Kenwood Entree RS232 or IP Control

Reese Jacobs

I have a partner that has inherited an installation that uses a Kenwood Entree media manager which is managing 3 Kenwood 5900 DVD changers. The Entree has an RS232 port, an Ethernet port, and of course IR for control. Presently, he is controlling it through IR since Kenwood has not been helpful regarding the control protocol or control options using RS232 or Ethernet. Using IR imposes some obvious limitations on the richness of the user interface as well as control feedback.

1. Has anyone controlled an Entree using RS232?

2. Has anyone controlled an Entree using IP? We did a complete TCP port scan on the Entree and it does not appear to have any open listener ports besides Telnet and Ftp (and perhaps Sun RPC). Telnet did respond indicating it was an 'Escient' device but that was about all we could get out of it. There did not appear to be a listener process on port 251 which is the standard Escient Fireball TCP port.

3. If yes to either of the above, does anyone have the external control protocol for the Entree?

If RS232 or IP control of the Entree is not possible, we may ditch the device and go with the Escient DVDM-100 media manager. It supports up to 3 Kenwood 5900s and can be controlled quite nicely using RS232 or IP.

Thanks in advance,

Reese