HouseBot

Scott,



I am trying to setup my HT system and have, in the past, checked out HouseBot. I am trying to figure out if it will serve my purposes. So, I have a couple of questions.



First - Can I select albums or playlists from the remote? If so, how is it done? What would the interface be? Can Album/DVD covers be displayed on the remote display?



Second - I have 4 Rio Receivers that I can synch for whole house audio. I control them via a Java applet. Can the software remote run a popup window with a Java applet?



I am hoping to use the software remotes in different rooms to control audio in those zones.



Am I close :) ?



Sam

Sam,



HouseBot comes with support for WinAmp and playlists (using WinAmp). There is a sample configuration download on the web site that illustrates this setup. It doesn't select 'albums', but you could create a playlist that includes all of the tracks on the album.



As far as displaying the album covers... with that last version I added an option for dynamic images (images that can be updated on the remote). You could use this control to implement something to display album covers, but it would require some scripting to bring it all together. At some point, I'll probably implement some kind of media management that will bring together the media player, playlists, tracks, and album images into a single Device. I haven't given it any though yet, as it's further down the list right now.



There is a Theme Control for executing an application on the Software Remote. You may be able to call a java applet through the Java Run Time or IE... (at the end of my Java knowledge), but I don't know. I would suggest controlling the Rio Receivers from the HouseBot server somehow. This way you only have one place to configure/interface between the systems instead of at each remote.



HouseBot is very flexible, but also somewhat limited in support for a wide variety of devices "out of the box". Whenever you need something that isn't supported, it can generally be done with a bit of scripting or by writing a new Device plugin. I realize that most people don't know or want to go that route, but it's difficult to include support for every possible device and configuration.



Hope his helps,

Scott

Scott,



Thanks for the amazingly quick response :)



I will experiment further. I like the flexibility of Housebot, but it does take time and I am not into programming at all :)



Sam