Remoteserver and girder interface

[Promixis]

Gavin, maybe you know the answer...

I was wondering if it would be possible to have Girder talk to the remoteserver of Media Center. - maybe using the luasockets plugin.

I haven't been able to find a documentation of remoteserver protcol.

Mike

[Ben S]

What are you trying to do, Mike?

I've been the "maintenance" developer on RemoteServer for awhile, and I can answer any questions you have.

Is there something NetRemote isn't doing right?

[Promixis]

Ben,

Was curious if I could use girder to interface with mc9 directly. Not to replace netremote but I was think of using girder to display artist/album lists on my vfd and have a expensive version of the audiotron :) I have a griffin powermate knob to use as a "local" input device.


Is the remoteserver interface documented? Do you think girder could interact with it? Or perhaps this is more of project then I want to get into :0


Mike

[brockgr]

Mike

Have a look at DVD Spy:

http://girderplugins.sourceforge.net/DVDSpy/

Gavin

[Promixis]

Thanks Gavin,

Already using DVDSpy for whats playing etc. This works great with Netremote.

I want to be able to access MC's library and control whats playing directly from girder.

Mike

[Mastiff]

Mike, I know this isn't exactly what you're looking for, but have a look at my webpage, I can at least do all transport keys and play any CD from the collection on my system from any IR remote in the zones in the house. Maybe it would help? 8)

[Eiffel]

Not sure this will allow you to do everything you have in mind, buy the command line interface described in http://www.musicex.com/mediacenter/devzone.html allows you to control MJ with some granularity. Combined with DVDSpy this can be a relatively powerful combination for 2 way communication.

[Promixis]

Thanks Mastiff and Eifel

I wonder if a COM interface to MC will work with the LUA COM extensions.... hm sounds like alot of work!

Downside of COM is both MC and girder must be on the same computer.

Will wait and see what the remoteserver interface looks like - hopefully easier to do!

Mike

[Eiffel]

Mike, there is an additional issue with the MC COM interface... it is not designed to be accessed by applications outside MC (It is really made for plugins). There is a workaround with a third party tool called MCIO (MC Inside Out), which works well but has some additional constraints...

What might be possible is to extend the LUA language to manipulate some of the MC objects exposed by the MJ COM interface.

Good luck

[Promixis]

Eiffel, I can't find any reference to MCIO on interact or even google.

Would you please point me in the right direction.

I still think the best we to go would be via the remoteserver interface and lua sockets.

Ben, is there any documentation on how the remote server works?

Mike

[Promixis]

Eiffel,

I found a ref. in the developer zone.

Thanks,

[Ben S]

Hi Mike,
I can give you all the info you need, but there is no documentation. I'm not a lua-wizard, but if you can connect to a socket and send stuff through, then you should be able to control it via tcp/ip.

The new protocol is a simple command with up to 4 quoted parameters.

For instance ...

LX "PLAY" "Audio\Albums\Some Album" is a library execute, play action, on Audio\Albums\Some Album.

And vice versa. The new protocol will pass information about it's runstate back with ...

SV "MP.CurPosition" "00:00"

You can actually try this by telnetting to the server and port.

You initialize the new protocol by sending "NRPI [default image size]" instead of an http request.

So if you type "NRPI S[return]" you should see it send back a lot of info, including a small image.

Let me know if you want to continue this route or use the COM interface, and I'll provide more info if needed.

[Promixis]

Hi Ben,

Ron (Girder) and I have been able to get the COM interface working but there seems to be problems with COM extensions to girder during a event processing.... I don't think this is going to end up working

So, I am interested in the socket protocol to connect to remoteserver. I did try teleneting and it works.

Mike

[Ben S]

Okay, Mike. I'll put together some documentation and shoot it off to you.

[Promixis]

Thanks Ben,

Whenever you get a chance. Mike