In this article, we are going to explore various ways to turbo charge your CasaTunes installs!
Customers will appreciate installers who go the extra mile and implement many of these best practice recommendations. These recommendations provide customers a highly customized user experience and helps jump start their listening experience.
The CasaTunesX App is CasaTunes’ cross platform App that works the same, and provides the same functionality, across all Amazon, Apple, Android and HTML5 browser devices. Having a single App that is designed for users and administrators alike, simplifies learning and supporting CasaTunes and your users.
Personalize your setup by uploading photos for each room and your home. Customize the “home” name by, for example, renaming it to match the family’s name.
Using the CasaTunesX App, go to MENU > Settings > System Setup > Rooms to upload and set the room images.
Go to MENU > Settings > HomeSettings to set the home image and to configure a custom name for your home.
Room groups allow customers to control music in multiple rooms as if it were just another room. Rooms groups are ideal for grouping multiple zones in open concept areas where you want to control the area as one, and for implementing scenes, for example, you may want to create an Entertainment room group, which might include the kitchen, dining, living, and outdoor areas.
To manage your room groups, use the CasaTunesX App, go to MENU > Settings > System Setup > Room Groups.
Set up and configure your customers’ music services. Most music services allow for multiple accounts, so for example, if a husband and wife have their own Spotify accounts, then set up two Spotify Browser accounts and appropriately name the Spotify account for each in CasaTunes.
To add or manage music services using the CasaTunesX App, navigate to a room, select Pick Music, then select ADD or EDIT in the App header to enter into music services edit mode (where you can add, rename, or delete music services).
To learn more about managing music services, watch the CasaTunesX 101 Series - Managing music services using the CasaTunesX App video.
If customers have their own personal music collections, you can configure CasaTunes to import (ie. catalog, index and optionally copy) their music onto the music server. For CasaTunes to manage these music collections, the music must be accessible via the network, or you can import music from a USB drive by inserting the USB drive in an available USB port on the music server.
CasaTunes supports multiple music collections, so for example, if each spouse has their own music on their own laptops, you can configure a music collection for each laptop. When browsing imported music, you can either browse individual music collections, or you can select an aggregated view of your music collections, and select music from all music collections.
To manage your My Music collections using the CasaTunesX App, go to MENU > Settings > My Music.
To learn how to set up your My Music collections refer to the Tech Notes found in the My Music section on the CasaTunes web site, under Support > Resources
Set up Featured Items for customers (aka CasaTunes Favorites or Starred Items) to allow customers to quickly select their favorite tunes.
We recommend you set up their top 10 favorites as Featured Items. This can include a mixture of radio stations, playlists, albums, tracks, short cuts (deep links) and even searches.
Watch this video on Featured Items to learn more. Note: Although this video uses the old CasaTunes App, the concepts are the same.
There is nothing more soothing than waking up and falling to sleep listening to music.
Alarms are configured on a room or room group basis. You can configure any number of alarms for each room or room group.
Before configuring your alarms, make sure your music server is set for the correct time zone. To change the music server time zone using the CasTunesX App, select MENU > Settings > Time Zone.
To configure the alarms for a room or room group using the CasaTunesX App, navigate into the room and select MENU > Configure <room name> Alarms.
To learn more about setting up alarms watch the video Installing a CasaTunes System - Part IV. Skip to the 8 minutes 10 second mark.
Set up the default User Profile for users. You can customize the features available for users in the CasaTunesX App, by selecting or customizing a predefined User Profile, or by creating your own custom profile.
We recommend you configure the provided User profile as the default profile for users, in order to prevent users from making changes to your CasaTunes system.
To select a User Profile, or change the profile settings for a profile using the CasaTunesX App, go to MENU > Settings > User Profile.
Watch Installing a CasaTunes System - Part V for more information on User Profiles.
To ensure your customers' CasaTunes installation continues to work reliably, make sure CasaTunes is configured for automatic updates.
You can verify whether automatic updates are enabled and scheduled using the CasaTunesX App. In the App, select MENU > Settings > System Setup > Update CasaTunes to turn automatic updates on or off, and to select the time to perform updates.
Proactively manage your customers' CasaTunes sites using Notifications.
You can configure CasaTunes to send you an email when CasaTunes starts up, shuts down, or if an issue is detected. These email notifications allow you to proactively manage your customers' sites.
To configure notifications in the CasaTunesX App, select MENU > Settings > Notifications.
Provide links to your customers so they can learn how to use the CasaTunesX App.
Go to the How to Videos on the CasaTunes web site and watch the videos located in the CasaTunesX App section.
Seamlessly integrate your Home Theater, Living, Family Room and/or Master Bedroom AV Receivers as part of your whole house music system. With support for most popular AV Receivers, CasaTunes can use your AV Receivers to play your CasaTunes music in these rooms. Best of all, the UI is identical for rooms powered by an AV Receiver and rooms powered by your matrix amplifiers, making it completely seamless for customers.
To configure a room to be powered by an AV Receiver refer to the Tech Note How to integrate AV Receivers with CasaTunes.
To configure the AVR settings for a room using the CasaTunesX App go to MENU > Settings > System Setup > Rooms > <room> and scroll down to the section AV Receiver (AVR) Settings.
Create custom smart tasks, or even a custom Smart Task music interface.
CasaTunes Smart Tasks are similar to macros (for CasaTunes), and can be run interactively or scheduled. Each Smart Task consists of one or more Actions. Actions can include playing music, controlling rooms, controlling music, playing chimes, converting text messages into playable audio, and adding a timed or scheduled delay. Using these basic building blocks you can create powerful smart tasks.
Smart Tasks can be run from the My Tasks screen or they can be added to the Rooms and Now Playing menus. To navigate to the My Tasks screen, go to MENU > My Tasks.
For example, you can create a custom Smart Task to always turn the music off in all rooms at midnight every day.
Another example would be to create a Text-to-Speech task you can run when you want everyone to come down for dinner!
For users who are not familiar with CasaTunes, like small businesses, renters, guests or technophobes, you can create a simple push button UI consisting of Smart Task buttons. For inspiration, check out the Purity Spa video and the custom Smart Task based custom interface built for this company.
Play a custom doorbell chime when the doorbell is pressed.
To learn how to configure the doorbell and set up your custom doorbell chimes, check out the following Simple Doorbell Integration Tech Note.
In addition to our best practices guidelines, we have also created a series of videos that walk through a CasaTunes installation. If you are new to CasaTunes, or need a refresher, then checkout the video series on Installing CasaTunes, Parts I-V.
How to... Videos