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Have you ever wanted to listen to a radio station, or your favourite CD in another room in your home? When entertaining guests, would the mood be enhanced by playing background music? Does each family member have his or her own musical tastes and music collection?

Control4 will give you the freedom to play different music throughout your home. The Home Theatre Controller allows you to index and sort your MP3 collection. Using the on-screen display you can play albums sorted by album name, genre or artist simply by selecting cover-art. You can listen to radio stations simply by clicking its logo. Each family member can then listen to their own favourite audio wherever they happen to be.

We will take the Home Theatre Controller that resides in the home theatre, and we will extend its capabilities with peripheral products. There are two peripheral products that are used in this situation – a powered amplifier (called a Speaker Point) and a 3.8” colour touch screen (call the Mini Touch).

Introducing the Speaker Point

The Control4® Speaker Point™ makes delivering audio throughout the home easy and cost effective. This truly easy-to-use device with its integrated 50 watt per channel digital amplifier instantly delivers music to any room from any connected music source in the house. Its small design and wireless capability allows Speaker Point units to be discreetly located throughout the house. And its simple installation and configuration makes setting up and using the Speaker Point a breeze.

The Speaker Points always get their power from a local 240V supply. Since they have a built-in amplifier you can attach the room speakers directly. In addition, attaching a local audio source allows you to stream that audio to other destinations or amplify it over the local room speakers.

Introducing the Mini Touch Screen

Imagine all the features of a full-sized touch panel and a remote audio server packed into a compact four-inch touch screen. Control4® brings this to life with the Mini Touch Screen, loaded with rich color graphics and touch screen convenience. Utilizing the Control4 Navigator interface, the Mini Touch Screen is simple to navigate and provides functionality designed with the homeowner in mind. But it doesn’t stop there. This versatile touch screen can also become an "instant audio zone." It can receive and deliver audio streams, wired or wireless, to an amplifier right from its location.

Benefits of using Control4 for Distributed Audio

• Mobility: Home owners will warm to being able to control the audio from the comfort of their bed, chair or even while walking around the house by using the ZigBee remote.
• Retrofittable: Don't have the ability to lay CAT5 cables? Not a problem. Both the Speaker Point and 3.8" Mini Touch come in wireless flavours. All you need is a local power source and a wireless router and you're up and running.
• Scalable Streaming: Each Home Theatre Controller can support up to 7 different MP3 streams throughout the house. If you need more, just keep adding more Home Theatre Controllers.
• Visually Impressive: The homeowner can change the appearance of the interface on the Mini Touch Screen. This allows you to choose a theme that reflects your tastes. The Mini Touch also provides album-art and track listings. With an AM/FM tuner you can also add radio station logos.
• Choice of control interface: You can get live track listings on both the wireless ZigBee remote or the in-wall 3.8” Mini Touch. Why force yourself to select music tracks through superseded keypads that provide no feedback?
• Amplification and Distribution: The Speaker Point has a built in amplifier and line level inputs and outputs. This means you can amplify local audio sources them through connected speakers or stream them to other rooms in the house.

How to connect devices for Multi-Room Audio

In this example, we connect the HTC to a network switch, effectively giving the HTC access to a Local Area Network (LAN).

Down the left we use CAT5 cable to connect a Mini Touch Screen to the network. The Mini Touch can playback music stored on the USB hard drive through it's internal speaker, or through external speakers using an amplifier.

The Mini Touch has a full colour touch screen, rotary jog-dial and RCA line-level audio outputs. In a wired environment, the 3.8” Mini Touch can receive power directly from the CAT5 cable. If the touch panel is connected wirelessly it then relies on a local 240V connection.

Down the right we use the Wi-Fi features of our Network Switch or Router to stream the music to our Wireless Mini Touch. This is perfect for situations where CAT5 is difficult to install.

At the bottom of the page we have another device called a Speaker Point. You can select and playback music on local devices or on the USB Hard Drive by issuing commands with the System Remote Control to the Speaker Point. The SRC is a ZigBee remote control and features a 4-line LCD. You do not need one SRC for every Speaker Point. A SRC can control multiple Speaker Points but it is generally not as convenient for the client.

The Speaker Points always get their power from a local 240V supply. Since they have a built-in amplifier you can attach the room speakers directly. In addition, attaching a local audio source allows you to stream that audio to other destinations or amplify it over the local room speakers.