HouseBot

Ok, been trying to make this thing usable, and it really does ALMOST work. However, there are a few usability issues that I think could be addressed- they're either features or bugs, so I'll call them features (free program you know!)



Ok, this is all CE client stuff...



1) if you power off the device or it powers itself off, when running the swremote.exe, on power on you must exit and then re-enter the app for it to talk to the server - this must be a networking thing (I've done CE coding, your socket is closed on powerdown since the cf card goes away, then on powerup you're not detecting or are not recovering from the socket error)



Suggestion - try UDP messages from client to server - udp rocks for this kinda stuff, and works 'connectionless' so it is a little lighter weight on the ce batteries. Also either detect poweron (there is a window event for it) or attempt to reconnect to the server if you do lose connection.



2) would be nice if I could minimize the app on CE.



3) a button that forces you to go into setup mode for ce would be good too (is this done by the menu button? Hmm... need to try that!) - I had to edit the registry to force it to look at a different ip address for the server



4) it might just be me, but button repeat for the hard buttons (left/right/up/down) seems flaky. I have l/r set to volume down/up, u/d set to channel +/- - they work fine as discrete presses but only seem to send one 'press' even when I hold them down.



Still loving the whole thing, thanks for writing it.

When the client is powered off and then back on, it will detect that this has happened and is supposed to reconnect to the server with a new socket. I haven't tested this in a while. I don't use this feature myself because the reconnect takes too long (this is mostly due to the wireless card taking too long to find the AP). I turn off the auto-suspend feature of the client and let the Software Remote engage its 'Soft Sleep' feature. Soft Sleep will turn off the video and REALLY save on power. When leaving soft sleep, all the Software Remote has to do is to turn the video back on because the network connection was never lost. --- Anyway, I'll do some more testing with this after I complete my current project (new plugin). I may look into UDP also.



I'll add minimize on CE to the list. I guess I never added it to the CE software Remote because most CE apps don't minimize.



The 'Menu' Theme Control Button will allow you to get to the configuration. You can also use the /config Set command line option on the SWRemote to bring up the config dialog. Also, if the SWRemote fails to connect to the server, the next time it will display the configuration dialog.



I've never implemented button repeat for the hard buttons. I'll add this to the list too, but it depends on what button events CE sends to me.



Scott