CouchPotato - an iPhone remote app for MediaPortal | Version 1.2 (2011-08-05) (1 Viewer)

[Shukuyen]

hey man a quick question / request (if its not added)

is there any way to control the mouse as in many other iphone apps (hipporemote, airmouse) ? thing is, i usually use firefox when i need to browse on my htpc, currently im using a dinovo mini keyboard + integraged mouse so its not a problem. but i want to fully switch to using couch potato from now on, and without this feature it will be pretty hard or impossible.

or maybe some better way to interface with the webbrowser plugin of MP. it uses numbers to select the hyperlinks so maybe a special screen with some more accessible numbers?

let me know.

pd: any other alternate ideas to browse are also accepted if anyone can think of them.

Hi,

controlling the mouse isn't supported and I don't think it will be. I don't have plans to rebuild those cool remote apps. For everything outside of MediaPortal I am using the app "Mobile Mouse" which works really well.

Regarding your suggestion with a more accessible number keyboard, this is more what I would like to do. I will try to make the keyboard switchable between keys and numbers, that should be ok, right?



@robbo100:

3) is a little tricky because there are all those other controls that need touch input (scroll view on the bottom for descriptions, the image, ...). I thought about how I could implement it but the thought of gestures inbetween the normal controls wasn't very satisfying. I think it wouldn't be fun to use, so we (or I) have to find a better solution here. That's why it isn't in yet.

When pressing the home button whilst watching TV, this seems to take the screen back to the TV Main Menu rather than Home, but it goes to Home from other scenarios. I have not fully tested this yet, and although far better than before, it still doesn't seem to go to the Home screen in all cases.

This could be an issue with the keymap. I am rebuilding my crashed homeserver now, then I can test and hopefully find a fix for that.

If there is one area for improvement, it would be for the shape of the album art to be detected as currently the artwork is stretched or cropped to fit within DVD cover shape/size. This distorts the music cover art and does not give a perfect look.

I think for the small image it's ok like it is now, but fullscreen should respect the image ratio. Will have a look at this, shouldn't be much trouble.

If I were you, I wouldn't bother with the iPad update and would continue working on the iPhone updates only - but then I can't afford an iPad

Hehe, I think there are some users here who see that differently "Is there also an iPad layout?" is the question I am asked most. But don't worry, the iPhone version will only get better by this! Also there are some things I have to address before an iPad version is really useful, like media library browsing ...

An update on this: I am doing some tests how to best tackle the media browsing. There are some technologies I want to use for that (and eventually also the rest of the app) but I have to play around and get used to those first as they are new to me and I want to do it right.

 

[mr viggo]

Have you considered addidng a tv-guide function to couchpotato? I really miss a good way to add recordings in tv sever. Tried ipimp but I'm not happy with the absence of a good and easy viewable tv-guide.

There's a swedish tv app in appstore that has a really good one when you tilt the phone (see second screenshot), but obviously it can't interact with MP I think the app is free so if you have the time have a quick look at it.

 

[Shukuyen]

Have you considered addidng a tv-guide function to couchpotato? I really miss a good way to add recordings in tv sever. Tried ipimp but I'm not happy with the absence of a good and easy viewable tv-guide.

There's a swedish tv app in appstore that has a really good one when you tilt the phone (see second screenshot), but obviously it can't interact with MP I think the app is free so if you have the time have a quick look at it.

Yes at some point this will be possible. I think we can use the TV4Home service to schedule recordings and it should also be possible to read the EPG. Just note that I am only getting into those webservices now, so it may take a while to get this done. Also I think I will try to implement the "static" stuff (series, movies, ...) first and then try to tackle the tv part.

 

[Duglas Nelso]

Hi Guys,
This is the first time I have ever tried posting in a forum. I'm desperately trying to find a solution to a problem I have with this fantastic App. I've installed CouchPotato V 1.2 and Wifiremote 0.4 and it worked perfect first go. However as soon as the iphone goes to sleep and I unlock the phone and enter the App again it will not reconnect with the PC running mediaportal. I've emailed support@couchpotatoapp.net but unfortunalty they couldn't find the problem either. If it wasn't such a good app I'd just give up but I can't leave it be. I've tried it on another PC in the house and I have exactly the same problem.

Please Help!!

Many Thanks
Doug

 

[Shukuyen]

Hi Guys,
This is the first time I have ever tried posting in a forum. I'm desperately trying to find a solution to a problem I have with this fantastic App. I've installed CouchPotato V 1.2 and Wifiremote 0.4 and it worked perfect first go. However as soon as the iphone goes to sleep and I unlock the phone and enter the App again it will not reconnect with the PC running mediaportal. I've emailed support@couchpotatoapp.net but unfortunalty they couldn't find the problem either. If it wasn't such a good app I'd just give up but I can't leave it be. I've tried it on another PC in the house and I have exactly the same problem.

Please Help!!

Many Thanks
Doug

I am pretty sure this is a network issue or something simmilar with Dougs setup. If anyone has an idea please write here, because I am in the dark with this one ...

 

[lolos70]

Hi Shukuyen, this app made a lot of progress to the top, however i have a suggestion:

For the scrolling in the gesture mode when wee move down, for ex, and stay with finger down in the screen, the down button is repeat, and the same for the tree other arrow button.

 

[robbo100]

Hi Guys,
This is the first time I have ever tried posting in a forum. I'm desperately trying to find a solution to a problem I have with this fantastic App. I've installed CouchPotato V 1.2 and Wifiremote 0.4 and it worked perfect first go. However as soon as the iphone goes to sleep and I unlock the phone and enter the App again it will not reconnect with the PC running mediaportal. I've emailed support@couchpotatoapp.net but unfortunalty they couldn't find the problem either. If it wasn't such a good app I'd just give up but I can't leave it be. I've tried it on another PC in the house and I have exactly the same problem.

Please Help!!

Duglas Nelso - Have you tried disabling Bonjour and configuring the connection manually?

For the scrolling in the gesture mode when wee move down, for ex, and stay with finger down in the screen, the down button is repeat, and the same for the tree other arrow button.

Shukuyen - This is a really good point that lolos70 raises. When I was using the app the other day I was thinking exactly the same thing, but I couldn't think of a good way to improve the control, but lolos70's idea is very nice. Perhaps it could be implemented that when you are holding your finger on the screen and the system is scrolling (in what ever direction the initial gesture was), you could speed up or slow down the repeated button presses by moving up/down or left/right whilst continuing to hold after the initial gesture.

For example:

1) Gesture down and hold
2) after a pause of 1 second from the hold, couchpotato then sends a down button press once ever second (causing a downward scroll)
3) after the 1 second hold, after the scrolling has starter, the user can move their finger further down so that there is a linear increase in button repeat speed from 1 per second all the way to 3 button repeats per second at 2 cm finger displacement.
4) If the user moves their finger back towards the initial hold position on the screen the repeat slows to 1 per second (you could even make it that moving further up then moves the cursor in the opposite direction).
5) releasing the hold stops the movement.

The same could be implemented for left and right.

What do you think?

Robbo100

 

[Shukuyen]

lolos70, robbo100,

yes, I thought about that when implementing the gestures.
Sending a "scroll" command is no problem, I already do that when you press and hold an arrow button on the normal remote.

Swipe and hold is a bit more complex. The easy way to do gestures that I use now (GestureRecognizers) determines that a swipe has happened once you lift your finger. It's not a continuous gesture like the pinch-to-zoom gesture but more something like a tap.
To do what you propose (and what I think is a good idea) I would have to handle the swipes myself and I shied away from that But it's worth a try, I think I will tackle this after the first media library browsing step.

A small progress report:
I connected successfully to GMA and displayed a list of tv series. Now I have to plan a clever and reusable structure to navigate all the content, draft and program the UI, load images asynchronically for each item and implement options like "play on mediaportal". By the time I get this done a first version of MPExtended may be released (no pressure, guys ) and I can switch to that.

Conclusion: I am working on the app but it will be some more weeks to get that done properly.

 

[Mike Lowrey]

Shukuyen
If you just started with media browsing you should think about implementing the ui first and abstract the data connection.
And since the whole idea of the new gma implementation is to be more generic (and not bound to a specific database backend) you should also consider making MP specific options hideable(only in regard to media browsing).
This would make the application less bound to MP(1) (e.g. with a MP2 data source in mind)

 

[Shukuyen]

@Shukuyen
If you just started with media browsing you should think about implementing the ui first and abstract the data connection.
And since the whole idea of the new gma implementation is to be more generic (and not bound to a specific database backend) you should also consider making MP specific options hideable(only in regard to media browsing).
This would make the application less bound to MP(1) (e.g. with a MP2 data source in mind)

Hi Mike,

the json data is mapped to objects and should be easy to replace, I think.
What do you mean by "MP specific options"?

Thanks,
Shukuyen.