Meridian Unplugged - Powered by MrTechGuy.co.uk Forums Discussion Meridian - Systems IR to RS232 converter? Direct soundfield access...

This was sort of discussed in the early part of thread:
http://www.softronix.com/ubb/Forum1/HTML/000262.html .

It's not as much of a "no-brainer" as you would think. Sending RS-232 is pretty trivial, and costs of UARTs are dirt cheap. The device that you're envisioning, in terms of parts, would be quite inexpensive. The problem is: There's no "standard" RS-232 protocol (no terms of data payload).

Meridian uses their protocol. The Sony G90 projector uses another (far more complex) protocol. The Snell & Wilcox interpolator uses yet another protocol (complex as well, but not quite as bad as the Sony G90). Lutron Grafic Eye uses another protocol. Lutron Radio-RA (whole house lighting) uses another protocol, and that's from the same company that does the Lutron Grafic Eye! Of the 7 devices I have on my system "talking" RS-232, all of them use different data protocols.

So, while receiving I/R and retransmitting (one-way) RS-232 is pretty trivial, the tough part is: How do you control WHAT is sent? What if such a device is built, and then Meridian changes or extends the protocol for new features? That's the rub, I think, and what makes such a device much more involved than a "no-brainer".

In the end, any device (I know of) that talks RS-232 can drive the Meridian. The Meridian has a very simple (yet extremely flexible) protocol that offers thousands of combinations of settings (nearly anything that you set via the PC setup program can be overridden via RS-232).

If you have a computer, it would take a pretty trivial PERL program (or a program in any language, really) to send bits out of an RS-232 port at a known baud rate. But then you'd need some way to control it (wireless keyboard or something).

A whole host of automation hardware, of course, has RS-232 devices (Panja AMX, Panja NetLinx, Crestron, etc), and it's relatively trivial to drive the Meridian via those. But these probably qualify as "really expensive and stupid", in your terminology.

It seems like what you're asking is: "I don't want to pay the cost for a whole automation system, but I want a subset of automation system capabilities". I know of no solutions for such a need, although, as I said, the hardware is cheap (it's the user interface - or the installer interface - of determining what is sent via RS-232 that's more involved).


I think that's a little short sighted. To be honest, I don't think there's any reasonable way for Meridian to offer such capability AND keep everyone happy. Why?

• More development costs are involved than you think. For example, a new remote - no jokes please on the MSR - would need to be built that controlled both these new I/R features and all existing features.
• While "there's no dearth of IR codes", there is a limited number of I/R codes that a single device from a single manufacturer can control. Sure, I suppose you can work around this by multiple I/R receivers, but then how can Meridian make everyone happy? Think of all the settings available in the Meridian setup utility. Then think of trying to make all that available via I/R. It's far more daunting than you think. And that would take far more than one (or probably two) extra I/R controllers.
• If Meridian did do the above, trying to make a subset of functions available, I guarentee that a number of people would be unhappy. For example, I'm quite thrilled that you can control, via RS-232, if Dolby Normalization is set or not. Why? Well, a number of disc manufacturers screw this up (which subsequently confuses the Meridian). But since I can override via RS-232, I can work around these manufacturing issues. I'll betcha there aren't too many others concerned of this.

RS-232 is the only way I can think of that has infinite expansion flexibility. They can add not ten, or twenty, or fifty possible commands (like with I/R), but hundreds and hundreds of possible settings to control probably ten thousand (or more) combinations.

And, when they're done with that, they can add a new protocol to control on-screen text display.

And, when they're done with that, they can add a new protocol to allow an intelligent control system to query the state of any of the controlled parameters and make decisions based on them.

And, when they're done with that, they can add a new protocol to control if an anamorphic disc is inserted into the unit - a wishlist item of mine. This is the only thing Meridian has NOT done yet with RS-232; all the above items have already been done (or are nearing completion).

The point is that RS-232 is infinitely expandable, and that's all I know of that is (well, I suppose you could have a USB interface to interface with the Meridian, or you could give the Meridian a TCP/IP address, but this would even make it harder for most folks to control it - RS-232 is fine, and is the least common denominator that everything can control).

I have a number consumer electronics devices (i.e. Yamaha DSP-A1, Tivo, etc) that don't do RS-232. In the end, these devices limit my capabilities tremendously. So I really applaud Meridian's effort to make their devices as rich as they are via RS-232. It gives me, as an owner that understands these things, a rather infinite array of possibilities in terms of controlling the equipment.