For this component to work, you'll need to have a serial connection between your Cambridge CXA amplifier and your Home Assistant instance. This can be either a direct serial connection, or you could use a remote device like a Raspberry Pi to provide the serial connection from your CXA to your Home Assistant instance.
In case you have a direct serial connection between your Cambridge CXA and Home Assistant, follow the steps below. If you have a Raspberry Pi in between, scroll down to the next section.
On your Home Assistant, create a directory called cambridge_cxa under the custom_components directory, and save the files from this repo in there.
Alternatively, you can install this component using HACS. Add custom repository lievencoghe/cambridge_cxa and install the component.
Then you need to add the following to your configuration.yaml file:
media_player:
- platform: cambridge_cxa
device: /dev/serial/by-id/<insert id of USB to serial device here>
name: CXA
type: CXA61 or CXA81
slave: <Optional value, if you have a CXN, enter its IP address here, so you can control the CXA's volume through the CXN>
Restart Home Assistant, and see you have a new media_player entity for your CXA.
You'll need to install ser2net on the Raspberry Pi where you have the serial connection to your Cambridge CXA, so the serial port can be accessed over the network.
Install ser2net: sudo apt install ser2net
If you installed ser2net version 3.x, add this to /etc/ser2net.conf file on the Raspberry Pi:
5000:raw:600:/dev/serial/by-id/<insert id of USB to serial device here>:9600 8DATABITS NONE 1STOPBIT
If you installed ser2net version 4.x, add this to /etc/ser2net.yaml file on the Raspberry Pi:
connection: &cambridge
accepter: tcp,5000
enable: on
options:
kickolduser: true
telnet-brk-on-sync: true
connector: serialdev,
/dev/serial/by-id/<insert id of USB to serial device here>,
9600n81,local
Make sure the ser2net service is enabled and running on your Raspberry Pi. Enter following commands.
sudo systemctl enable ser2net
sudo systemctl start ser2net
Then, on the PC/Raspberry Pi/VM/... where your Home Assistant instance is running, we'll need to connect to the serial on the Raspberry Pi. We will do this using an utility called socat.
Make sure socat is installed by running sudo apt install socat
Next, create a file /etc/default/socat.conf and add the following:
OPTIONS="pty,link=/dev/ttyCXA,raw,ignoreeof,echo=0 tcp:<IP address of the Raspberry Pi>:5000"
Change the IP address to the IP address of your Raspberry Pi. Leave port to 5000, unless you changed it in the /etc/ser2net.yaml file.
Notice the name of the device /dev/ttyCXA. You'll need this later on!
Then you'll need to create a systemd service. Create a file /etc/init.d/socat and add this:
#! /bin/sh
### BEGIN INIT INFO
# Provides: socat
# Required-Start: $local_fs $time $network $named
# Required-Stop: $local_fs $time $network $named
# Default-Start: 2 3 4 5
# Default-Stop: 0 1 6
# Short-Description: Start/stop (socat a multipurpose relay)
#
# Description: The socat init script will start/stop socat as specified in /etc/default/socat
# Then log (FATAL,ERROR,WARN,INFO and Notic) in /var/log/socat.log
### END INIT INFO
NAME=socat
DAEMON=/usr/bin/socat
SOCAT_DEFAULTS='-d -d -d -lf /var/log/socat.log'
. /lib/lsb/init-functions
. /etc/default/socat.conf
PATH=/bin:/usr/bin:/sbin:/usr/sbin
[ -x $DAEMON ] || exit 0
start_socat() {
start-stop-daemon --oknodo --quiet --start \
--pidfile /var/run/socat.pid \
--background --make-pidfile \
--exec $DAEMON -- $SOCAT_DEFAULTS $OPTIONS < /dev/null
}
stop_socat() {
start-stop-daemon --oknodo --stop --quiet --pidfile /var/run/socat.pid --exec $DAEMON
rm -f /var/run/socat.pid
}
start () {
start_socat
return $?
}
stop () {
for PIDFILE in `ls /var/run/socat.pid 2> /dev/null`; do
NAME=`echo $PIDFILE | cut -c16-`
NAME=${NAME%%.pid}
stop_socat
done
}
case "$1" in
start)
log_daemon_msg "Starting multipurpose relay" "socat"
if start ; then
log_end_msg $?
else
log_end_msg $?
fi
;;
stop)
log_daemon_msg "Stopping multipurpose relay" "socat"
if stop ; then
log_end_msg $?
else
log_end_msg $?
fi
;;
restart)
log_daemon_msg "Restarting multipurpose relay" "socat"
stop
if start ; then
log_end_msg $?
else
log_end_msg $?
fi
;;
reload|force-reload)
log_daemon_msg "Reloading multipurpose relay" "socat"
stop
if start ; then
log_end_msg $?
else
log_end_msg $?
fi
;;
status)
status_of_proc -p /var/run/socat.pid /usr/bin/socat socat && exit 0 || exit $?
;;
*)
echo "Usage: /etc/init.d/$NAME {start|stop|restart|reload|force-reload|status}"
exit 3
;;
esac
exit 0
Then enable and start the service:
sudo systemctl enable socat
sudo systemctl start socat
On your Home Assistant, create a directory called cambridge_cxa under the custom_components directory, and save the files from this repo in there.
Then, add the following to your configuration.yaml file:
media_player:
- platform: cambridge_cxa
device: /dev/ttyCXA
name: CXA
type: CXA61 or CXA81
slave: <Optional value, if you have a CXN, enter its IP address here, so you can control the CXA's volume through the CXN>
Restart Home Assistant, and see you have a new media_player entity for your CXA.
Note: When running Home Assistant in Docker, you need to forward the serial port /dev/ttyCXA to your container as a volume, not a device! So add -v /dev/ttyCXA:/dev/ttyCXA to your docker command, or add this to your docker-compose file:
volumes:
- /dev/ttyCXA:/dev/ttyCXA