Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion What's New At Axiom AxiomAir

Hello everyone! I'll be really happy to reply to every question, curiosity or suggestion you may have about AxiomAir's software side of the moon...

The "priority mechanism" some of you mentioned is actually something that we didn't think about.. It could be doable, but IMHO will make the user experience quite problematic...

As for multiple users sharing the queue, that is what AxiomAir already has, the issues you're reporting are probably due to Hotspot performances. It would be really helpful if those of you that experienced some problems on that side would report some more details about it

Hi!

- What protocol are you using to keep multiple devices in sync? NTP / PTP clocks / something else?

- Do you still plan to release (as stated) the code?

Thanks
Nathan

We tried NTP Multicast solutions, but they were not suitable for a consumer-grade scenarios (this solution is really dependent on the network it operates on).
So we are sending chunks (from 5 to 20ms) of PCM data via TCP and continously sync clients via NTP.

And yes, we'll release the code. More details about that soon..

Thanks - and how do you handle drift between the devices, Do you drop/add packets, resample or ?

Welcome to the forum, Michelangelo.

Here are a few more questions for you:

1. Are you going to expose something like a REST interface so we can integrate the AxiomAir into larger control software?

2. If not, then are the HTTP commands used by the UI easy to reuse through HTTP posts (or gets). Additionally, if no API is supplied to retrieve information from the AxiomAir, is the UI based on machine-readable HTML or is everything done through AJAX and JavaScripts (thus not directly parsable to get the data).

Regardless on the specifics of the answers to 1:

a. Is there a mechanism to remotely power up/down the AxiomAir? Is the HTTP server always active? Or would we have to use Wake-On-LAN? Or Infrared?

b. Will there be commands to control the volume (up, down, mute, set)? How about retrieving the current values?

Multi-Room control:

c. Will you be exposing a mechanism to remotely control (by software not human clicks) multi-room capabilities, including obtaining the lists of all current speaker sets?

d. Would the API for one AxiomAir be able to use the APIs supplied for all the above functions? (ex: controlling the volume of each AxiomAirs currently synched).

Thanks in advance,
E.F.

Drop packets, but believe me: they are rarely dropped

Hi and thanks for the welcome!

Here are your answers (very interesting questions indeed)

1. Yes, the whole system will be controllable from APIs. At launch we'll have just socket.io APIs, and in few months I plan to mirror them also with REST ones. They are already documented, and should give you a better idea on the whole architecture:
https://github.com/volumio/Volumio2/wiki/WebSockets-API-Reference

2. The UI is fully powered by Angular.Js and gets sends data via WebSockets (socket.io).

3. I don't think there will be WOL, as this is something that requires a specific hardware state. Hardware wise we now have ON\OFF.
But this could be an interesting feature to add in the future (but sure it will require hardware redesign)...

4. Absolutely, you have full control on volume, and you can retrieve it (together with all playback related info) from the getState API call

5. Yes, with Socket.io

6. Yes indeed. Every AxiomAir device uses the same APIs to talk with the others, and so can you.

Hope I replied with clarity to your question. Really eager to know your feedback on the architecture we set up.

Yes. Thanks.
Looks easy enough to implement on my side.

I had forgotten a VERY important UPnP question.

a) Are you planning to support SetNextAVTransportURI from day 1?

b) Which formats will be available day 1? DSF? FLAC? M4A?

c) Can you steam multi-channel that you will then downmix to stereo using selectable algorithm to mix (at least one that will preserve volume)

Great info. Like many, I'll have a mixed environment with multiple Axiom Air, but existing Airplay Devices (to feed amp), and other DLNA / Airplay Speakers speakers.

What is the potential options for Whole House (in sync) audio. Can you use say DLNA (or Airplay or ???) to push music to one Air and how does it go co-ordinating playback with the other Airs and the other Airplay / DLNA devices?

Also how is the standalone Axiom Air Adapter going?

Thanks
Nathan

Any word on delivery dates? Will we receive an email when it has shipped?