KinskyPDA and Naim Uniti

Posted by: bartve on 20 June 2010

I would very much like to use KinskyPDA on my HTC Diamond 2 to control my Naim Uniti, but somewhere something doesn't work well.
My music is on a Qnap NAS with Twonky server upstairs, the Uniti is in the living room, both connected to my LAN.
Normal, direct operation of the Uniti works great: it finds the Twonky server on the Qnap NAS and just plays the music. I'm also able to control the Uniti from several computers on the LAN using Mediaplayer, Foobar and eezUPNnP.
When I start KinskyPDA (v. 3.3.6) it recognizes the Twonky server and lists the music, but when I select a song to play on the Uniti nothing happens. The debug log shows some lines with errors like 'ReceiveFailure' and 'Description= "Invalid response: Bad Request". I am not able to save the log.
I als tried to use Kinsky Desktop, and the story is similar: it sees the Twonky server and lists the music, but when I play a file nothing happens. Also the right side of the window keeps saying 'Subscribing' with a busy sign.
Here are the last lines of the Kinsky Desktop debug log:

20-6-2010 12:20:07: Library+ MediaServer(PARACUTIN: BartSmile
Insert into playlist started...
Inserted 1 item into playlist
AVTransport.AsyncActionPlay.Callback(http://192.168.1.35:8080/AVTransport/ctrl): ConnectionClosed
AVTransport.AsyncActionSetAVTransportURI.Callback(http://192.168.1.35:8080/AVTransport/ctrl): Code=600 Description="Invalid response: Bad Request"

Does anyone have any idea? I would appreciate any help, KinskyPDA looks very nice and it would be great if I could control the Uniti from my handheld,

many thanks,

Bart

Posted on: 20 June 2010 by Geoff P

Hi Bart

Welcome.

I am not certain but I suspect the problem is that KinskyPDA just like Kinsky Desktop is expecting to talk to a Linn DS since it was written specifically to control music delivery to the Linn products.

I hvae tried Kinsky desktop with a non Linn media player and got the 'suscribing' error you report aswell.

I use dBpoweramp to rip and found they do a nice pair of programs 'Asset UPnp' which acts as a 'server access' and 'Asset Control' which offers the same function as Kinsky desktop and looks quite similar but works really fast without the restriction I suspect Kinsky has.

Be aware you can try a trial version of Asset UPnp but to use it fully you need to buy it ( not expensive). Asset Control is offered free if you search their website forum for it because right now it is a piece of beta software but I find it works really well. Asset Control does not need Asset UPnp to work as I understand it .

These two programs work on computers or netbooks running Windows.

I use an Apple iPod touch as a handheld controller running the 'PlugPlayer' addin which has a similar interface to the Kinsky and talks to Asset UPnp easily.

regards
geoff

Posted on: 20 June 2010 by bartve

Hi Geoff,

many thanks for your help. As UPnP/DLNA is an independent protocol (?) I thought that the Linn Kinsky stuff would be brand independent. Aside of that: I thought all Linn software is opensource (which is really nice from Linn!), and therefore blocking equipment from other brands doesn't make much sense?

regards,

Bart

Posted on: 20 June 2010 by Aleg

quote:
Originally posted by bartve:
Hi Geoff,

many thanks for your help. As UPnP/DLNA is an independent protocol (?) I thought that the Linn Kinsky stuff would be brand independent.
...

regards,

Bart

In theory yes, in practice No.

I consider UPnP to be one of the most instable protocols when communicating across brands. So much so I have even given up trying to get it working and won't consider gear that depend on it.

-
aleg

Posted on: 21 June 2010 by 0rangutan

To further support Aleg's point, while the Uniti can play from most UPNP servers, it is not able to pause a stream delivered by a number of popular options (EyeConnect, Playback, Majestic, Windows Media Player), but can using Twonky. All of these are built using the same set of open standards.

Sadly, UPNP seems to be a little too open and allows too much interpretation of the standard during implementation. The Consumer Electronics industry has worked around this by adopting DLNA as a standard above UPNP, whereby every device getting DLNA certification has been independantly tested and meets the bar for compatibility.

I'd love to see Naim go for DLNA membership/certification for its streaming products, hopefully resolving these frustrating incompatibilities.

In the meantime, I will wait patiently for the next Uniti firmware release which is expected to fix the pausing issue. There is some chance that adding support for extra commands like this might also make KinskyPDA compatible but I wouldn't hold your breath.

John

Posted on: 10 July 2010 by bartve

Something very nice happened: I got an email from David (the great Kinsky developer?) who asked me to run some diagnostic software and send him the log files that were generated. He found a bug, repaired it in the nightly build of KinskyDesktop and KinskyPDA, and now the Kinsky stuff works also for my Naim Uniti.
Remember, for now you have to use the nightly build (http://oss.linn.co.uk/trac/wiki/DownloadKinskyPda and http://oss.linn.co.uk/trac/wik...nloadKinskyDesktop), but I suppose it will be fixed also in the next release of a stable version.
Many thanks to David for fixing my problem, and to Linn for making this software and giving it away to everyone, even to us humble Naim users!

Bart

Posted on: 10 July 2010 by Develyn

This is great! I had tried it earlier and it didn't work like everyone said but now it does. Thanks for sharing.

I wish Naim

had an app to control all the Uniti functions from a pc.