Are there any programmers out there that can help me with this.
I have a client whos house was wired (not by us) for speakers in different rooms, but not wired for keypads or volume controls. I need a wireless touchscreen remote with good range (200' or better) that can be programmed to control a multizone controller. Either a russound CAV 6.6, or an elan System 6. Anyone with any ideas on programming or other equipment would be a big help. THANKS!

With that kind of range, you're going to be into a world full of grief. Lots of products claim to have great range but when it comes to real world situations and th e 200 foot range turns into 40 feet (and that's will full batteries), your customer is going to be calling and calling and calling.

How about looking at an 802.11G solution?

Can you pull wires to any of the zones?

I do not know as you are best to use a 2.4 gig solution. It is a very crowded spectrum but it also does provide you with some of the shelf options. I see from your profile that you are generally in the Maryland - Virginia- DC area and the answer to your question is very much enviorment dependant. Think you will obtain great RF performance in DC proper? I doubt you will get 200 feet. You might not obtain 15 feet in some areas. In Suburban Maryland or Virginia if you kept the reciver high, say in the attic, you might have some luck at that distance. I have managed 300 ft with Radio Ra when the spec said 60 feet. I have managed your distance with one-way Crestron touch panels in good RF enviorments. But you offer no clue as to what you have in mind. You think you will get that preformance out of an MX-3000 or 850? Maybe but given its RF curve I you may or may not and I am betting on the latter. A pronto? No way. I did not know Elan made a wireless touch panel. But why do I have the feeling that your receiver will be in the rack in the basement and your bedget is uder $1000?

Alan

1. MX-3000 with new MRF 300 with multiple repeaters. It is supposed to be released within a month, Hopefully. Also, no one has any experience with the new MRF-300

2. RTI T2+. Not a regular touchscreen but might do the trick.

3. Tablet PC's with something like Charmed Quark software. Haven't used so I can't comment.

I'm not sure if you would be able to do what you are looking for with the CAV 6.6 or System 6 with only IR control and not using keypads to control each of the zones. Something like 2 Marantz ZS5300 might work for your application. You'd have to buy separate tuner(s) though.

We did a very simple system with this. It only had 2 sources and 5 rooms and we used 3 wireless Prontos but range wasn't an issue.

Bob

My 2 cents.

First, wireless scares me. What's the name of the Canadian company that sends control down speaker wire? (matrix?) How about one of their systems?

Second, go to an IR based head end. The CAV is not going to allow your protocal to work. Consider the PR4Z from Russound, the venerable ZPR68-10 from Xantech. Use either an IR based system like the mx800, with each zone having an assigned port on the receiving base. Those systems are buss assigned, as opposed to code assigned, so routing at the base is critical,

If you want an LCD touch panel, consider Viewsonic's Airpanel bundled with the M plus software and the global cache. Add one of the On-Q wireless access points and range issues should be addressed.

Note you will lose status information from the system; you won't get the onscreen indication of radio or track from this like you would would with the CAV system.

I'd suggest that it might be worth while to run keypad wires; the flexibility and reliability will make up for inconvenience.

Per Fred's suggestion, if you can at least grab speaker wire @ keypad location, Matrix audio delivers audio, control and power over speaker wire. Gets rave reviews. www.matrixaudiodesigns.com.

One of their key engineers left recently and started a rival company, Nexus,with similar products. I can track down that info if anyone wants.

I second that motion.

You might check out Home Logic’s system. They have Edge bricks, which sit on the network and will integrate with the Russound CAV 6.6 system VERY, VERY nicely. You could then sell the customer an 8” wireless touchscreen (or more) and/or install some IPAQ’s with the Home Logic interface.

WiFi wireless isn’t that scary but you may have to find a way to install a few WiFi access points through out the house, to get proper coverage. One benefit of this approach would be that you would not have to install the CAV6 UNO keypads. The Home logic touchscreens would have every zone’s UNO represented on the touchscreen. I know this works, because I have this set up in my showroom and it works flawlessly. They also have a very cool interface for the Russound AM/FM tuner and the XM tuner. And if you plan on doing any MP3 serving, their MP3 interface very nicely dovetails into all of this.

Call the folks at Home Logic 781-639-5155 and they can walk you through the options. They can even walk you through some on line demos, so you can see how it will all work and look

One caution about any touchscreen control using 802.11 to control anything, whether it be Home Logic or M+: WiFi tablets go to sleep to preserve battery power. Nature of the beast. When you “wake it up”, it has to reinitiate communication with the access point and then you are good to go. This can all take up to 7-15 seconds depending on your hardware arrangement, WEP enabled, etc… So it will never be as quick as tapping an MX3000 and pushing a button.

FP--as an fyi on M+. They're moving to the Viewsonic platform that Crestron is using for TPMC Isys I/O. A CE layer on top of a web layer. The CE layer now handles control functions, so it's as fast as a traditional touchscreen controller. NO longer slow, browser-based platform. Saw it at CES and it's a great solution.

Fred and Julie,

I would also recommend the Matrix Audio solution, Except he said the house was not wired for Volume controls.With no volume control location , there will be no place for the keypad control.
Another thought here: If all the rooms do have a coax cable on the wall, you may use a xantech product and send IR from each room to the main controller. Xtralink2 comes to mind.
If you want to sell them some lighting control too, Vantage and Lutron have RF keypads and controllers with RS-232 interface for either the Elan or Russound. They will get a great lighting system and control of their music from the same keypad!
---end of rambling thoughts.

if you can wait for elan's Via 2 it will run on 802.11b. So if you have cat5 in the house you can use multiple repeaters to achieve the range you want.

If you have a TV location in these rooms with speakers, what about Elan system 6 controlled via IR. With the IR injected into the coax?

Please look at www.nexusaudiosystems.com to see if the C6 system would suit. The system requires only 4 conductor speaker wire. Keypads have built in lcd display with feedback of source and tuner station, volume, tone control. RS-232 control. Video switching. Page and mute functions.

I have used the MX-3000 with its RF kit and it does have some great range; much more than the Pronto TSU-3000, etc. I got a good 100ft. with no problems.

There's a good chance that you can stretch the range to cover the house using the new MRF-300 base station and the MX-3000. We designed the base station to power up to three hard wired RF receiver (RFX-150) locations. Conservatively, you should get robust RF performance from about 75 feet away from each RFX-150. Thus, by spreading the RF antenna locations around the house, you'll easily get the 200 foot range you need.

The secret to success is finding a way to get three conductors (can be 3 out of a partially used CAT5) to each RF receiver location. That supplies power, ground and data to each RFX-150 Receiver. If you can only find two conductors, and you can still supply 9V power to the receiver you could still make it work.

The system was designed to directly connect to any of the Elan systems. It can work with Russound, but you must wire to each Keypad location from a locally placed base station, so you would find it quite a bit more expensive to install.

Best Regards,

-Eric

Eric Johnson
VP of Technology
Universal Remote Control, Inc.

Phone 1-800-247-7001