IMS and Home Assistant Communication

[David Ellis]

Hi. Has anyone attempted to get an IMS and Home Assistant to talk to one another? I am certain there is a way but after two days of trying, I am in need of help. Any help is greatly appreciated!

[Steve Guttag]

Try talking with Dolby technical support. The IMS3000 communication protocols are reasonably well documented. Their primary form, however is WSDL/SOAP based.

[James Gardiner]

I have been meaning to look into this myself. One day. But, I can see a reasonable amount of capability as .. I have posted in the past how you can emulate a http GET with Dolby (And likely others) socket communication. So, I expect you could do something. Just need to look. And I don't have any more time to work on pet projects. Too many already in the air.

[Ryan Gallagher]

The most direct path might be an intermediate translation device? Something to react to the home assistant commands and issue the corresponding IMS ones.

Maybe the Junior automation folks have looked into supporting this? Or a single board computer of any flavor.

Home assistant is open source, so I’m sure it is doable internally too, just might require more developer level knowledge in HA.

[Marcel Birgelen]

What direction do you want the communication to flow? And what type of calls do you want to do? Dim some lights? Start a show based on external triggers?

The IMS can do TCP callouts, which could simulate a HTTP call with JSON payload.

The cleanest way would be to implement a plugin for Home Assistant, but also the least efficient way, as in time spent on the project.

[Dustin Grush]

I played around with this somewhat last year and never quite got it to work with our Doremi using TCP raw data. The only thing that actually responded to the Doremi was the Node-RED application, and all I could get it to do was toggle a single input. No matter how many I added they would not function independently, and all they would do is toggle. I could not set ON/OFF values. I am generally bad at code/software things so it was probably errors on my part. Unfortunately that instance crashed without a backup and I haven't had time to mess with it this year. Would be interested if anyone has success.

[Ryan Gallagher]

Personally I’d probably play with Bitfocus companion (and thus Buttons) interoperability, but I can see the fun/utility if you already have a lot of HA controlled things.

[David Ellis]

What direction do you want the communication to flow? And what type of calls do you want to do? Dim some lights? Start a show based on external triggers?

The IMS can do TCP callouts, which could simulate a HTTP call with JSON payload.

The cleanest way would be to implement a plugin for Home Assistant, but also the least efficient way, as in time spent on the project.

Hi. From IMS to Home Assistant primarily. Once any type of communication is received by Home Assistant then within Home Assistant it can be made to do pretty much anything. For example, in our case lighting control.

[Ryan Gallagher]

Another route might be to tackle GPIO commands first... if the network and protocols route is too frustrating.

There is what looks like a handy framework for many microcontrollers called "ESPHome". Never used it myself but I have dabbled in ESP32 projects. They all can react to GPIO input and cause events in HA.
https://esphome.io/index.html

GPIO methods may not be as fully featured on the cinema server end, but it's one approach. You could certainly trigger a minimal set of lighting states. I assume this is for a home cinema setup? Using Home Assistant in a commercial cinema might be a bit "weird". ;-)

[Marcel Birgelen]

GPIO may be a very low-level solution. If you have your HA running on a RasPi for example, you have GPIO integration right there, you don't need another device like an ESP32 controller.

I was thinking about a TCP to MQTT "bridge", like this one. It's 5 years old, written in Go, but probably easier than building your own integration based on e.g. TCP commands.

[Neil Davidson]

Is there any particular reason to be using HA in the system? If not then take a look at https://onlx.ltd and particularly the almost too capable iPad version. I will be doing this myself shortly for an interesting microled wall project so haven’t tested with IMS3000 yet (your post reminded me I need to get the api). It’s trivial for Barco and most any other system though so I am confident!

[James Gardiner]

It's a interesting topic about, should the industry standardise on automation technologies. Re-investing the wheel, has been a common issue seen with all the different types of Automation implementations around. Then the larger common place ones in high-end corporate automation is eye-watering prices. (And rarely used due to this)

It's why Home Assistant is an interesting topic as if vendors follow its implementation, we are likely to have better integration and tools at better prices that can take advantage of it (In theory). But then again, bringing in another complex system critical to each screen is also a negative. Keep it simply and with as few components as possible is a better path typically.

Its due to this, Home Assistant is an interesting topic as these issues have not been investigated well enough from a cinema automation perspective. So keen to hear if anyone has taken this path.
Appreciate impressions and Good/Bad points.

[David Ellis]

Another route might be to tackle GPIO commands first... if the network and protocols route is too frustrating.

There is what looks like a handy framework for many microcontrollers called "ESPHome". Never used it myself but I have dabbled in ESP32 projects. They all can react to GPIO input and cause events in HA.
https://esphome.io/index.html

GPIO methods may not be as fully featured on the cinema server end, but it's one approach. You could certainly trigger a minimal set of lighting states. I assume this is for a home cinema setup? Using Home Assistant in a commercial cinema might be a bit "weird". ;-)

Hi. This is for a drive-in. HA is surprisingly powerful and versatile. There are a number of fairly complex automations that they are currently using HA for. The projector/IMS is pretty much the only thing on the property that is not integrated. If we can get them talking then it will be great!

[David Ellis]

It's a interesting topic about, should the industry standardise on automation technologies. Re-investing the wheel, has been a common issue seen with all the different types of Automation implementations around. Then the larger common place ones in high-end corporate automation is eye-watering prices. (And rarely used due to this)

It's why Home Assistant is an interesting topic as if vendors follow its implementation, we are likely to have better integration and tools at better prices that can take advantage of it (In theory). But then again, bringing in another complex system critical to each screen is also a negative. Keep it simply and with as few components as possible is a better path typically.

Its due to this, Home Assistant is an interesting topic as these issues have not been investigated well enough from a cinema automation perspective. So keen to hear if anyone has taken this path.
Appreciate impressions and Good/Bad points.

You hit the nail on the head! This is the precise issue. There are SO many devices and they all use different protocols. Home Assistant (don't let "home" undermine it) is virtually the only solution - because it can integrate with SO many protocols/vendors etc. Literally the only device on the property that Home Assistant is not integrated with is the projector/IMS.

We have a JNIOR, which is an awesome device but it is cumbersome. Home Assistant is able to talk to it via MQTT. I can probably get this to work eventually, but there has to be some way to have Home Assistant and the IMS/projector talk to one another directly.

[Carsten Kurz]

So what is actually desired to be automated? Servers and projectors have very many different ways to act and react. Yet I guess that what you want to do related to IMS/projector is probably limited.