How to control Russound MCA-C5 via RIO Protocol

Third party integrations
1

I own a Russound MCA-C5 8x8 multi-zone amplifier which has for years been controlled via IP by an RTI controller. I’m slowly migrating devices to Home Assistant. I configured the Russound RIO integration, and see the name of each Zone exposed as a new media_player entity. But how to I control ithem?

I’ve added a couple Media Player cards for a couple zones, but they don’t seem to work. I’m a bit of a newb for non-GUI integrations. Any ELI5 explanation for how to now control the Russound? Is there something I’m missing?

The Media Player cards are active, but clicking the various buttons doesn’t change anything on the Russound. Opening the Details page for either card, I can see the proper control surfaces. The Volume Slider works, the Source selection is populated from the Russound’s data, etc. But changing settings (adjusting the volume, selecting different sources, etc.) has no effect on the Russound.

MediaPlayerDetail

Configuration.yaml

#Russound MCA-C5 configuration
media_player:
  - platform: russound_rio
    host: 192.168.xxx.xxx
    name: Russound

Dashboard configuration:

type: grid
columns: 1
square: false
cards:
  - type: media-control
    entity: media_player.phil_s_office_2
  - type: media-control
    entity: media_player.living_rm

Thanks in advance for your help. This is on Home Assistant v5.11 running in a VirtualBox Windows 10 VM on an Intel NUC.

2

The Russound MCA-C5 is very temperamental when IP connected. Try a power cycle and/or a restart of HomeAssistant.

On the advice of others I have installed a managed switch and restricted the access. Others have change the config or swapped out the router.

Refer to Russound MCA C5 Tuner. There’s some discussion about the problem and an alternate integration that allows for selection of stations on the tuner.