So I'm trying to figure out a way to join rooms whenever the client wants, like a party mode. But also be able to turn OFF this party mode.

The simplest thing I can thing of is a Press & Hold or even just a "Group" or "Link" or "party" button on the PTL4 that he can hit to join up the two zones. Then have it separate the zones back apart whenever the Room/zone is turned off.

So if that works, how do I program this?

Program it in SIMPL? :)

Create a global preset for party on, and one for party off. You'll have to add buttons yourself and do the joins.

Wish I could.

So how would I go about this? My goal is to have the rooms join and then control for both rooms would just be from one of the rooms and VOL up/down would control both zones together.

How many different rooms and controllers? If you want to be able to have any controller become the master, and have alot of controllers, this could be very time consuming.

This is a simple setup. Basically the Dining & Kitchen were intended to be one big zone with a single PTL4. The client is wanting to separte the zones but be able to link them back up when desired.

Basically the link would really just be to turn the 2nd zone on and make the volume control become a master for the two zones together. Maybe it would be easier to just add a volume UP/Down for the OTHER zone?

I dont know if you can reliably control the volume for 2 zones. You should theoretically be able to set the startup volume then have the up/down volume commands both on a single button (up or down) control the 2 zones together but there is always a risk that one will get louder than the other especially if you try and do one crestron stereo zone and 1 surround zone. Even if you have serial control of the surround receiver and the ability to set the volume at startup it will ramp up and down differently.

This screenshot shows an easy way to give the client "party mode" using global presets for your macros. Page flip into this menu from the home page. If you want to get back to it after selecting control source you have to go home and page flip into it again.

Using 1 touchpanel for 2 zones means you have to have a "choose a room" button. Also wanting to have control of both zones at the same time means you need something like this on the home page.



You can have 3 copies of every source in the GUI with the specific button you pressed linking to them. So CD_zone1 CD_zone2 CD_zoneall are exactly the same except volume control is set for the zone/s you selected initially. This is the old school one-way system style of multiroom control before flags.

I dont know enough about true creston programming to get the terminology correct but i know that you dont need to do this. You can have that single room button press "tell" the system what its doing. I dont know how to do this with system builder.

Not in front of my computer with SB on it, so here is a question/possible way of doing it. Dining and kitchen sound like two zones just on the pamp, so no receiver involved I assume. Could you not just create a subpage on both control devices that link the volume controls together? They would start at the same volume based on the global.

I assume you are programming this in SB? Use the connect command in SB and setup a macro, so each source output from the first zone will connect to the same source on the 2:nd zone. Make sure you link all the sources you are using.

You will then do the same on the off command as well as the volume command.
Your "Global/Party mode" button will then connect and disconnect the signals as a toggle.

There are a couple of pages on Crestron's site that gives maybe better detail then this as well.

[Link: support.crestron.com]

[Link: support.crestron.com]