Sonos integration suggestions

[MikeA]

I have installed a Sonos Connect into my home AV system. I find the device is pretty cool, with a so-so human interface. I am planning to use the Sonos to select and play Pandora, Sirius, iTunes based music library, and possibly internet radio.

What I need to decide is how much I want to integrate it into CQC, and what tradeoffs I will need to make compared to the Sonos control apps for computers/tablets/etc...

Option 1 - which feels daunting is to try to fully integrate the Sonos using the CQC ZP driver. Trying to deal with Pandora lists, iTunes library access, internet radio lists, etc... seems like it is more trouble than it is worth. It also doesn't seem that the CQC driver is able to download the album art of the currently playing audio, for example from Pandora or Sirius internet radio.

Option 2 - have some sort of nifty switch between CQC and the Windows based Sonos control app. I would use CQC to setup my receiver, etc... and then switch to the Sonos control app to select the music service, and specific tracks. When done, I would switch back to CQC to control the rest of my AV system. I have done this with internet explorer widgets, but I don't see a clean/fairly seamless way to go back and forth between CQC and the Sonos app.

Option 3 - Similar to Option 2, but do the switch on my Android tablet between RDP running the CQC Interface Viewer and the Android based Sonos control app.
I can do this manually, and it works, but is totally not wife friendly.

So, any suggestions? I would appreciate any inputs from those who have done some work with integrating Sonos.

Thanks
Mike

[finish.06]

I am attempting to determine the best route moving forward with Sonos also MikeA. At this time, I am just manually switching between the CQC client (on iPad) and the Sonos app. My wife doesn't seem to mind his thankfully b/c she is the one who wanted Sonos ... I planned on going hardwire with a Nuvo or Russound, but yeah, gotta let the wife get in on this too!!

Best of luck and hopefully we hear about great setups on here!

Caleb

[Dean Roddey]

All the stuff that has to do with the 'stations' and such are not part of the exposed UPnP API. That's all done apparently via a completely separate interface. Or, I guess most likely both the box and their app download stuff directly via the proprietary APIs of those services. We don't have access to those services ourselves, at least not currently (and I'm not sure what's involved in getting access without digging into it.)

It's not that hard to set up a template with a list browser that loads a favorites list and lets you select from them, and shows at least the non-art metadata.