Author Topic: Android remote  (Read 93217 times)

aidanw

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this topic is closed - a plugin has been created by Kelsos on this topic:
http://getmusicbee.com/forum/index.php?topic=7221.0







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I'm considering developing an Android remote for MB and would like to know how much interest there is in this first.

Must have features:
- Skip/play/pause basic controls
- Display currently playing song information
- Mute & volume control

Want features:
- Display current playlist
- 5-star rating
- Search Music Library for song or playlist and add to now playing
- Widget for home screen

Nice to have features:
- Edit playlist, re-order
- "Find More by Artist/Album/etc"
- Links to song information
- Display lyrics

I'd be targeting this at Android 2.1+ and support QVGA+ devices.
It would connect over WiFi.

As MB doesn't have a web services API this would require either a plugin or app to run on the PC running MB.
The use-case for this would most likely be where the PC is acting as a music server.

Welcome any suggestions/feedback/signs of interest. Cheers
Last Edit: August 27, 2012, 01:10:31 PM by Steven

thegreyspot

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Hey fish,

I to was thinking about this. And i would love to help.

I started off thinking about making it for android, but then i figured, why not just make it a webserver that hosts an html page. Then any device can use it....
Then we could make a simple android app that just embeds the website with webview...

Steven

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i've uploaded a portion of some code i had implemented to have MB run as a server
http://www.mediafire.com/?80m6pn3sj4d48sd
i ditched the idea in the end as i thought its more appropriate it be done in a plugin but it might be useful to you as a starting point - keep in mind i was new to socket programming so there might be better ways to do the things
Last Edit: April 04, 2011, 09:03:50 AM by Steven

john6555

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I have been dreaming about something like this!

kelsos

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I was planning on making TCP socket based client/server application for remote control with windows mobile 6 since that's the OS of my current phone, still I plan on getting an android device later so I ll try later to make an android version too. Still I am new to the Socket programming stuff so I have to get more resources and read some more stuff... I currently postponed it for a while, but soon I ll start again... The code portion could prove really useful, thanks Steven.

aidanw

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i've uploaded a portion of some code i had implemented to have MB run as a server
http://www.mediafire.com/?80m6pn3sj4d48sd
i ditched the idea in the end as i thought its more appropriate it be done in a plugin but it might be useful to you as a starting point - keep in mind i was new to socket programming so there might be better ways to do the things


Thanks Steven, appreciate the code.. will check it out and see what I can do with it

aidanw

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I was planning on making TCP socket based client/server application for remote control with windows mobile 6 since that's the OS of my current phone, still I plan on getting an android device later so I ll try later to make an android version too. Still I am new to the Socket programming stuff so I have to get more resources and read some more stuff... I currently postponed it for a while, but soon I ll start again... The code portion could prove really useful, thanks Steven.

As a suggestion, there could be many components to a "Mobile Remote", and several people could work on it at once:

1) MB Plugin that provides .NET => Web Services (SOAP/REST) wrapper and runs in background while MB is running
2) Windows Mobile client connecting to web services
3) Android client connecting to web services

I prefer web services as they give really generic access... but if someone wants to say why sockets should be better I'm not closed minded :)


aidanw

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Hey fish,

I to was thinking about this. And i would love to help.

I started off thinking about making it for android, but then i figured, why not just make it a webserver that hosts an html page. Then any device can use it....
Then we could make a simple android app that just embeds the website with webview...

That's a good idea, the WebView's I've used take longer to start up and I think the idea of a remote should be really lite and quick so it can open quickly. However that could just be they weren't written well :D

I think my reason for avoiding this is running a web server has it's own security, updates, privilege issues. I guess running web services doesn't avoid all of these either but should be more secure.

Steven

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i've uploaded a portion of some code i had implemented to have MB run as a server
http://www.mediafire.com/?80m6pn3sj4d48sd
i ditched the idea in the end as i thought its more appropriate it be done in a plugin but it might be useful to you as a starting point - keep in mind i was new to socket programming so there might be better ways to do the things


Thanks Steven, appreciate the code.. will check it out and see what I can do with it
musicbee runs each plugin in its own thread (so it cant interfere with the usability of the GUI) - so you could probably get rid of listener thread if you do use it

thegreyspot

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So ya, if you need any kind of webbased project management tool setup or somewhere to store svns, just let me know and I can set one up on my server. Please let me know what I can do to help :)

royalcs

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maybe take a look at the itunes Digital Audio Control Protocol DACP.  this way we would have all the remote control apps allready for android, ios etc. plus you can search the library etc.
I dont know how hard it is to  use the DACP . but i would love to see something similar like this on musicbee.
I used monkeytunes, for media monkey, wich is a free 20 day trail. so you could check it out with mediamonkey. There are free DACP plugins for songbird called Telescope and foo_touchremote for foobar2000.   One Android app is called "tunesRemote+" and its free.

please check it out
edit: i would like to point out that it has all the functionality you where talking about
Last Edit: May 01, 2011, 02:49:03 PM by royalcs

Steven

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WiR3D

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I dont have the time now, but if by  end October its still not done ill climb onboard.
Im busy doing 2 android based projects concurrently now, not little things either, and some heavy server involvement.

So ill keep tabs.
I would love this to be pulled off.

Also i would love it if i could stream music through musicbee on my PC onto my phone over wifi.
And view all my playlists and my entire library then just hit play.

But lets leave that for when i get involved late October for v2, i by then will also have a working JSON server with an android client.

But plz guys lets get this puppy rolling, i have big hopes for this

MasterP

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let me show some interest for this :)

if possible it would be nice if it could also display album art (optional)

my android programming skills are quite low but i could help with some GUI layouts...
Last Edit: September 05, 2011, 07:13:50 PM by MasterP

Hebbe

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Maybe overkill but if you are really fond of your couch then a wake on lan function could be handy.