my automations not calling out an entity ID that was deprecated in a recent release. (No I didn’t read the release notes when I updated… i went from .45 to .85) I moved into a new house and went without my HA server for a year before i had the time to set it back up.

6

Okay, I seem to have fixed it. Interestingly enough, using ssh and hassio hardware info i got usb1. I double checked within the hassio UI, and found it was reporting usb0. I switched back to usb0, and after a few restarts was able to get it to launch successfully. I am still having errors with the myq component though. It seems to work fine, but shows errors in the log.

7

Can you share what cable you used to connect to your Monoprice amp? I’m looking to add this component but I’m not having much luck finding details on how to physically set this up.

8

This one worked for me.
UGREEN USB 2.0 to RS232 DB9… https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00QUZY4L0?ref=ppx_pop_mob_ap_share

9

I use the Monoprice with both PI and NUC. For the PI I used a USB->RS232 and a straight through RS-232 cable, for the NUC the same straight RS-232 cable.

Works really well.

10

Anybody experienced that wall pads are innactive?
My case:
I firstly connected RCA to 3.5mm to my laptop, and wallpads were working.
Then I bought some cheap chinese rs232 to usb cable and I sticked into my RaspberryPi. I sucessfully integrated with my HA.
and from that point my wallpads are innactive - they light blue color, but I cant turn them on.

IMG_6170
IMG_61703024Ă—4032 631 KB

I tried with pulling out RS232 cable, and switching off/on the amp.
Also I wrote to the monoprice.com maybe they will step in to solve this problem.
If anybody experiences this please let me know.
Thanks

11

I had some issues like this. Really don’t understand why what I did fixed it.

How many of the wall plates/zones are you using?

1 Like
12

I am using 4 plates, I have only 4 zones, and for now, I connected on input 1 some RCA cable from my computer… my wallpads were working and I could control them when I was playing music from my PC through RCA cables, but from the moment when I connected RS232 cable, they stops working, actually, I cant even play the music.

This is my configuration in my config file:

media_player: 
  platform: monoprice
  port: /dev/ttyUSB0
  zones:
    11:
      name: Living Room
    12:
      name: Bathroom
    13:
      name: Bedroom
    14:
      name: Office
  sources:
    1:
      name: Computer

Maybe I’m using low quality cable… I ordered a few days ago UGREEN RS232 cable, maybe that will helps :slight_smile:

13

Any luck?

I am using only 5 of the 6 zones. In order for the wall plates to function correctly I had to install a “dummy” cable into the unused zone on the wall plate splitter. Once I did that, it seemed to fix the problem. Not really sure why that worked, but it did.

14

Did you ever figure out what the issue was? I have the same exact problem. If I plug in only 3 keypads they all seem to work, however when I plug in the 4th they become unresponsive but I am able to turn the zones on through Home Assistant.

15

Late to the discussion, but you may want to try to re-terminate the network cable for the “bad” zone. I had some issues with my initial installation and re-terminating helped with my issues.

16

Well, I was able once to make it work all four, but when network failed, also the audio controllers failed.
I am now waiting to get 5v dc converter, and try to make it sure that wasnt UTP current messed up.

17

In my case no one zone appeared to be bad. I could plug in any of the 3 or 4 zones (don’t remember at what quantity I started having issues) and they would work. Once I plugged in the 4th or 5th zone, they would all become unresponsive. I somehow discovered that plugging a cable into the 6th zone made everything function normally. I think I had cables in all 6 plugs, switching things around while troubleshooting.

18

I have one with 3 pads, another with 5. Both work just fine here.

19

While I haven’t gotten the amp to work with HA yet, I did experience this when the dip switches on the panels weren’t set to their respective zone values.