Posted by: MarkHarrison
Web control - 04/04/2002 04:01
OK, my first post here, so be gentle with me ;-)
I'd like to see the Receivers controllable with a "proper" web iterface. I have the displayserver hack already, so I can have web control, but it's clunky to use. What I want is a web page that presents a list of tracks / albums / playlists, and lets me "click" on one to play.
I've been thinking about how to do this, and I see two distinct options.
1: A web server served by the Rio that made a request to the Music Server for, say, a list of artists, and then displayed that list back to a web page (while outputting something basic like "Web Control" onto the internal display.) Each of the artists was a hotlink to a list of tracks (including a "play all" dummy track.)...
2: A web server that ran on the _music_ server, and presented the artists (etc.) in an HTML page, but next to each track (including the "play all") was a button for EACH actual Receiver being served. The buttons would act as a link that sent a request to the Rio Receiver in one of two ways:
2a: It could send a web request that logically said "play this track - Meat Loaf - rock and roll hero".
2b: It could send a web request that logically said "simulate the following key presses - menu - down - select - down - select - 1[abc] - select - down - down - down".... This would be slower to respond to, but probably easier to implement since generating the key sets is straightforward (see, for example the Perl used by the "generate a Pronto CCF"), and, AIUI, a relatively minor change to the receiver.arf to allow the IR simulations to tee in at the right place.
To answer the inevitable question "why not just use a PC".... well, I have several PCs, 5 Receivers, but only 1 Pronto. I also have (on order) a touch screen tablet PC with a wireless network card. It would be nice to be able to sit at one end of my sitting room, and pick the preferred track on the wireless tablet... I could do THIS with additional Prontos, but I'd rather get an extra 4 wireless tablets, which would be generically useful web browsing machines, than extra Prontos.
Regards,
Mark
I'd like to see the Receivers controllable with a "proper" web iterface. I have the displayserver hack already, so I can have web control, but it's clunky to use. What I want is a web page that presents a list of tracks / albums / playlists, and lets me "click" on one to play.
I've been thinking about how to do this, and I see two distinct options.
1: A web server served by the Rio that made a request to the Music Server for, say, a list of artists, and then displayed that list back to a web page (while outputting something basic like "Web Control" onto the internal display.) Each of the artists was a hotlink to a list of tracks (including a "play all" dummy track.)...
2: A web server that ran on the _music_ server, and presented the artists (etc.) in an HTML page, but next to each track (including the "play all") was a button for EACH actual Receiver being served. The buttons would act as a link that sent a request to the Rio Receiver in one of two ways:
2a: It could send a web request that logically said "play this track - Meat Loaf - rock and roll hero".
2b: It could send a web request that logically said "simulate the following key presses - menu - down - select - down - select - 1[abc] - select - down - down - down".... This would be slower to respond to, but probably easier to implement since generating the key sets is straightforward (see, for example the Perl used by the "generate a Pronto CCF"), and, AIUI, a relatively minor change to the receiver.arf to allow the IR simulations to tee in at the right place.
To answer the inevitable question "why not just use a PC".... well, I have several PCs, 5 Receivers, but only 1 Pronto. I also have (on order) a touch screen tablet PC with a wireless network card. It would be nice to be able to sit at one end of my sitting room, and pick the preferred track on the wireless tablet... I could do THIS with additional Prontos, but I'd rather get an extra 4 wireless tablets, which would be generically useful web browsing machines, than extra Prontos.
Regards,
Mark
