UK AV distributor Habitech has signed an exclusive agreement with Sire Control to distribute its SS1 control processor, which acts as a protocol bridge between home music system Sonos and any control system.
The SS1 is a standalone 1U rack mount hardware solution offering seamless two-way communications with all Sonos environments. The devices is said to answer the need from integrators to resolve the complex UPnP conversions required for effective control of Sonos from third party control systems, which involve significant processing power and scripting conflicts, leading to compromised processor operation and impaired control performance.
A single application Linux processor, Sire’s SS1 offloads all the UPnP communications and provides a simple command line API (Application Programming Interface) releasing the control system’s processing resources to do the job at hand.
The system offers preloaded drivers for seamless control system integration, including those from Crestron in the form of a SIMPL module, xPanel and iPad interface. Crestron documentation and Sire API documentation are also available with the modules from the Habitech website. Configuration and remote support are supplied through a web-based tool.
Currently, Sire’s solution can be scaled from a two to a thirty-two player environment involving the Sonos Play:3, Play:5, Connect:Amp, Connect and Playbar components. It is also compatible with the earlier Sonos ZP90 and ZP120 products. Supported services include play from Sonos network share, play Sonos playlists, player zoning, transport controls, queue management, search available sources, Spotify integration, and TuneIn integration.
In addition, Sire for Sonos incorporates a number of features, configurable through Sire’s web tool, designed to enhance Sonos functionality. These include album art caching, album art redirection using tiny URLS to reduce string lengths; album art resizing, track progress configurations for frequency; configurable music services, character set encoding support and string length management for Crestron.