Network Control

[PeteK]

Hello--

I was wondering if there were any plans for adding network control of the player (like Tivo did for their HD box) to allow for higher-level home automation control of the player. I thought I had seen something indicating that this was a feature being considered for a future release, but I haven't seen anything about it lately. I appreciate the help.

Thanks!

-Peter

[eri3k]

You should be able to telnet into the player on port 8080 of the Roku's IP address. Here are the commands to control the player (you really only need to use the first letter of the button):

press up
press down
press left
press right
press select
press home
press fwd
press back
press pause

I don't know whether this works for version 1.5 of the software. If you do wind up making something, let me know what you come up with.

[PeteK]

Interesting. Thanks for that information! I'm working with it in conjunction with LinuxMCE (http://www.linuxmce.com) an open-source home control application. Currently, I'm controlling it via a USB UIRT, but if it can be controlled this way instead, it would be a much cleaner solution. If anyone from Roku can say whether this would continue to be supported (or if there are plans to change or expand the interface), I'd greatly appreciate it.

Thanks,
-Peter

[pjoshua5000]

You should be able to telnet into the player on port 8080 of the Roku's IP address. Here are the commands to control the player (you really only need to use the first letter of the button):

press up
press down
press left
press right
press select
press home
press fwd
press back
press pause

I don't know whether this works for version 1.5 of the software. If you do wind up making something, let me know what you come up with.

What is the "back" button. Do you mean "rew"
Also what is this suppose to do. I can't seem to get it to work.

[booyah5]

It would be cool if they added a lite http interface as well.

[jeffrok]

You should be able to telnet into the player on port 8080 of the Roku's IP address. Here are the commands to control the player (you really only need to use the first letter of the button):

press up
press down
press left
press right
press select
press home
press fwd
press back
press pause

I don't know whether this works for version 1.5 of the software. If you do wind up making something, let me know what you come up with.

What is the "back" button. Do you mean "rew"
Also what is this suppose to do. I can't seem to get it to work.

This lets you send remote control keypresses thru a telnet session to the player.. So you could essentially create sequences to send from your computer.. For instance maybe one day your remote control breaks and you don't have any other choice but to use your laptop or something to control the Roku. You could do it thru a telnet session (poorly, but you could still do it).

[rmuziani]

Has anybody got this to work, I tried, I keep getting, Can Not Connect. Timed Out.
Thanks

[RokuMarkn]

If anyone from Roku can say whether this would continue to be supported (or if there are plans to change or expand the interface), I'd greatly appreciate it.

This is not an officially supported feature, although there are no current plans to change or expand the interface. However I'd recommend you use the full name rather than just the first letter, just in case more options are added later.

--Mark

[booyah5]

I'd expect someone will cobble together a very light web server with a simple illustration of the Roku's remote and by clicking the buttons on screen it will in the background telnet in and run the commands (or series of commands).

[PeteK]

This is not an officially supported feature, although there are no current plans to change or expand the interface. However I'd recommend you use the full name rather than just the first letter, just in case more options are added later.

--Mark

Thanks, Mark! I appreciate the response.

-Peter

[Saqqara]

for what it is worth, this works from the free iphone telnet client Mocha Telnet Lite.

enter the IP address of your Roku. Port 8080. Change terminal type to xterm, name the profile roku

in settings set local echo on, swap lf to crlf on.

I imagine there is a way to create an iphone application which does all this behind the scenes with an image of the remote on the touchscreen. It would make a great complement to the existing iphone application Instant Queue Add for Netflix.

[jondecker76]

This is good information.

The only thing that would make this better, would be if there were a command to start a movie directly (either by some ID key, or offset position from the first movie)

Are there any other commands besides the simulate remote keypress commands?

thanks

Jon

[eri3k]

I got tired of waiting for someone else to write a Roku telnet remote GUI, but was too lazy to whip up something from scratch. So I instead shamelessly appropriated the code for William McBrine's exceptional TiVo Series 3 network remote, stripped out large tracts that did not suit my purpose, and in no time at all I had a kludgy-yet-functional Roku telnet remote.

In order to use it you must have Python installed on your system. You can get the software here:
http://www.python.org/download/

Once you have Python, you can download the Roku GUI here:
http://dl.getdropbox.com/u/823516/Roku_Remote.zip

You can run the program directly from the zipped file, or extract it wherever you want. In order to use the interface you must enter the Roku player's IP address. If your Roku has a static IP address and you don't want to enter it each time you start the interface, just use your favorite text editor to assign the Roku's IP address to the global variable roku_address at line 28.

This was a 15-minute exercise so the code is not properly commented by any stretch of the imagination. Anyone who wants to take it and clean it up is welcome to it.

[Saqqara]

Thanks! Great stuff.

I know python can be used for web scripting. Can this code be presented as a web page? Perhaps an html forms (or a cute zoned image) with buttons representing those on the remote, submitting back to itself to play the command? Keeping the page very small so that it can be viewed in an iphone or other mobile browser.

Such a page would have to be hosted inside the nat, or telnet mapped through the nat to the user's Roku if someone hosted it elsewhere on the web.

I know just enough to know it would take me an awful long time to learn what I need to get this done and someone who does this kind of thing could do it in 15 minutes. So I'm just putting a bug in the ear of any similarly obsessed but better skilled reader.

[Saqqara]

This is good information.

The only thing that would make this better, would be if there were a command to start a movie directly (either by some ID key, or offset position from the first movie)

Are there any other commands besides the simulate remote keypress commands?

thanks

Jon

I wonder if this could reliably be done by calculating the number of forward and right commands to get to the queue position of that movie, then executing them all. Or if it is closer to the end, use back and left commands. Not ideal, but it might work better over telnet than an IR macro does.

Cool that this python application makes the secret screen easy to access. I suppose we could test how fast and reliably such a scheme would work by repurposing that button.

Again, if we can get this to a web application, we could perhaps integrate a feed of the netflix queue to jump to that movie. It might do so slowly and by visibly scrolling.