Cynical Denon - Denon and Marantz AV Receiver control

Posted on
Sun Aug 12, 2012 4:33 pm
Perry The Cynic offline
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Cynical Denon - Denon and Marantz AV Receiver control

Fresh from the presses, this plugin lets you create Indigo devices for certain Denon AV receivers. If you have a Denon "AVR" receiver with a serial port or Ethernet port on its back, this may be useful to you. If you have a recent Marantz receiver like that, it may also work for you (Denon bought Marantz a few years ago, and the computer interfaces are very similar).

What can you do? A lot, actually. You can set the volume, switch sources, fiddle with surround modes, invoke presets, set the tuner, and so on. You'll see the major operating characteristics of your receiver reflected as device state in Indigo, and so you can trigger events when things change (the receiver switches to Blu-Ray, the volume goes above -20dB, zone 2 turns on, and such). Read the help.

What's the catch? You need a network or serial interface, so the really low-end Denons are off limits. Denon receivers don't announce their capabilities to the computer, so the more different yours is from mine (an AVR3312CI), the more work you'll probably have to do to make this work well for you. And of course, this is currently tested on a sample of one (mine), so you'll be helping improve things with your feedback. :-)

More information and download from here: http://www.cynic.org/indigo/plugins/online/denon-av.html.

Cheers
-- perry

Posted on
Mon Aug 13, 2012 8:36 am
jay (support) offline
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Re: Cynical Denon - Denon and Marantz AV Receiver control

Great plugin, thanks. Makes me wish I had a Denon receiver.

Jay (Indigo Support)
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Posted on
Tue Aug 14, 2012 6:50 am
Vaillant offline
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Location: Belgium

Re: Cynical Denon - Denon and Marantz AV Receiver control

Tested your plugin with the Marantz SR7005. Works great.
Just last weekend I programmed the Marantz in Indigo.
Guess what I used ... the Cynical Network Plugin.
And now this great plugin. Your work is greatly appreciated.

One thing I can not figure out.
I like to use volume up and down buttons in Indigo to increment the volume.
Same for Up, Down, Left and Right control buttons.

They are not standard so I figured that is what Perform Script is for.
But how does this work?
I tried the command MVUP for volume up but no response.
Am I missing something?

Greetings,
Adrian

Posted on
Tue Aug 14, 2012 9:17 am
eme jota ce offline
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Location: SW Florida

Re: Cynical Denon - Denon and Marantz AV Receiver control

Thanks Perry!

Can't wait to try this on my 3311CI.

mjc

Posted on
Tue Aug 14, 2012 10:06 am
Perry The Cynic offline
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Re: Cynical Denon - Denon and Marantz AV Receiver control

One thing I can not figure out.
I like to use volume up and down buttons in Indigo to increment the volume.

The cool new idea is to use plugin formulas. Use an Audio Volume action with the value =device.volume+1 (or whatever change you intend). I'm still exploring this space, and it's got some teething trouble, but that's the general idea.
Same for Up, Down, Left and Right control buttons.

Do you mean moving the actual on-screen UI cursor? I should add an action for doing those. Still...
They are not standard so I figured that is what Perform Script is for.

Let's walk through this. Perform Script will run Python code in the context of the plugin itself. So if there's a documented method or function available there, it will work. (There are some intentional limitations, but I'm not trying to put the user into a box here, just put up a fence to keep them from falling off a cliff.) So if you happen to have looked at the code, or if I had documented this detail (I haven't yet), you could write a Perform Script action whose script is
Code: Select all
device.zone.command("NS90")
because my receiver device object has a zone attribute that has a command method, and NS90 just happens to be the Denon command for "screen cursor up." (And yes, MVUP for volume up would also work. But I like the formula approach better.)

There's an interesting balance between Indigo actions and internal methods here. Actions have UI and can be "graphically" programmed, so we should prefer them within reason (now that they can have expressions for their arguments :-)). Python methods are way geekier but also more flexible, and they make great tools for experts and desperate users missing a feature. It'll be interesting to see how this will balance out over time.

I did mention this is a beta release, right? :-)

Cheers
-- perry

Posted on
Wed Aug 15, 2012 6:49 am
Vaillant offline
Posts: 105
Joined: Nov 06, 2011
Location: Belgium

Re: Cynical Denon - Denon and Marantz AV Receiver control

Thanks for the help Perry. All is working now.
I see the power of formulas now and I love the flexibility of this plugin.

Any chance you are for hire?
I would love a similar plugin for my Dreambox and Pana VT50 :lol:

Greetings,
Adrian

Posted on
Wed Aug 15, 2012 1:11 pm
ELWOOD offline
Posts: 225
Joined: Feb 11, 2007
Location: Ramsey, NJ

Re: Cynical Denon - Denon and Marantz AV Receiver control

Perry
I have been hopping someone was going to do a Denon plug in, THANKS

My Denon is a AVR 990, my trouble is that the network card on the Denon has stopped working.
So I want to connect it through the serial port using a USB to serial adapter.
The plug in setup wants a network address, how do I tell it to go to the serial port instead?

Thanks again for sharing your plug in.

Elwood

Posted on
Wed Aug 15, 2012 3:00 pm
Perry The Cynic offline
Posts: 836
Joined: Apr 07, 2008

Re: Cynical Denon - Denon and Marantz AV Receiver control

My Denon is a AVR 990, my trouble is that the network card on the Denon has stopped working.
So I want to connect it through the serial port using a USB to serial adapter.
The plug in setup wants a network address, how do I tell it to go to the serial port instead?


That's not there yet. The current version needs a network serial interface like a Global Caché box. Eventually you'll be able to type the path to the serial port device in as the address. But not yet.

Meanwhile, you're sure you didn't just mis configure your network parameters, right? :-)

Cheers
-- Perry

Posted on
Wed Aug 15, 2012 4:36 pm
ELWOOD offline
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Joined: Feb 11, 2007
Location: Ramsey, NJ

Re: Cynical Denon - Denon and Marantz AV Receiver control

Perry
Thanks for the fast response. My Denon seems to have a bad network card.
When checking network under the Demon menus it shows status as connecting,
and does not have a ip address. When I look at my network on the router it shows
the Denon and has assigned an ip for it.
Did a search on the Internet and found a lot of other people have a network card problems
with this model. So one day I just may have to ship it back to Denlon for repair.
So in the meantime I am patiently waiting for future updates on this plug-in.

Thanks again for all your help
Elwood

Posted on
Sat Aug 18, 2012 12:34 pm
Perry The Cynic offline
Posts: 836
Joined: Apr 07, 2008

Re: Cynical Denon - Denon and Marantz AV Receiver control

1.0.0 beta 2 is now up. Changes:

Support for local serial ports (just enter /dev/whateverdevice as the "Address" for the device).
Support for recalling quick selects.
Support for menu navigation commands, including showing and hiding the on-screen menus.
Volume now clips to -81dB at the low end; this should make up/down volume adjustments easier.
The set-volume action now has new variables current and step (the smallest increment change possible), so adjustments to volume can be written simply as =current+step and the like.

And bug fixes, of course.

Cheers
-- perry

Posted on
Sun Aug 19, 2012 4:14 pm
ELWOOD offline
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Location: Ramsey, NJ

Re: Cynical Denon - Denon and Marantz AV Receiver control

Perry
I've updated to your new version (v1.0.0b2) to try and connect using the USB serial port but I'm still having problems connecting.
Here's my configuration for the usb port /dev/USA49W24341P1.-Port1
With this I get the following error

Aug 19, 2012 6:06:49 PM
AD2USB Alarm Interface Message from unrecognized Zone device: !RFX:0406209,84

Cynical Denon Error denon unavailable: could not open port /dev/USA49W24341P1.-Port1: [Errno 2] No such file or directory: '/dev/USA49W24341P1.-Port1'

Aug 19, 2012 6:08:54 PM
Received INSTEON "HVAC HALL STAT INSTEON" humidity changed to 56.0

I probably just don't have this thing formatted correctly or it may be that I'm using an old USB to serial adapter but any help would be appreciated.

Thanks
Elwood

Posted on
Sun Aug 19, 2012 10:42 pm
Perry The Cynic offline
Posts: 836
Joined: Apr 07, 2008

Re: Cynical Denon - Denon and Marantz AV Receiver control

Cynical Denon Error denon unavailable: could not open port /dev/USA49W24341P1.-Port1: [Errno 2] No such file or directory: '/dev/USA49W24341P1.-Port1'


That simply means that the plugin can't find a serial port by that name. Check the spelling. note that some USB serial adapters have a nasty habit of changing their name if you plug then in differently.

Cheers
-- Perry

Posted on
Mon Aug 20, 2012 9:31 am
jay (support) offline
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Re: Cynical Denon - Denon and Marantz AV Receiver control

Perry - have you considered using the Serial Port field type? It'll show a list of available ports or allow the user to specify an IP address. Just a thought so people didn't actually have to type in the serial port path.

Jay (Indigo Support)
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Posted on
Tue Aug 21, 2012 10:13 pm
Perry The Cynic offline
Posts: 836
Joined: Apr 07, 2008

Re: Cynical Denon - Denon and Marantz AV Receiver control

Perry - have you considered using the Serial Port field type? It'll show a list of available ports or allow the user to specify an IP address. Just a thought so people didn't actually have to type in the serial port path.

I've considered it. I can't use serial_for_url (my network stack is way more detailed than that), but I suppose I could parse the output of getSerialPortUrl and act accordingly. FWIW, I'm thinking of the Denons as IP-connected devices with a somewhat cheesy serial port fallback, rather than as a serial port with an IP option. (I'm also not terribly happy with the "serialport" UI itself.)

You've jogged my memory though: I forgot to put in a check-clause for the address field. Next version will at least yell if you mis-type the serial port or hostname.

I'm actually fairly close to reducing the whole matter to a single popup field - Denons have AMX beacons, so I could enumerate network-connected receivers and local serial ports. I could even, ad-hoc, enumerate serial ports on Cynical Caché devices. I wish there was a supported way to ask all loaded plugins a question though. (I could cobble one together as an action-with-return-action, but it'd be cheesy.)

Cheers
-- perry

Posted on
Wed Aug 22, 2012 8:32 am
jay (support) offline
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Re: Cynical Denon - Denon and Marantz AV Receiver control

Perry The Cynic wrote:
(I'm also not terribly happy with the "serialport" UI itself.)


Because typing the full path to a serial port (/dev/cu.usbserial-A8003R03) is so much more user friendly than selecting it from a popup? :P

Jay (Indigo Support)
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