XM Radio with RS-232

Just looking for a small application to interface XM Radio online with my whole-house audio system. I'm using a Russound CAV system and am able to communicate RS-232 with the hardware. What I want is an application that can log into the XM Online servers using my account username/password. I want to be able to create a list of 10 or less "favorite channels". I need the RS-232 to send the "what's on now" data...song title/artist every 20-seconds or so for the currently selected channel. The user will need to be able to use the keypad to advance to the next favorite channel. Oh, and the RS-232 is already being used for another application, so the application will also have to be able to only respond to requests for the "zone" it is wired to send audio too. For example, if I'm listening to another audio source on Zone 1, the application must not accept or act upon button presses from any keypad using Zone 1...but if XM Radio is connected to Zone 2 then all key presses for this zone should be processed and RS-232 returned. There is a freeware MP3 version of this that works fantastic with J River Media Center. Same basic concept, just instead of playing MP3's...I want to listen to streaming XM Radio. ## Deliverables This application can have a minimal GUI. Showing "what's playing now" song title/artist for each of the 10 favorite channels...channel number...channel name. RS-232 settings are fixed (I'll have to post them separately as I don't recall them right this minute.) I have full RS-232 documentation on proper communication to the Russound CAV hardware. This details how to send hex values to the hardware for displaying the character set (song title and name). This will be provided to you. J River Media Center has a free 30-day trial application on their website with a free CAV plug-in that functions exactly as I would like-- this free application is only meant to work with MP3s. I need similar functionality for XM Radio Online. The application I need must automatically login to the XM online servers...and request the selected favorite channel from the Russound keypad. Once the song title/artist is available, the software should begin scrolling this information approximately once every 20-seconds. When the fast-forward button or rewind button is pressed, the software should advance to the next channel in the favorites list and retune to that stream. As a desired shortcut, it would be nice if pressing and holding a selected button of your choice could toggle the display to show the list of favorites...then each press of rewind or fast-forward would advance the list to the next favorite name in the list. Pressing the Play button would then select that favorite channel and cause the application to that stream directly. This is to save the user from having to advance through each channel one at a time to get to the desired favorite channel. The critical function this software must be able to do is ignore key presses from other "zones". This software must allow the user to select which of 6 zones it should respond to, and must send no data or respond to users on any zone except for the zone selected in software. For example, my wife may be listening to MP3s in Zone 1 and I'll be listening to XM Radio on Zone 2. When she presses any keys on the keypad, this application will not take action. However, because I'm listening to Zone 2 and that is the zone selected in the software, my key presses are processed and channel changes are done, etc. (The Zone number is always sent from the keypad hardware, so this is very easy to accept and process.) One final thought, this application needs to be able to automatically launch at system start-up and needs to provide a status message while the application connects to the online service...maybe a "Logging in..." message displayed until the audio stream becomes available. When the system is shut down and no keypads are communicating with the software, it would be ok to stop the audio stream and logout. This will save Internet bandwidth during unused times. I know testing this application will fall on me. If you create a small start that can send a sample message to the display with a "Rewind", "FF", "Play", and "PressHold" message for the appropriate button press, I believe the rest is just getting the XM Online info to pass. Once you have a tested starter app with the keypresses working, I will provide a temporary XM Online account username/password for you while this project is on-going. (You need to be able to test XM Online, right?) At the end of the project, I will disable the XM Online access as it will no longer be needed.