iPhone and XBMC

msmith2112 said:

Ok, I'm not sure how many of you will be interested in this idea, but I suspect quite a few of you may.

I own a modded Xbox running Xbox Media Center. One of the features of XBMC is that you can remotely control the music/movies/etc. from a web interface.

I would LOVE to see an iPhone-optimized web interface that controls my XBMC. That way, I can use my iPhone as a remote control from anywhere within my wireless network.

Would anyone else have an interest in this? I don't know much about writing html, but I can supply my graphic design talents if needed.

Click to expand...

HELL YES. I was actually just using the standard one on my iPhone yesterday, but its pretty crappy. It works ok but it's ugly and doesn't fit the screen very well. An optimized version would be awesome.

I can do HTML, JavaScript, and basic CSS.

This looks like a good place to start: http://www.xboxmediacenter.com/wiki/index.php?title=WebServerHTTP-API

It talks about the different things we can do from the web interface.

msmith2112 said:

I'm willing to help in any way I can! Again, I don't know much about the "coding" aspect of things, but I can definitely make it "pretty" looking. Do you think others would be interested? Maybe I could start a post at XBMC's forums?

I haven't purchased my iPhone yet ($), but if we could get this feature going, I would hurriedly get one!

Click to expand...

This shouldn't be too hard. If you want to start putting together a mockup of what it should look like, I'll start on the coding part.

As far as the look of it goes, I think it should look as much like a native iPhone app as possible. Another decision we should make it whether it should be in landscape or portrait mode. Or perhaps switch between the two (landscape for standard play/pause/stop/next/previous controls, portrait for browsing files.

Do you know where we can get iPhone-like gui controls, like the buttons and stuff?

cheesy said:

Do you know where we can get iPhone-like gui controls, like the buttons and stuff?

Click to expand...

Just came across this link today.

This would be very handy!

So, tonight I hacked together a basic version of file browsing for XMBC.

EDIT: It works pretty well now. You can browse all your video, music, photo, and file shares, and play any file by tapping it.

Obviously it's a screenshot of it running on Mac OS X, since there's no way to do iPhone screenshots (yet!), but of course it runs fine on the iPhone too.

The interface is mostly iui:

http://code.google.com/p/iui/
http://joehewitt.com/

What I need right now is for someone to make a nice looking set of transport controls (play/pause/stop/next/previous/etc). I don't know if we should have file browsing in portrait, and transport controls in landscape, or what (it's pretty easy to use JavaScript to detect change in orientation)

that looks great!

any furthur progress?

Yeah it's going pretty well. I'll post here when it's ready to be released.

Oh wow, this is exactly what I've been looking for. Bookmarked

Any way to have XBMC scripts incorporated into this. I'd love to be able to listen to Howard Stern on my iPhone via the XBMC Sirius script.

davpel said:

Any way to have XBMC scripts incorporated into this. I'd love to be able to listen to Howard Stern on my iPhone via the XBMC Sirius script.

Click to expand...

An easier way would be to setup something like Nicecast on your computer and then stream from there:

http://rogueamoeba.com/nicecast/

Maybe tie in Remote Buddy:

http://www.iospirit.com/index.php?m...de=infogroup-23&o1_infogroup_objcode=html-141

Xbox Media Center iPhone Remote v0.1!

Alright, it's finally here! Check it out:

http://tlrobinson.net/projects/xbmciphone/

It's still a little buggy but it works quite well. kaidomac is working on better transport controls, too.

Please try it out if you have Xbox Media Center (works alright with most normal web browsers in addition to the iPhone) and let me know how it goes.

Use the fancy web installer if you can, I need someone to test it out.

Please leave feedback!

cheesy has done a really excellent job on this! I am designing some xbmc-specific transport controls especially for landscape mode. I got my iPhone activated today so now I can physically test the controls and get things rolling on my end. A video of the XBMC-iPhone interface is below; the version in the video is slightly older than the current one but you get the idea. It's 17 megs and you may need Perian/VLC to play the video since it's straight off my digital camera:

http://orionmods.com/temp/xbmc-iphone.avi

Future improvements will include a beefed-up landscape control mode as well as speed improvements and some other top-secret features that we've been hard at work on. Next release with improved landscape transport controls should be available by next weekend. Hope you guys enjoy it!

If you are interested in setting up an Xbox with the AppleTV skin, here's a great A-Z mini-guide I wrote up over at 123MacMini.com:

http://www.123macmini.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=12342&start=15

I also have to commend cheesy on the great piece of work he did on the album/cover art feature. XBMC has the ability to grab CD and DVD covers off of sites like XBMC in order to display a picture of the media on your TV. cheesy's code grabs the thumbnail and displays it right on your iPhone! Simply by hitting the "Now Playing" button (which automatically comes up when you select a new song or video), you can see the album art right on your iPhone. How cool is that?? Here's a pic of my iPhone after selecting the Mel Gibson movie "Maverick":

http://orionmods.com/temp/coverart.jpg

Awesome, awesome work cheesy. XBMC just got even better

This works great guys!! Thanks again.

A tip for all those wanting to run this. Upgrade your XBMC to a newer version, I am not sure what version, but I just upgraded to a very recient on, from a version at least 1 year old(which this app did not work with)

One issue I am having, is I can play, add to play lists and all that just fine if I navigate to the files from the "files" on the home screen of this app.
when I click video under the media menu on the home screen, and then click Videos(to go to the vidoes folder on the hard drive) nothing happens.

Using XBMC normally with controller, going from home screen, to videos, to videos again, shows what is in the folder.
I can get to all my stuff, as I said before by just using the files button on the home screen of thus web app, but I would like to bring it up as an issue I am at least having.

This app rocks and can't thank you enough except that I will be using a lot, to say the least!

Thanks you guys!


EDIT: also, when I added a video file to a playlist through the web interface, it added the file to the slideshow playlist. And could not play the file via the slide show playlist.

Schmoe0013 said:

This works great guys!! Thanks again.

Click to expand...

Added to the bug list, thanks!

Found one more potential bug. You can only use the landscape controls from the index (home) screen. The other places, the controls show up in landscape mode but you can not click them.

Schmoe0013 said:

Found one more potential bug. You can only use the landscape controls from the index (home) screen. The other places, the controls show up in landscape mode but you can not click them.

Click to expand...

Yup, that's a known bug. Any CSS gurus know how to force absolutely positioned elements in front of non-absolutely positioned elements? I tried setting z-index to a high number (1000) but it appears z-index only applies to absolutely positioned elements, and the file browse pages aren't.

i fixed the playlist issue. It had to due with bad shortcuts grandfathered in when i updated XBMC.

Great program, I just need to clean up my shortcuts!! heh