Site update and oath to blog more

I’ve just completed a complete site update, as this site had become a bit neglected over the past few months (maybe nearly a year). University took over a huge part of my life during the last year, with major deadlines for my final year project, dissertation, module projects and essays. This lead to a lot of things that I had started up, like this blog and even my baby (RokuRemote), getting left to one side.

However, I have now seen the light at the end of the tunnel and even travelled through it! My free time has slowly increased as I’ve learnt to adapt to the world of work and relationships. I therefore (and I’m sure you’ve heard this on many peoples blogs before) have decided to take an oath with myself to try and blog regularly from now on, to gather and express my experiences whether it be as a developer or just in the normal day-t0-day goings of life. Call it my New-Years resolution (being I didn’t create one this year).

I hope whatever I post over the coming months will be helpful for someone out there, even if its just for me to keep a diary of the many different things I get up to.

Chris

RokuRemote Update

Hi guys/gals, sorry its been a long time since the last post. Many things have happened since then.

Anyways, I just wanted to drop a line anout the next update to RokuRemote.

As you are probably aware, the lyrics service I was using within RokuRemote has stopped working due to licensing issues.This has now also happened to the album artwork service as well. So you will have to bare with me until the update is pushed out for these to be fixed.

The update is being coded as fast as possible (without neglecting quality), but is taking sometime due to the re-write of the code from the ground up. I decided to do this as version 3.0 of the iPhone software made some very big changes into the way that networking is dealt with, and by re-coding the remote to use this new infrastructure will mean a much more reliable connection to your Roku device. Also, the method in which song/album/artist etc… lists are retrieved from the Roku device has been changed to a sync method. This will mean when you access your libraries the first time will take sometime while a sync takes place, but from then on afterwards library access will be instant, which you will hopefully find a much better way to use the remote.

As for timescale on the update, I have set dates several times but due to life pressures and the fact I do this in my spare time all I can tell you is that the update is coming, it is being coded and it will be released free of charge to people who have already bought the app. All I can ask is for your patience please and hopefully in the end you’ll like the end product!

RokuRemote v1.1 Released

Finally, after a coding cock-up by me (bloody null-pointers) and waiting for apple to give the check-over, v1.1 is now available to download through the iTunes App Store. For those who have v1.0, you should be able to find the update in your app store update view (and of course all updates are free!!!!)

Below is a list of features added for version 1.1, I hope you enjoy it as much as I do!

- Auto-discovery of Roku devices, as well as manual add via IP addressing
- Play internet radio favourites
- Preset and FM/AM radio controls
- Artist -> Album -> Song workflow
- Song lyrics (Requires internet connection)
- Artwork and lyrics caching
- Custom album artwork selection from your photo album
- Switch alarms on/off
- Toggle sleep time (Off – 90 mins)
- Tracks ordering preserved
- General bugs and speed fixes

Screenshots

Bonjour Greatness

Well after a fun and exciting day, it was pointed out to me that I could use bonjour to automatically discover roku devices and make the setup process even easier.

So I went off on my web travels and started messing about, seeing how bonjour worked and how I could use it in my app. When I final found the “good-stuff”, I was amazed at the simplicity of the code required:

NSNetServiceBrowser *browser = [[NSNetServiceBrowser alloc] init];
[browser setDelegate:self];
[browser searchForServicesOfType:@"_roku-rcp._tcp." inDomain:@"local."];

Basically, this tells the app to find any roku services on the local network, all in 3 lines!!! And for the delegate method:

- (void)netServiceBrowser:(NSNetServiceBrowser *)aNetServiceBrowser didFindService:(NSNetService *)aNetService moreComing:(BOOL)moreComing {
if([aNetService getInputStream:&iStream outputStream:&oStream]) {
//open streams
} else {
//close streams
}
}

All the hard work of fetching streams, finding and setting port and host/ip data is all done for you. Once the streams have been opened and delegated your ready to go

RokuRemote Released

Well might as well start this blog with a bang!

I have been developing an iPod Touch/iPhone remote application to control Roku music devices and it has finally been accepted by apple today for release.

So far feedback has been great!

To keep up with developments of new features, please visit the roku forums