years and years ago (sometime around 2017) i had the brilliant idea to pick up some speakers (bose 791) and an amp (bose sa-4 or sa-5. i find myself with both) to put in our bathroom. not having a great place or desire to mount them on the wall protruding into the space I opted for some that mount in-wall or in-ceiling. my thought was to cut some holes in the ceiling, drop in the speakers, run a couple wires and we’d have a music filled bathroom. the actual process hasn’t been as simple.
in the midst of all of this I also put in a new exhaust fan and did a shit job cutting the sheet rock. if I can’t cut a square hole then mentally I was thinking I would do a really shitty job with a round hole and that pushed my plans out years and years to today. this time around I actually bought the right tools and carefully cut my holes which worked out much better than the rip saw I already had. lesson learned.
so, holes successfully cut. next im exploring where the amp is going to go and realizing that if i want to integrate with the rest of my google ecosystem i’m going to need to get creative.
our laundry room seemed like a great place to mount the amp but after doing some measurements i don’t have the attic access to the ceiling that i had expected. the search for the mounting location continues.
looking at the amp there is an input for an analog volume control. this seems great b/c i have just the place for it and i like to have another option besides using my phone for everything. unfortunatly, the documentation says, ‘contact bose support for more info’ and guess what? they really don’t have any info for me. their suggestion was pretty much grab a potentometer, plug it in, and see what maps to 0%/100% volume. super helpful. this is probalby going to be more trouble than it’s worth. also, the amps that i already have seem to mix and match feature sets. the bose sa-4 includes the analog volume control input but no aux input. the bose sa-5 has aux input but no analog volume control. could buy an old bose sa-3 that has aux input and volumen control but then i lose any bluetooth or wifi connectivity. just hitting roadblocks left and right.
bigger challange is how to make these speakers work along with my other google speakers. back in 2017 the easy solution seemed to be the somewhat recently discontuned (~2015) chromecast audio; cheap and easy solution. now in 2022 these devices are going for ~3x the original pruchase price. soooooo, shit. i bit the bullet and picked up two for ~$150 on ebay. opening up the packages they both came with euro style 220v plugs. not the best sign to get started. no big deal as they’re just powered over micro USB. plug one in and start the google home workflow only to get error messages when trying to connect to the wifi. it keeps telling me to check my password. okay, i try again. same results. i open my router app, copy the password, go back to google home, paste it in, and get the same error message. try another network and get the same errors. try an open network with no security and it tells me to check my network settings. well, now im frustrated and turn to the google.
as always google tech support is a delight to deal with but in this case, at least so far, they havent been able to solve my issue. we tied rebooting devices (the CCA, router, and my phone). we tried removing the google home app and reinstalling. we tried using another mobile device. we tried everything again with the second CCA that i bought. i’ve gone through all my router settings and can’t find anyting that seems to be an issue. tried going through a mobile hotspot instead of my AmpliFi router or ISPs router. i even tracked down a power suppy i got with a chromecast ultra that adds wired internet. no bueno.
during all of this im also scouring the internet for reddit threads or anything else i can try to resolve or push the settings directly to the device and finding very little. the CCA device wasnt ever super popular and was fairly short lived. :shrug:
after two calls w/ the google team i don’t have super high hopes that that’s going to work out and my backup plan is to utilize a standard chromecast and split the audio out to my amp. not ideal to not have the audio quality that comes from the CCA vs the regular CC but shit happens and there’s a decent chance we wont be able to tell the difference anyway. so out the $150 for the 2x CCA plus whatever i buy to split the hdmi into seperate audio and video. sigh.
stay tuned
scotts blog 