If anyone is interested, I modified the Xantech code and implemented a version which works with the Dayton Audio DAX88 8 zone, 8 input controller. This unit is slightly different in the RS232 interface from anything in the Xantech protocols as the status returned is different in order and in ASCII, but controlling other things like Volume returns HEX. It works well though at least for zone on/off, volume and source selection. What to see if I can add bass/treble/balance in the future so that I do not need Matrio application at all.
The Speaker Zones area shows my zones with one (zone 8) still unused. Zone 7 is pre-amp out to an amp in the Master.
I would note that the Dayton Audio Dax88 comes with a USB to RS232 cable that works perfectly. One only needs to ensure that the ttyUSB0 device is read/write after install.
After reading this whole thread and then pondering the ‘multi-room home audio’ problem and exploring the various solutions, I found they are mostly either ‘too expensive’, ‘too cloudy’ or ‘too closed / proprietary’. So I’m in!
I’ve ordered an OSD Audio PAM1270 six zone amp from Amazon (which appears nearly identical to the Monoprice / Dayton units except it doesn’t come with the wall pads and is thus cheaper ($499). It’s unclear if the RS-232 commands are identical to the Monoprice unit but I read the entire PAM1270 manual and the structure seems conceptually similar and all the codes are documented. So, I figure at worst I’ll need to do some manual translation of the command text in the script.
I’ll post more here when it shows up and I’ve had a chance to dive in.
Some minor changes to the media_player.py from xantech and now grabbing bass, treble and balance, Next is to add functions to be able to adjust them and then add to the GUI.
I looked at that unit bit only 40 watt / channel. That is what I replaced as I wanted more. The Dax88 has 8 outputs (6 speaker @ 75 watt) and two preamp.
You can buy an upgraded amp from Soundavo called WS66i. It is identical to the Monoprice amp, but swaps the RS232 for RJ45, i.e. control via Ethernet cable over LAN, and it has 2 built-in wireless streamers (DLNA renderer). A guy on YouTube has a discount code for it. It’s quite pricey. There is a pull request to get the ws66i integration added to Home Assistant.
I am about to move into a new home with 6 zone audio all 4 wire / 2 speaker zones terminating in our family room and really hoping to control via HA.
While I was initially looking at monoprice box, I’m now intrigued by the Soundavo(even at +$400 after the YouTuber discount…) because I’d rather not colocate my HA instance (a VM running on Unraid server box) in my family room media furniture instead of my media closet with more space and ventilation
I think I interpreted that there is potentially an esp32 IP solution via the mono rs232 to usb connection but I think that is beyond my current capabilities…
I’m inclined to go this route and pay the extra $ if the active pull request adapts the current integration cleanly to allow HA control over local ip.
How long do pull requests usually take to be incorporated? Are we talking a few or many months?
Any other guidance or thoughts from the community?
I’m the author of the pull request. I submitted it in Sept. of last year. 1 reviewer (bdraco) has accepted it, and it’s near the end of the list of open pull requests. I’m hoping it will be merged soon. Edit: It just got merged.
The features are the same as the monoprice HA integration, but with updated error handling. The Media Player Entity doesn’t support setting the bass and treble, so you won’t be able to do that. What you can do is control each of the zones to turn on/off, mute, set volume, and set the source. The ws66i integration has a 30 second poll time. I decided on this long poll time to save on resources. Actions taken on the keypads can take up to 30 seconds to be reflected in HA, but actions taken in HA will be reflected immediately. It’s been reliable so far in my testing.
Here is what the default expanded WS66i Zone entity looks in HA:
I used the Xantech integration and had to add some additional changes for the Dayton Audio Dax88 (8 zone). The interface commands are slightly different than the standard Monoprice ones.
As I said, I actually grab the Bass, Treble and Balance as attributes. I could add then into a slider if needed but it was low on my list of things to do. It is not like I change them (if ever) once they are set so I did not see the value in time spent.
Edited for clarity and to complete my initial thought…
That’s awesome news!! Congrats (I guess?) and thank you for your efforts with this. I went and read through your pull request after first seeing this amp existed as an upgrade from the Monoprice (and for me at least, greatly simplifying the set up so that I didn’t need to build something with esp32 to avoid co-locating my Unraid server to be in the family room entertainment center where my speaker wire runs terminate!)… It was really interesting to see the effort / feedback provided by the reviewer and the time / thoughtfulness / effort you put on from your submission until now!
I’m not so concerned about tuning treble and bass from HA (though I guess they would be nice adds for a future version if you had time and if the Media Player entity were updated accordingly…) I currently don’t plan to run the keypad controllers into each room so the remote polling time doesn’t impact me either.
Did you ever get this working? I have an iTach Flex IP as well. Worked fine with a previous solution and trying to figure it out with Home assistant now.
One final Congrats and thank you to Zinic now that the integration is deployed for use with the 2022.6 release. Only unfortunate thing for me is I’m currently traveling so I won’t be able to try this out until next week.
Would it be possible to have every zone show up as a different device on Spotify?
I know there are several different servers like LMS, snapcast, volumio, etc. But from my understanding, those require a client running on separate hardware, connected to an input of each zone.
This is not something that Monoprice/Xantech integration could do as it would be the source media hardware connected to each source on the amp. For instance, if you had 4 zones, you’d need something like 4 HiFiBerry input devices so that Spotify could stream to the specific HiFiBerry you wanted. The Monoprice would have each zone locked to a specific source that had the HiFiBerry for that room.
I just got a few of these amps (Dayton DAX88) and was searching for the best way to integrate them with HA when I found your post Are the changes you made merged back into xantech? If not would you mind sharing how you made the changes? I noticed there are rs-232 codes in the back of the manual but my code writing skills are of the copy and paste nature so any help would be very appreciated.
Are the changes you made merged back into xantech? If not would you mind sharing how you made the changes? I noticed there are rs-232 codes in the back of the manual but my code writing skills are of the copy and paste nature so any help would be very appreciated.