I am trying to build a system using a PMC2+. It is 2 home theatre rooms using identical gear with zone 2 speakers for each theatre room. Both rooms have PTX3's. The AVR that I'm using is VSX-1019AH (IR).

When I attempt to enable "Two Zone Volume Extender" in the 2nd room for the 2nd remote, I get a pop up warning " The extender cannot be turned on at this time; One or more plugins indicate that enabling it will cause an invalid project configuration".

Can anyone tell me why you can't enable the extender on the 2nd receiver?

are you using 1 PMC2 to control both theater rooms?

are you using prodigy wizard?
are you letting system builder build the pages on its own?

Yes

No

Yes

It's just a limitation of how SB works. SB can be extremely powerful in aweseome, but you have to understand what it does and how it works. 

SB doesn't support two theaters. You don't HAVE to have 2 zone extenders to do both, but will have to create all your macros and flag tracking manually for the 2nd zone. 

What i'm trying right now is to put a PAMP in the project and set it up as a multizone system. SB will now create all the room source controls and options for each zone of the PAMP. You then just drop in the switching and power of commands of the AVR in the room outputs creating by having the PAMP in the system. 

I am doing a system right now this way, haven't tested it yet, but it should work. My only concern is that the system won't be seeing any feedback from a PAMP (since there isn't one), which may cause issues. 

What I do not understand is why you are not working with someone and templating your installs. It's hardly difficlult to have a template for dual zone system, one for PAMP with pre/pro and one with PAMP.

All you'd need is to change out the driver for pre/pro, cable/sat ird, display and source equipment.

The first Prodigy dual zone system took 3 hours to code. The next one took 40m, most of which was spent on firmware updates, software uploads and fixing preset channels. It's not hard to add or change drivers.

Alan

I am having the same issue but we are using 3 surround sound systems. We are trying the PAMP solution but you may have to have the PAMP in the system. I went to Crestron's office and went through it with the trainer. It seemed to work only after we hooked up the PAMP. I have not been back to try it so I don't know if it works.

I still think this is a huge oversight on crestron's part. It seems to me it would be super simple for them to turn this on in systembuilder as an option. The things like zone extenders and video switching are there, seems like all they'd have to do is basically "flip a switch".

That being said, I do multiple receivers in a system all the time. I just don't use their default templates. you have to create your own "logic". Getting my head around it the first time was difficult but now it is second nature.

You could use the multiple processor option now, haven't done that myself yet so I cant say if it would be easier or harder.

guys, system builder has to personas.

1. builds all your pages and dictates all rules

2. completely bends to your needs by not letting it build any pages for you, and you build them your self.

i right click on the controllers added, and uncheck Build pages automatically.
i then goto programming view and double click the remote to build pages. it builds nothing, but it makes the file for the remote. i then close out sb, open vt pro, and open that remote up. then i import a bunch of pages from a guifx theme i bought. i select my home page (mark page as first), save it, and go back to SB.
from there i create global macros that i assign to buttons on the home screen and on the power off screen. i also map ir / rs232 / ip codes to individual buttons on all screens.
i have the power to edit graphics really easily on any page i want via vt pro. all the pages are organized neatly in my own set of folders (Power folder for on/off, cable folder for main cable page and fav's, and misc sources folder for dvd apple tv etc).

thats a really simple system i just described, and any time i have a similar system, i open that last system i did, and just save it as a new file with a new client name .. make small adjustments and upload it for that client.

doing what i mentioned above will give you the ability to control two or more systems from one pmc2, by creating global macros for each system, mapping IR ports correctly, and creating the necessary pages on the remote ....

hope that made some sense.
again - thats a simplified version of what i do.

I always go with the second option. I created an 8 zone system with RTI T2-C's. Each room had a T2-C and each room can be used to control all of the other rooms.

You basically create all of the possible macros. Every source to every zone. Now you have all your macros and you can assign them to any button on any remote.


Edit: Above should have read "i used to go with the second option". These days i only use System Builder for single zone systems. Theater or media room etc. Multiple zones are always programmed in simpl.

You can actually do both also. You can have SB do what it does and then have your 2nd zone panel built manually.

The benefit to letting SB build and using the AUDIO ZONES via zone extender or PAMP is that you can VERy easily having your remotes be multi-room remotes. This is ideal for when a remote quits working. 

You could do as Mo does and still have multi-room remotes, it will just take a LOT more time up front. 

 The PAMP idea may not work without a PAMP in the project. However, I'm doing some tweaks to an old project of mine and noticed that I have both the 2zone extender for the AVR and 2 zone extender for the Display active. Perhaps you can setup the 2-zone extender for the display in the 2nd theater and manually add the AVR power and switching commands to those outputs.

Thanks for the info guys. It's apparent that the only way to efficently do multiple zones is to program in Simpl.

A few months ago, i had lunch with the regional technical manager and we had a discussion on Crestron's product and programming model for the future. He seemed to indicate that Prodigy was their main focus and that SB would be the programming method of preference. They've got a long way to go if this is in fact the case.

Im doing 16 zone audio systems in systembuilder.
I'm also doing multiple video zones in systembuilder.
I have one job with 10 video zones - all done in sb.

People under estimate it's capabilities. Mostly because people let it program for them instead of using IT to program.

+1

I don't know where you've made this conclusion. The issues with SB are two-fold.

1. Endless database and utility upgrades can cause it to break, typically when you are on deadline. The solutions typically takes 4-10 hours till you learn for yourself every possible kludge work around.

2. The underlying macros that SB uses have certain prejudices that you need to understand. Secondly, the way SB interacts with those macros makes some conditionals impossible--or I've found no work around save to go into Simpl and force the connection.

For example, have you attempted to condtionalize a volume press so that audio goes to the macro but video goes to a surround processor? It's rather trivial to do in Simpl, in fact, it's one of the most basic examples of the buffer and interlock symbols. But I've tried variables, source fb, and I have yet to get SB to do this. The only way I've found this to work is to link the analog out of the module to an analog input on the serial macro. In other words, you cannot conditinoalize the press but you can use the output of the macro, assuming you have a device driver for that analog input.

But as can be seen here, unless you are writing you own SB modules it can be frustrating to perform basic conditionals as in the case here. First Prodigy job I ever did was precisely what is desired here. But I was coding in Simpl.

I have SB controlling multiple surround processors, multiple third party shades, multiple video processors and switchers and most every lighting system. I've had APADs control volume on Receivers. SB is very powerful but it's also limited by what the underlying macros and the way they configurator ties the signals to those macros. Of all the GUI configurators I've touched SB is one of the most powerful--and therefore one of the more frustrating programs. When it works it's amazing but when it breaks?