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Considering New App - Hotkey Monitor

General support forum for Chameleon MediaCenter (formerly MM Browser)
Teddyboy
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Re: Considering New App - Hotkey Monitor

Post by Teddyboy » Tue Feb 16, 2021 12:17 pm

Paul,
This looks really cool! I'll take a closer look when I have more time at the end of the day. First glance it looks pretty logical to me, but I need to stare at it a bit more. I do like it. This has been one of my things that I've wanted out of CMC. This and a decoupled presentation manager for custom skinning.

Efrain
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Pauven
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Re: Considering New App - Hotkey Monitor

Post by Pauven » Tue Feb 16, 2021 12:37 pm

Thanks guys. I think the GUI will be even more obvious in use as you will be able to see how the GUI response to changing the values. Though I think there may be a need for some dividing lines to separate the Short Press from the Long Press and the Button, as the three areas flow together a bit. It's actually very similar to the Advanced MCE Remote Mapper, just laid out a bit differently, with less redundancy and without the Registry aspect. The Description is just a FYI field for your own use on custom actions, as otherwise you might not recognize what a particular Hotkey does for any given app.

Jamie wrote: Sat Feb 13, 2021 8:52 pm Can you use a customized link so the remote can control the lights in a room by either turning them off and on or dimming the lights. That would be great!
Well, possibly, but that depends upon how your smart lighting solution works. You would need software running on your PC or a URL on your network for this to communicate with, and they would need to be able to receive commands. For example, I recently added support for the Mi Casa Verde smart home controller, which has a Scenes feature that you can call via URL - so you could easily enter the URL to be called via any button press.

Jamie wrote: Sat Feb 13, 2021 8:52 pm I also read on the Mymovie.dk website that some time in the future you may consider providing Amazon Echo features which would be great. I would really love to see that feature too! I realize that it might be awhile and I will temper my expectations for now.
I actually bought an Echo and a Nest a long time ago with plans to add support. But I've yet to plug them in. While these are on the "to research" list, I think before I seriously look at either of these I would add support for making CMC a "target" for My Movies so you can use the iOS app.
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Pauven
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Re: Considering New App - Hotkey Monitor

Post by Pauven » Tue Feb 16, 2021 1:01 pm

I added some horizontal lines and increased spacing, hopefully this makes it better not worse:

image.png
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Teddyboy
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Re: Considering New App - Hotkey Monitor

Post by Teddyboy » Tue Feb 16, 2021 1:59 pm

Pauven wrote: Tue Feb 16, 2021 12:37 pm Thanks guys....
I actually bought an Echo and a Nest a long time ago with plans to add support. But I've yet to plug them in. While these are on the "to research" list, I think before I seriously look at either of these I would add support for making CMC a "target" for My Movies so you can use the iOS app.
This ^
You're really the only one that I know of that is really trying to pull data out of MyMovies through the API and whatnot. As far as I can tell most of the other apps just scrape data. I'd rather see see CMC as a target as you put it so I can use the MyMovies iOS app. I use the iOS app, but for me it's just a glorified collection display, and not very useful. I'd rather see this then home autommation. Not that home automation would be nice to have, but I think you still need to keep working on core functionality.
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Re: Considering New App - Hotkey Monitor

Post by Pauven » Wed Feb 17, 2021 6:48 pm

Teddyboy wrote: Tue Feb 16, 2021 1:59 pm I'd rather see see CMC as a target as you put it so I can use the MyMovies iOS app.
I was about to send you to the My Movies forum to post on the topic where this was discussed, because I thought Brian hadn't responded to my request for info.

But I was surprised to find out that he did in fact respond!!! Here's the link for future reference (saves me time looking for it on their forum): https://www.mymovies.dk/forum.aspx?g=po ... 585#221585

Edit: I just read through the documentation Brian shared, and his guidance. If I'm understanding him correctly, I would create a fake My Movies API running in CMC, so that the mobile apps would connect directly to CMC (but think they are connecting to My Movies). CMC would be responsible for providing all API data to the mobile app, and in turn receive commands from the mobile app to initiate and control playback. Yowza, that's not what I was expecting at all. While it's certainly possible, that's going to be a lot more involved that I had hoped.
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Re: Considering New App - Hotkey Monitor

Post by Teddyboy » Wed Feb 17, 2021 7:28 pm

I recall reading what Brian wrote about the fake api. How much work would that take? Would you have to emulate the whole api or just a subset. Sounds like a lot of work and you’d be on the hook for maintaining that should he change something. I thought he might put in some api calls on his side so you could call them and be able to control the app that way? Was that what you were expecting?

I need to read the what he posted.

I just read it. It doesn’t seem to me that you would create a fake api. You’d send commands as is outlined in the faq to the remote server api. That’s what it sounds like to me, but I’m not a programmer. 🙂
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Re: Considering New App - Hotkey Monitor

Post by Pauven » Wed Feb 17, 2021 7:58 pm

If I'm reading it correctly, the "remote server" would be CMC.
Teddyboy wrote: Wed Feb 17, 2021 7:28 pm Sounds like a lot of work and you’d be on the hook for maintaining that should he change something.
My thought too.

Though to be clear, I expect the mobile app to talk to two different API's: the online Web Service is the main one, and I wouldn't have to replicate that. The secondary one is the local My Movies service, which probably only had a few commands, and I'd have to replicate that.

But we'll see what he says.
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Re: Considering New App - Hotkey Monitor

Post by Teddyboy » Thu Feb 18, 2021 12:08 am

My understanding is that a installation of MyMovies 5 would be the remote server with the api. You would send commands over a port to that api which in turn would relay commands to the iOS/android app which in turn would issue playback commands to whatever player is installed. I just seems odd to me that you’d have to replicate a api when he should be the one to make that a available to third parties. Why would he not want to make that available since WMC is no more. As it stands now the iOS app is nothing but a glorified display. It really doesn’t do much.

Like you said we’ll have to wait and see what he says.

Maybe now would be a good time to put together that API wishlist. ;)
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Re: Considering New App - Hotkey Monitor

Post by Pauven » Thu Feb 18, 2021 1:24 pm

I've gotten very close to figuring out how this works.

I was able to simulate WMC responding directly to the mobile app. It's just very basic XML responses to requests on port 51408, and the mobile app has no idea that I'm faking WMC. Pretty cool.

I'm able to get past the first challenge, selecting a disc for playback, but my fake response for starting playback on the selected disc actually crashes the mobile app. Since it's not documented what response the app is looking for, I'm stuck there until Brian can provide guidance on correct API responses for that command.

The really cool part is that the info coming from the app is more than sufficient to start playback in CMC - this would be super easy!!!

There's more commands to work through, some of which should control the player and not CMC (i.e. Pause, Next Chapter, etc.). For these, I'm thinking that my new remote control monitor app is the perfect solution. In addition to monitoring input from MCE RC6 remote control, it could also be responsible for monitoring input from the Android/iOS mobile app, and issuing out commands as appropriate. I wasn't expecting this to be a kismet moment.
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Teddyboy
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Re: Considering New App - Hotkey Monitor

Post by Teddyboy » Thu Feb 18, 2021 3:56 pm

That’s really cool! It doesn’t appear to be as bad as you had originally thought. Looks like your remote control monitoring app can be a really useful conduit for more than just remote control of CMC. This is super cool. If this proves out, it will make me take another look at the iOS app. As I mentioned earlier I didn’t have much use for it until now. Did you post in the MM thread asking for more information?

Edit: I see that you have been posting in that thread. This is so exciting!
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