Bathroom Audio Turns on Max Volume Randomly

brdb24 · June 2008

I programmed an AMX control system for a company outside of Chicago and they have been seeing some strange behavior. The master bath audio zone has been turning on at the max volume at random times throughout the day. One time the homeowner left to go to the store and then came back and the bathroom audio was on at full volume. This particular zone has one AMX R-4 and one DMS Pinnacle keypad. The rest of the system is as follows:

AMX 4100
8 R-4's
14 DMS Pinnacle Keypads
Autopatch Optima Video Switcher
Autopatch Precis LT DSP Audio Switcher
LG Blu-Ray Player
3 DirectTV DVR's
Russound ST2XM Tuner
8 LG TV's
2 AUTON Lifts
1 Somfy Blinds

The one thing we are currently attempting to do is to monitor the system using the AMX Diagnostics and Notifications to see what, if anything, registers when this happens. Hopefully, this will be able to tell us if something in the program is making this happen or if there is some other cause for this behavior. Any suggestions or ideas you guys have as to why this might happen would be much appreciated.

Thanks in Advance!
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a_riot42 · June 2008

I would think that if it was software doing that then you could write to a file or send an email or do something in your data_event when the switcher reports that it has just cranked the volume in that zone, and print the time and date. Shouldn't be that hard to find if its a bad line od code somewhere.
Paul

vining · June 2008

brdb24 wrote:

This particular zone has one AMX R-4 and one DMS Pinnacle keypad

Could be a sticky DMS button since they love to stick. Is it a pinnacle or the button style? Of course you would expect them to notice it after the last volume push that stuck.

Spire_Jeff · June 2008

Are you using Levels on either device to control the volume? If so, it could be a problem with the R4 going on and offline.

Jeff

brdb24 · June 2008

The keypad is a DMS pinnacle keypad and no I am not using levels on the DMS or R4 to control the volume. I did use the R-4 comm module and put a timeout in there for the releasing of buttons. What really has me baffled is that this has happened before when no one was there and then they come back to find the zone on at full volume. All of the switching and volume control that I am doing is being done in button events, so if the code is making it happen I would think something would have to be generating a button event in that zone.

mcotton · June 2008

We have had the problem where a zone will be turned on and the source will stop playing (the CD ends) but the zone is still on. As soon as someone starts that source it will play in the previous zone because it was never turned off. Some sources are louder than others and this may be a cause of the zone suddenly playing really loud.

It has been a problem when someone turns up a quiet music server only to be blasted when they switch to XM radio.

We use lighting keypads to turn off the zones when someone leaves the area, pushes goodnight/away/etc.

This has reduced how often we have to deal with this.

Spire_Jeff · June 2008

mcotton wrote: »

Some sources are louder than others and this may be a cause of the zone suddenly playing really loud.

You can adjust the input volume levels to try and balance the audio levels between different sources on most audio switchers. I know that AMX/Autopatch units support this. Sometimes, there is a big enough discrepancy
that you actually have to lower a bunch of the sources in addition to raising the volume of a really quiet source to get them close. On the autopatch, these settings really just adjust the output volume accordingly, if I recall correctly, so if you are playing at the far end of the volume spectrum, you will still have discrepancies.

Jeff

Bathroom Audio Turns on Max Volume Randomly

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