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German film “Das Haus”, where the BLI turns up against his owner…

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Four buttons: Light, Audio, Video and “all” in the center.
You press to turn on TV, Radio or Lights and long press ton turn them off.
Long press in the center turn off everything.

The idea behind the A9 Keyholder was that when your leave your Beohome, you longpress the key holder and it shuts down all your stuff.

No volume control, hence my comment on background listening…

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I’m reading carefully.

Looks like we’re gonna write the next B&O related book: “B&O black boxes mysteries revealed”. 🙂

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You literally take the words out of my mouth! Yes.

In background music listening scenarios, where volumes are set, this is the perfect… Key!

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Good morning Guys,

Still no Beoport around, it happens more difficult than I thought to get the one I saw.

Anyway, I’m still playing with LinkPlayer, since there is not much you can do with BM-link alone and because BM-link needs an Audiomaster which make it (nowadays) not very useful outside an extended Masterlink network.

First: registration.
Linkplayer 1 was a paid product that needed a registration through the eSellerate (won’t comment on the meaning of this in French…) process. Today eSellerate servers are down or not working and you can not register the app anymore. LP1 still launch and work but I read that after an hour it stops working. I didn’t go that far so I can’t tell.
At a certain point, LP1 became free, you just needed to ask for a free license activation.
So I think sharing it would not be piracy. In any cas you can’t because the registration process is down and it rely on an unique installation ID linked with the machine you install it on. In a nutshell, as far as I know, LP1 can not be used anymore.

LP2 was launched as a Beta and never make it to release. It works and the registration part is greyed out. You’ll find plenty on intel on BW2 in which this extensive feedback thread.

Let’s play now:
LP2 is an old software and lots of things have moved on aesthetically since then. It is also an amazing piece of software and I suppose PhilLondon (thank you Phil, if you’re around…) had more to work on than concentrate on graphics.
Anyway, I pimped it up to my tastes:

Program icon:

N.RADIO graphic:

A.AUX graphic:

CD graphic:

I may need to adjust some designs, but it looks better.

Usage:
LP2 is remote controlled with the Apple remote. There is no control on volume (it always stays at 00, but I can hear music through the Mac speaker. The sound is not chopped anymore. I hope than with a Beoport connected, I will gain volume control and volume display.

I have set up 4 sources:
CD (as shown above): it works and load album and track names. Problem is that I dont know how to eject the CD after playing it. Even if I go on the computer desktop to eject it manually computer refuses because it is “used by Linkplayer”. Not a big deal.

A.AUX (as shown above): from the sound input of the Mac mini. I believe you can set it up to any sound input card handled by the system, like maybe USB RIAA preamp.

N.RADIO (as shown above): it relies on a playlist in iTunes. Unless I didnt’ did it well, it can be a little confusing because if you have other playlist based on music files (like Christmas songs, cocktail time music, etc…) they are considered as radios. I’ve also to entries that are IP adresses I can’t get rid of, are not on iTunes and are silent.
Biggest problem with radios is that sometimes (I haven’t be able to make it consistent), channels dont stop when your going from one to the other, they just stack up on each other creating a slowly increasing mix of echoes and you have to quit and relaunch to stop this.

N.MUSIC (as shown above): It reads your iTune library. When you launch LP2 it launch iTunes and scan the library.

Then if you hit play, it starts to play the first album of your playlist but I can’t really tell based on what: artist name, album name, song name.
Data is correctly displayed in a very well chosen font (actually well ahead of B&O itself since it his very close to the Gotham font the brand use now).

You can choose red/blue/yellow/green mode which allows you to respectively browse Genres/Playlists/Albums/Artists. With the Apple remote it’s a sequence of key, hopefully direct access from the beo4.

In the preference you affect the virtual sources to the real things that are connected to your system.

You can also choose “menu” like in for the PC entry at the bottom of the window.
That will open a window to choose other options:

These options will the appear to control iTunes directly from LP2.
I think playing through LP or remote controlling iTunes is related with DRM but I can’t say.

Web allows to browse the web, but the computer being old and safari as well, you’re not gonna go very far! (That iTunes icon need to be pimped too.)

Bottom line for today:
This is quite fun to play with this but I don’t know if it is really useful. It is unusable without screen and even as a standalone system like I planned to use it (Mac mini+Beoport+BL3500), that would mean powering a little of stuff to do what a bluetooth speaker and a phone do, or for Masterlink users, a single wireless receiver on AUX.IN.

Anyway, I will still looking for a tiny, 7″ or 10″ screen for the Mac mini.

Not sure it will happen something new until I get a Beoport.

Hope this useless yougtimer review will be useful for someone and again, thank you Phil wherever you are!

 

 

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XavierItzmann wrote:

I already figured out that connecting a USB charger to the BP’s USB port doesn’t work.

Hi alls, sorry to break in. You know one thing leading to another… Here I am…

Xavier, one thing leading to another, there is this thing: an old audio interface that is meant to be used with a computer but drivers get outdated and the interface became useless. Until a guy found a trick to make it believe it is connected to a computer.

I wonder if there is the same chip into the Beoport and/or this can be an inspiration?

The trick…

 

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Thanks for the clarification. Looks like I need to talk to somebody who said:
“1611 where replaced by 1636, same with added features”…. 😀

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Guy wrote:

The PC input worked fine using pins 2, 4, and 7 for Left, Right and Gnd respectively. I could select using ‘PC’ on Beo4 and it worked as a local source…

Hi Guy. Does it means it work the same way the 1611 converter but just limited to the PC input ? (meaning, remote control working to start the speaker, set volume and adjust sound parameters, all through the Link Speaker sensor only.)

…but as soon as I disconnected the ML it stopped working – so there is no simple BL Active standalone option.

Why would you disconnect ML since it’s the only way to drive a Link Speaker?

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Guy wrote:

Perhaps the shorting (or otherwise) of ML pins 4 and 12 in early model BL3500s is relevant to our investigations?

Beolink Handbook shows Masterlink and Obsolete Masterlink wiring,
pin 12 is “+ supply voltage” in both case, pin 4 is not connected in Masterlink and “+ supply voltage” too in obsolete Masterlink.

Shorting Pin 4 and 12 would therefore mean “the device expect positive voltage on pin 4 but because we have changed our wiring, you have to take it on pin 12”. Right?

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Guy wrote:

BL3500 attached to Wireless 1 by Powerlink.

This is something that is puzzling me and for what I’not found any clear answer.
User manuals for the 3500 clearly says the Powerlink socket is of no use.
User manual for Wireless 1 clearly says connection with BL3500 must be thought Masterlink.

But I’ve also read many times on the forum that the Powerlink socket on the 3500 is there for use with W1.

I suppose they were different version of W1 over time, one of which uses Powerlink and the other Masterlink, right? But even then, Why would the Beolab react to a Powerlink connection from W1 only and not any other device?

Given you tried all the combination of voltage trigger, this something I don’t understand.

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Test unit has SW3.1.

I checked also the runtime counter but dont know how to read it.
Service manual says:

A: XXXXX, which is the Audio mode operating time in hours x 10.

So if display shows 00150, is it 15 hours or 1500?

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XavierItzmann wrote:

For years I used a Mac Mini (purposefully with no updates beyond 10.6.8) with LinkPlayer 1.1. […]

Hi Xavier,

This sounds promising. Can’t wait to see the song name on the Beolab screen!
I’ve not played long enough with Linkplayer to have it stopped by the end of the trial period. I think I’ve read V2 with a beta version that didn’t need to be serialized. I need to check this if I don’t want to have a useless Beoport in hands.

Thank you for your post.

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LukeS wrote:

Just to say I have some python code to control Apple Music

Hi LukeS. I’m sorry but I’m not good at Github things. Could you elaborate a little bit on how your code could be adapted and what for?

I dont know if it’s related but I try my luck: what I would need and would be very useful would be to be able to control iTunes on a computer, say an headless Mac mini, from another computer (like the iTunes remote app do but from a desktop computer). Could your code be anyway near that?

Thanks in advance.

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@Madskp

Yes those solution are the ones we try to avoid. They use the PL mode from service “Menu 0 4 GO” and the speaker is turned off as soon as you touch any key on the remote. Volume is set from the source and to me the more important: you lose the sound adjustments from the BL3500. It is clearly much better to have the 1611 solution. But when you have it, adding an extra source for casual needs with the PL path is something that comes free and can be useful.

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Guy wrote:

(I’d also much prefer for you to buy a Beoport than for me to buy a mac! )

That one is good. Maybe its some sort of luck for people around us that we’re not living in the same street!

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Guy wrote:

I just had a quick look at how easy it is to access Beoport/BeoPlayer N.MUSIC Playlists from a Link Room. Tested with BL3500 (L.OPT 6) connected by ML to Beoport (OPT 2).

Hi Guy, I have open a new thread on this and if you know howw to do this, it could be good to move your post over there (I dont know how to).

Also we maybe should ask Kieth to open a new category that could be ‘Old stuff experiments” or “Laboratory” or whatever “My Science Project” like name. Maybe our black magic is cluttering too much the general discussion home page? I dont know…

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Is that eeprom the one that use to “fry” and brick the whole unit?

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Rajkumar-Cat wrote:

Seems no one help from this forum?

I think no one helps because no one know knows. Given the solution you found, it is not that surprising. You’ve learned something today and can enjoy the full credit of your repair,

This is also Beoworld…

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A little bit of philosophy…

Fiddling with old stuff…

If it works you’re so happy. I was amazed that it worked straight on.
Installed, launched, ear music even if not through Beoport, not to mention this so cool and familiar dot matrix font…

Then you start to have “needs”: I need to listen to the AUX.IN, I need to be able to choose that album I didn’t listen for years but I want to listen to now… Even more, I want to understand how it works. Because it works but not as I expect (capital I is an emphasis that English speaking people will miss).

And now here you are: why doesn’t it work?
Because I’m using hardware from the previous century?
Because your network is not 2.4 or 5.0 or a/b/c/d/g/n compliant?
Or maybe it is but you have too much “things” on it (how that?).
Because even if that hardware still seems to works, it is so slow it looks like it don’t? Like parsing the megagigabyte library you built when terabytes became cheap.
Because I lack the logic behind using Masterlink and all its subtleties?
Because I’m just trying to grim a… Citroen into a Mercedes (just don’t have left studies in third class…).

Well, in fact it “does not work” enough for me to drop it.
It works enough for me to continue even if in the end it will be useless.

God, I’d like to have MLGWLNL problems and SPDIFIAA mysteries, But I can’t so here I am, wondering if it’s all stuck just because Mac mini’s USB is only 1.5 and not Terapotatoes kind…

I now remember a quote from a valuable member here, in a topic about “whatever-online-hirez-music-provider” who said: “I just stand up my chair, flip the record, and have all the electronic bits I can hear”.

Please take this as a joke and nothing more, because…

… “This is Beoworld”

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Yes and Yes. I still need to confirm SW version of test unit.

On early ones there is also the MCL engraving under the DIN socket that show early units.

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