MythTV

I had this as part of another topic, but it got focused on the other half of my question.

Is there any ability to control MythTV front-ends via IP, using Roomie? It's probably a bigger market than XBMC, and it's a really robust set of controls via IP. There are some third-party MythTV-only apps out there, but I'm hoping Roomie can be my single home automation app.

Thanks in advance for any help or advice!

Is this the interface you're referring to?

mythtv.org/wiki/Frontend_control_socket

That looks very easy (also very basic) to add as a custom device:

<p class="p1">roomieremote.com/faq/#customDevice</p>

<p class="p1">Is there a more advanced integration point as well that you know of?</p>

<p class="p1">Thank you.</p>

That's the integration I'm aware of. It's really full featured, with key presses to control the actual UI, and then lots of direct functions.

The issue with some of that is it's two-way, so for example, you get a list of the programs, display it, then pick one and play that one (ideally).

But at a minimum, having a couple of the direct buttons (now playing, manage recordings, delete, etc.), and then the main keys (arrow, page), would be awesome.

Is that something Roomie is planning/could do? If not, how hard is the DDK to use (I didn't download it yet)?

Okay, I can't get this to work. The IP control has some extra chatter that might be confusing things? Here's a sample:

# Marks-MacBook-Pro:~ mark$ telnet <ip address> 6546

Trying <ip>...

Connected to <ip>.

Escape character is '^]'.

MythFrontend Network Control

Type 'help' for usage information

---------------------------------

# help

Valid Commands:

---------------

jump - Jump to a specified location in Myth

key - Send a keypress to the program

play - Playback related commands

query - Queries

set - Changes

screenshot - Capture screenshot

message - Display a simple text message

exit - Exit Network Control

&nbsp;

Type 'help COMMANDNAME' for help on any specific command.

# jump statusbox

OK

#

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So I set up a plist file that looks like this:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>

<!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN" "http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd">

<plist version="1.0">

<array>

<dict>

<key>codes</key>

<dict>

<key>Server Status</key>

<string>jump statusbox</string>

<key>Now Playing List</key>

<string>jump playbackbox</string>

</dict>

<key>method</key>

<string>binary-ack</string>

<key>brand</key>

<string>MythTV</string>

<key>cat</key>

<string>MythTV Front End</string>

<key>type</key>

<integer>13</integer>

</dict>

</array>

</plist>

&nbsp;

And nothing happens when I load the remote into Roomie and press one of those two keys. Any ideas?

FWIW, I tried lineio, lineio-crlf, binary, and binary-ack. None of them changed anything and none worked.

&nbsp;

Never mind - successive restores from dropbox don't seem to replace the custom plist. I restored to another iPad, and it works now. (I confirmed this by changing the names of one of the commands and not seeing it come through.)

I'm using lineio-crlf right now, but other types might work.

I'll hopefully figure out a way to successively restore updated plists from DB though!

&nbsp;

Okay got it mostly working. For anyone interested, I've got the plist file and would be happy to post it somewhere.

The one thing I don't think I can do through the DDK is retrieve a list of programs from MythTV, and allow them to be picked from the Roomie UI? Can anyone confirm?

We're deploying a forum upgrade in the next couple of days with attachment support which should make this simpler.

We didn't see a command to retrieve advanced information like that from MythTV, but if you have a pointer just let us know. Building a guide for something like that is something we'd have to do.

Thank you.

The relevant commands for that are:

• “query recordings” (returns a complete list of recordings)

• “play FILENAME”

• (possibly) “play program CHANID yyyy-MM-ddThh:mm:ss”

• (and) ”play program CHANID yyyy-MM-ddThh:mm:ss resume”

I can test the last two if you want. Another one to look at for Myth is the full guide data. I’ve noticed that the guide data built in to Roomie doesn’t quite match what is in MythTV. There is a built-in command to get the guide data out of Myth:

• “query liveTV” (at least for current live TV info, not future info)

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