Whole House Audio TP4 template
alexsquared
Posts: 166
Finally looking to role out whole house audio for my personal home. I have no issue with the coding, but I'm wondering if anyone has A) a TP4 template that they would be willing to share, and/or 
recommendations on what has worked in the past. I only have 2 sources at the time going to 4 zones, but want to scale it to be 8x8 in the future. I have an MVP-8400 and will likely add 1-2 more in the future. I'm thinking of two things. 1, having presets that put the home in a certain mode with certain gain levels on the outputs, and then 2) having a popup page for each output where you can manually select different outputs. I don't want the users to have to jump to different pages for transport controls of the inputs, and that is where I am getting hung up. Should I have the transport embedded in the popup so that we can control it whenever we select the input? Should I have a button on the main matrix page that corresponds to each input and throws up a popup? One of my sources provides feedback, so on the transport page, I would like to include "now playing" data. Just trying to figure out how to simplify it. Part of me is almost leaning towards k.i.s.s. and not allowing a full matrix, but instead forcing all zones to listen to the same source. That would simplify some of the navigation, and make for a more pleasurable approach as you walk through the home and hear the same content everywhere (ie kitchen, dining, deck, outside). What have you done and where am I overthinking? Thanks.
Comments
My preference is for the user to select the desired source and that press yields a destination routing pop-up where you can toggle zones on/off. On this page, I have a remote control icon that can take you to the source control page for the selected source device. In my home, we mostly use a streaming endpoint source like an Audio ChromeCast or an Apple Airplay device with no device specific controls. I have multiple other sources to select, and those have device control but it is interesting to me that we gravitate to requesting music content from a voice agent and then play the content through the whole house distributed audio system.
Its been awhile for me since I have done resi. But in years past this is how I used to do it, and still do it with commercial spaces that have distributed audio. A selection of zones laid out with some statuses (mute on/off, current volume, current source) where you select the zone you want to control, then on the zone controls section you select the source control the volume, mute on/off, whatever. You could probably hold down the source for a specified time to that the source controls can pop up to control the source. I have a screenshot of a reference guide I did for one of the systems recently (forgive some of the bullet points from the guide), maybe it will make more sense.
https://drive.google.com/open?id=1vYxx0oaxkCxH4wC2WKFFwnGY3_YHo_XV
Its been awhile for me since I havent done resi in a good bit, but this is the same flow that I use to have in resi and in any commercial spaces that I do with distribution audio. The zone selection on the left will list out all the zones and show current stasuses (volume level, mute on/off, current source). When you select the zone you can then use the zone controls on the left to select source or turn off, control volume mute. I guess you could hold down the source button in order to access source controls, and you would squeeze in presets somewhere. The link is a picture of a reference guide that I had for distributed system a year a go or so (sorry for the bullet points in the picture it was from the guide).
https://drive.google.com/open?id=1vYxx0oaxkCxH4wC2WKFFwnGY3_YHo_XV
Thank you both for the input. This is helpful.
Navigation philosophy for us is to minimize number of touches.
Suggested above, choosing a source, then a destination, then asking for the controls page: 3 presses. Every time.
We prefer one.
Choose a (pictured) source on the main page, the panel knows where it is/was last used, so it presumes the zone, turns on that zone and goes directly to the controls page for the source. One touch, done.
The "home" zone name appears highlighed on the main (off) page. If it isn't the one you want, touch one of the un-highlighted zone names, then the source. Two touches to get to the controls.
Further options by panel can offer dymanic choices, like this example that surfaces functions and scenes selected by the user. Here, the "MUSIC" button is still one touch - it selects the favorite music source for this user in this room.
https://www.dropbox.com/s/p9w9kyt6u9idkoa/2016-11-06 18.14.11cSm.jpg?dl=0
This is one of those areas in UX that I find fascinating. I tend to prefer the "Point and Poke" method. (Select a source and then poke the various zones you want to assign it to) But, there are many who prefer to select the zone, which then opens up the possibilities of source selection. Either is fine by me. It seems to be more of a personal preference. I've had to do both over the years.