So we got this interesting internet controlled speaker system at work called Sonos. They turned it on for the first time tonight and started playing some house music. Â Neat.
That got me wondering — multiple people all controlling a media server transparently over the network… I wonder….
A quick apt-get install gupnp-tools away and I had gupnp-universal-cp up and running and, well what do you know, Sonos is using UPnP in a major way. Â They seem to follow the standard MediaServer / MediaRenderer spec (with AVTransports, ContentDirectories etc.) but also some nifty goodies: AlarmClock, ZoneGroupTopology, GroupManagement service set etc. Â They took the standard UPnP specs and added about 10 new services to fulfill all their needs. Â Awesome!
I was able to control the Sonos player using the standard AVTransport actions that I know and love via the universal control point. Â Things like GetPositionInfo etc. also worked like a charm. Â I’m downloading the needed repos now to install Zhaan and see if that can control Sonos and add yet another feature to Zhaan’s belt.