Essentials plugin for HouseBot?

kbosscawen · Post by **kbosscawen** » Wed Feb 16, 2005 9:47 am

As one that is probably lumped into the "complainer" group, I think I can say that some evidence of progress (e.g., a limited beta group) may just shut us up! :shock:

...for a little while, anyway.....

osetivo · Post by **osetivo** » Wed Feb 16, 2005 12:39 pm

I have an idea, how about a demo site.

Maybe Alan C. will open up a port or 2 and let us play with his movies, music, lights, HVAC, and Alarm systems. All he needs to do is convince the family "It's for a good cause." :twisted:

NOTE: I was only brave enough to change the TiVo channels at home remotely from the office... ONCE. Believe me once was enough.

Jeff_boulogne · Post by **Jeff_boulogne** » Thu Feb 17, 2005 10:45 am

well well ... anyway, a chance to see that pluggin from meedio that days ? (months ???

) ?

paran0id · Post by **paran0id** » Sun Mar 06, 2005 9:00 pm

Any progress report someone from the meedio team would like to share with us?

acheslow · Post by **acheslow** » Mon Mar 07, 2005 8:57 am

Nope, we'll post one here when there is anything to report.

paran0id · Post by **paran0id** » Mon Mar 07, 2005 8:58 am

Ok.. Just checking to see that the project is still alive..

Crashless · Post by **Crashless** » Mon Mar 07, 2005 2:55 pm

If you wait, it will come. :roll:

Meedio bought Housebot with the intention of creating a total solution for the home.

This integration plugin WILL be made. It's just a matter of time.

paran0id · Post by **paran0id** » Mon Mar 07, 2005 3:04 pm

Reason I asked is because I started setting up housebot with girder

to make it work..

And I wanted to know if a release was in the near future, in which case I

would have waited for it instead of putting hours into hb/girder

Steve Horn · Post by **Steve Horn** » Mon Mar 07, 2005 8:38 pm

Paran0id (or anyone else),

In light of the unavailability in the near term of a plug-in for HB and Essentials, can you explain how Girder fits in as an alternative? I don't know much at all about girder other than, as I recall, its a "keystroke emulator" type of app. Is that essentially (no pun intended) how it could be used to integrate HB with Winamp for example? (I'm still searching for the Holy Grail of juke box functionality through HB.). At this rate I may have to revisit trying to get Jim McDougall's Jukebot to work on my server.

thanks,

Crashless · Post by **Crashless** » Mon Mar 07, 2005 8:50 pm

If you're looking to control a jukebox with a PPC, take a look at netremote. I see a lot of satisfied users on the j.river media center boards that use the netremote music software.

It even lets you control audio zones.

My theoretical system setup (basically a continually updating system expansion diagram) has that to control things. I believe I'll be able to use housebot to switch on a zone, then launch the netremote to control that zone.

Hopefully, I'll be able to use a number of PPCs w/ housebot s/w remote and netremote to control every audio zone in my house from any remote.

The trick will be to automatically switch back and forth between netremote and housebot on the PPC.

That said...what's jukebot?

Steve Horn · Post by **Steve Horn** » Mon Mar 07, 2005 9:07 pm

Thanks; I'll take a look at netremote.

Jukebot is a HB plugin that integrates a HB front-end theme with the Winamp player (through the HB winamp plugin) and uses a MS access database back-end (supported by a custom library build/search app in VB I suspect) to supply the library/playlist functionality. The user selects artist,album, track, etc. through the HB theme using dropdowns. The selection is fed to a Winamp agent running on the HB server. I never could get it to work in my environment, but others did. So obviously I had something set up incorrectly. If HB/Essentials is going to be awhile I need to revisit that issue. The author of Jukebot is Jim McDougall (aka Circe640). I don't know if the plugin is still available, since its pre-Meedio, and as I recall there were "licensing issues" with one of the components. I lost track of the status of that. Jim may be able to supply you with the install pkg.

eirikso · Post by **eirikso** » Fri Mar 18, 2005 10:27 am

I am also here waiting for the Essentials - HB connection. I like to have things integrated and find it quite time consuming to semi-home brew from lots of different packages.

But, I need to control my music from a lot of devices NOW, and this is what I use while the Meedio team is working hard:

Meedio + J River Media Center + J River Plugin for Meedio + NetRemote

This gives me the possibility to control my music from my PDA, my laptop, my touch screen in the kitchen, all the other computers in my home, and of course from Meedio and the remote in the living room...

You can read more about this solution here:

http://www.eirikso.com/?p=79

Steve Horn · Post by **Steve Horn** » Fri Mar 18, 2005 7:22 pm

Eirikso,

Thanks for the tour and explanation of netremote and J River Media Center. I had pulled down the descriptions from their web sites, but before I got into them I stumbled across the HB Winamp plugin & sample theme that I'm experimenting with now. And I havent given up on Jukebot either. Like, you, I want to be able to launch a playlist or single track from one from any one of several HB remotes. It just like its just a matter of which media server (Winamp, J River, or eventually Meedio Essentials) one wants to work with. The Winamp plugin doesn't appear to control as much of the winamp client as I would like. I haven't been able to select a track at random from a playlist yet (like you can with native Winamp). But I'm still working with the sample theme... and may be overlooking something. Can the J River/netremote combination display a list of tacks in a play list and allow you to jump to a specific track?

thanks,

Kosh · Post by **Kosh** » Fri Mar 18, 2005 7:59 pm

Working on my own similar plugin, but its just as complicated almost :)

(Called ToothControl, just to have a name on it :)

Meedio -> ToothControlMee Plugin (Meedio Plugin) ->ToothControl Server -> Client (PDA, Sony Ericsson mobile phone etc.)

Prototype:

It doesnt really look nice atm, and limited options, but currently I can do mostly anything I want regarding adding,deleting from playlist, browsing through my music (the Meedio database), forward/rewind, change volume, play/stop/pause. Nice to see a list of 1000 artists show up on the PDA. And using the .NET Compact Framework the client program can be easily run on standard windows os.

Of course, Netremote can mostly do thing better, but nothing is as funny to be able to do it yourself.

Crashless · Post by **Crashless** » Fri Mar 18, 2005 8:43 pm

If I'm looking that those pics right, you've done two amazing things:

1. Remoted the media library. Something Meedio Inc. has said is very far off...

2. Used bluetooth instead of wifi, which saves HUGE on batteries.

Are these right?