Bindings to Send Telnet Commands (AV Switcher and AMX Netlinx Controllers)

Hey all,

I’m currently working on a project to integrate the automation of number of devices using OpenHAB2 and a Raspberry Pi. These include a Cbus lighting network, an Extron Matrix AV Switcher, a Ganz IP Camera System, an iMerge Sound Server and an existing AMX Netlinx Controller (NI-700) setup that controls Panasonic Plasmas and Integra AVRs.

The good thing is that all of these devices were designed to be network connected, and all have the ability to be controlled over Telnet, and I have PDFs with a list of commands that they can take. I am specifically looking at the Extron Matrix AV Switcher and the AMX Netlinx controllers at the moment. The Extron unit is very straight forward, once connected to a telnet session, which requires no username/password, it will accept any commands, and the commands are very simple (ie input 1 to output 1 etc). The AMX controllers look a bit more complicated, as far as I can work out the controllers are programmed very similar to OpenHAB (bindings etc) for their own touch panels, but also allows you to connect to it via telnet and issue commands to devices its connected to via RS232 as if the devices themselves are network connected, you just need to specify which serial port to forward the command to.

So having said all of that, I’m all new to this, and to java programming in general (being a knuckle dragging mechanical engineer, my coding experience goes as far as Python haha), so forgive me for some stupid questions.

Can anyone point me to some example bindings that issue commands over telnet?

I have looked at the existing Pioneer/Onkyo AVRs and the Lutron bindings, and got as far as defining the things and working out the functionality I want, but have gotten a bit lost in coding to turn these things into the required commands and then to send and receive the commands. They all seem to also include some form of discovery service, which to me is overly complicated for what I want to achieve, I know the exact ports and ip addresse of the devices (it would be a future addition, of course).

Cheers,

Alex

The Denon binding is 1.x, but it does telnet and http. https://github.com/openhab/openhab/wiki/Denon-Binding

Thanks for that, will look into it. Will have to educate myself on the difference between 1.x and 2.x bindings as well :slight_smile:

Any other tips/tricks/things that I should look at/into?

Hi Alex

Did you manage to get the Denon binding to successfully send commands over Telnet to your AMX box? If so, would you mind sharing the relevant lines from your sitemap, items, etc please? it would be a huge help as I’m struggling to do the same thing and have had no luck at all with the Denon binding.

Thanks

Neil

Hi Neil,

I ended up taking a different route by using the TCP/UDP binding.

It’s not the easiest thing to get working, and it’s not really the intended
use case for the amx controllers, but it’s the best way that I can see of
doing it. The amx controllers support passing through commands via telnet
to the specified serial port, so effectively its acting as a tcp to serial
converter. Not really using the amx system.

It’s annoying as I have a media player that has an amx plugin that supports
full interaction, but the only way that I can see to use it is to use the
amx system and touch interfaces, which is incredibly expensive. My intent
is to use openhab as my control system to tie in all the systems I have
together and use iPads as my control interface rather than the expensive
proprietary systems like amx. I know amx does have an iPad app but it’s
like $600 for a single device license which is just ridiculous. Openhab
isn’t really intended to do what the amx does anyway (ie you can use amx to
browse media libraries etc, openhab is more for automation and switching).

So that’s where I’m at so far, only about 50% through coding my sitemaps
and items. It would be good to share them to help each other though?

Cheers,

Alsx

Hi Alex

Thanks for the speedy response and an update on what you’re trying to do. I agree $600 is outrageous. I came across one of the AMX NXI 1U relay/serial/IR units and wanted to set it up with OpenHAB. Right now, all I’m trying to do is send ‘on32002:7:1,1’ command that turns on one of the relays. Sending this command from regular Telnet session works fine but I cannot seem to get OpenHAB2 to send it no matter what I try.

Using the Denon binding, I see the Telnet session get set up when I look in the NXI logs but that’s as far as I can get. I’ve tried sending it via tcp to the NXI IP address port 23 but still no luck…

Happy to swap ideas to get us both up and running :slight_smile:

Cheers

Neil

Hi Neil, you’ve been able to get it to work?
I am also looking into this but no luck so far.