Pass a variable to control page that defines device

I am working on control pages that control audio zones in my house. A sample of a work in progress is below.

Screen Shot 2011-10-07 at 7.24.47 PM.png

My issue is that I do not want to have to create many of these - Ideally I could pass a variable from a master page that would allow me to determine what zone to operate on. Not sure if this is making sense, but if so, are there any ways to accomplish this or will I be stuck creating one page per zone?

Thanks.

[matt (support)]

You'll need to create individual pages. But having some type of templating mechanism is a good idea, so we'll add it to our feature consideration list.

[jay (support)]

Couldn't you add a zone selector control(s) which would store the zone in a variable, then have your actions use the zone that's in the variable? It would require scripting but it should work.

I could use variables and have done that before. The only issue I ran in to was that it limits usage to one user. If a second iPod/iPad was running the control page, they would conflict. For now, I'll create one control page per zone.

Thanks for the input.

nlagaros -

Curious to know what you have hardware-wise. Are you using IR to control these devices? If so, which IR controller?
Or are you using Serial?

dave

It is serial access to a Russound system so no IR (thank goodness).

I set up my WHA control pages with combined zones (sort of like audio scenes) on one page with a few specific zones as well, with the most common sources right there. For instance, KitchenStudy operates the Family Room, Kitchen and Study with a single volume control and source selection. Whole House does all the indoor zones. The name button for each of these scenes, when pressed, sets the relative volumes of the zones so that they are all corrected to a measured dB level. While they are independent zones they are controlled as a scene.

The tone controls, radio controls and Pandora/iTunes are all on separate pages. Makes for a little back and forth but generally works well as one is not usually fiddling with the tone controls much once set. Since the volume controls and source selections are variable based, all devices are always in sync.

Here are some screen shots of my WHA page design. Plenty of room for improvement but works pretty easily.