[B3OHACK3R]

matador wrote:

Since you have the experience, could you tell use how difficult it would be and if you have any insight on why this is something that never came up?

Happy that you like it 🙂

I think there are commercial software solutions available that can act as a airplay sender. For example the one for Windows that can send audio to any airplay enabled speaker. It probably is neither approved nor an official implementation. Also that open source application I’m using here is around for a pretty long time already.
Why such a product was never a thing – I really don’t know. Of course a “big player” can’t use that at all in an official product. But why niche businesses never came up with that…

How difficult it would be? Technical wise it entirely depends on the point of view. What I consider easy could be difficult for others and visa verse. So hard to make a statement on that one.
As with every product the difficulty lies mostly one the financial risk. Nowadays the usual go-to-market duties besides the development itself can leave a huge hole in your pockets. Especially when sold internationally it can easily screw up your whole product pricing if you are not selling it in large numbers. Not even to mention customer support and marketing.

 

Millemissen wrote:

It is hard for me to say anything to the presented project….other than that it is cool! Lots of respect for that!

Thanks for that, MM 🙂
Also see the explanation above. Me speaking as a company – we are not set up for selling products to end-customers. Been there already, got the t-shirt, didn’t make much sense.
I really wanted to build that thing for a long time and the project was then released on the website to show an example of how we are working. So to at least mentally justify a bit of the effort that went into it.
So for sure the project itself has some kind of marketing idea attached – but not for anything happening here. Just wanted to share it because I think it’s cool to show.

Happy to answer any technical questions.

[B3OHACK3R]

Glitch,

thanks for the praise 🙂

Audio wise the “non-B&O world” currently can be served either by the AirPlay protocol or by a html webstream. For both I’m using a really nice open source software called owntone.

For the control part there is a simple html5 webapp that can be easily added to the homescreen of your smartphone. One can select all ML or DL sources from there and direct it to the desired output device.

There are many scenarios that are tested in hardware but not implemented in software yet. It could e.g. act as a “source center” and handle N.Radio and N.Music requests on the ML bus. So for example on an incoming AirPlay stream from your smartphone it could automatically switch on the audio master and inject the music stream accordingly.

Also it can map many functions to custom buttons on a BR Halo. So that one does not depend on the webapp only. It was implemented using the public available Halo python library.

[B3OHACK3R]

Hi Steve,

Interesting. I tried finding it (the female socket, not the plug) but was unable to do so. Anyway, the RJ45 connector saves a lot of real estate on the PCB. So not a bad choice I guess. In the end there are also those official RJ45 <-> ML adapter cables available. Probably got carried away to quickly because I enjoyed making that small plug adapter. 😉
Thanks for the hint, will update the post accordingly.

No, they did not finance it at all! They liked the project idea and lend out some recent network speakers plus a Halo and helped a bit with testing. That’s all. Probably I also should indicate that a bit better there.

It is not completely out of question that this project is ever being commercialised. I never though about that the first place. Just wanted to build that thing for at least 10 years out of a personal desire. As an extra it’s a nice project to show on the website which is missing such work examples.

[B3OHACK3R]

Steve at Sounds Heavenly wrote:

I still have access to new Masterlink connectors

Ah, okay. Interesting. Maybe new-old-stock from somewhere? At least I could not find anything off-the-shelf available from the usual sources. Is it an official Molex part?

The problem is not making them. It’s more things like cost of compliance stuff if sold world-wide, customer support and probably marketing as well. It just does not fit our regular business.

Wanted to share it here anyway. So consider it something like a personal hobby project.
I saw popping up questions on how ML and DL works in this and also in the two older forums. So happy to answer technical questions if there are any.

[B3OHACK3R]

Yes, saw that before and also the second one you linked in the other thread.

Both are a bit improvised and at least on a RP2040 MCU it didn’t work straight out of the box.

If you want to dig into it using an MCU I can recommend starting here. It supports IR and datalink so should be usable for PL data as well I guess.

https://github.com/Arduino-IRremote/Arduino-IRremote/blob/master/src/ir_BangOlufsen.hpp#L4

In the end you don’t have to understand or reverse engineer the data protocol at all. Just record and replay what comes out of the W1 PL data pin. So any software that can record and send raw IR data will work. For the sending part just make sure to switch of any carrier frequency.

[B3OHACK3R]

Madskp wrote:

After testing with the BL W1 I am now at the point where I have no further open ideas to test for the topic of this thread. Therefor any suggestions for further testing is very welcome..

Hi!

now where you have found out that both the trigger signal and some communication on the data pin is necessary just a hint from my side.

The next obvious step would be analyzing the data stream W1 sends on the PL Socket.
You can use a logic analyzer for it or a dev board like Arduino, Raspberry Pi, etc. Just watch our re the voltage level.
Since PL, DL, MCL and IR more or less all share the same data protocol my idea is treating it like an electrical IR signal (without the carrier). Use an IR library for recording the raw data stream that turns on the BL3500. Then just play it back again and the BL3500 should turn on. Make sure to turn off the carrier frequency when sending. If it does not work straight away use an oscilloscope for debugging.

No guaranty – to be done on your own risk 😉

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