Utilizing Clientcontroller for Commandfusion (1 Viewer)

[KeKs0r]

Hi,

this question is not directly connected to ipimp, but i would need some expertise on the topic

I am wondering, whether it is possible to use Clientcontroller plugin to handle http requests from another source than the ipimp webinterface. I am interested in an all in one remote and i wanted to try it with commandfusion. It is a flexible app for the iphone where you can define and customize remote layouts and configure http requests. I have another hardware component which converts some tcp messages to IR messages in order to control my Tv or receiver. It would be great to control all these things including my htpc with mediaportal with the same app. THerefore i would like to know if it is possible to use the clientcontroller to receive the htpc messages and then trigger some actions or key inputs in mp.

Thanks
Marc

 

[cheezey]

Yes it is possible, and the MPCC plugin was written to provide a generic interface, Yatse also uses this plugin.

Communication with the MPCC uses Json, you construct a Json request, send it via a tcp channel or http post and receive a Json response. If you set your log level to debug and use iPiMP to send some commands you'll see the requests/responses in the MediaPortal.log

 

[Jarrod]

Is there any documentation for the JSON protocol implementation that iPimp uses?
I too am setting up CommandFusion to control MediaPortal.

Side note: I am the Director of CommandFusion, so once I get this working I will be able to promote home automation integration with MP via iPad/iPhone/etc.
Use the one app to control MP as well as your lights, projector, receiver, blinds, etc.

Thanks,

 

[DieBagger]

Hi Jarrod, I sent a pm with a similar to cheezey yesterday, here's the answer:

I'm afraid I haven't documented the commands.

The best option is to enable debug logging and run some commands through iPiMP, with debug logging on all requests/responses are logged. All requests/responses are in JSON format.

The MPCC plugin provides TCP or HTTP listeners, the HTTP listener is probably better as it handles larger payloads better (e.g. images are transferred as Base64 strings which can be very large). You build your JSON request, HTTP POST it to the MPCC listener (http://<MPClient>:55668/mpcc) and consume the HTTP response.

This file handles all the requests, you can see the available operations starting on line 448.

cheezey: I ran it with ipimp/looked through the code, here's a few things I noticed:
- The clientcontroller will crash mediaportal if fanarthandler plugin isn't installed and "nowplaying" is invoked
- Their is no way to send continuous keypresses? It would be nice if there was a way to specify key-up/key-down commands, specially for scrolling through lists in mediaportal.
- Why is the key value sent through "filter" in the "button" action, not in "value"?

More questions to come...

 

[cheezey]

- The clientcontroller will crash mediaportal if fanarthandler plugin isn't installed and "nowplaying" is invoked

There is an updated MPCC plugin available here which had some fanart fixes in it.

- Their is no way to send continuous keypresses? It would be nice if there was a way to specify key-up/key-down commands, specially for scrolling through lists in mediaportal.

Not yet - shouldn't be too difficult to add though, how do you see this being used, you send a command for key-down and the plugin just keeps sending the key command until it receives a key up?

- Why is the key value sent through "filter" in the "button" action, not in "value"?

Ahem because I'm not a dev by trade and when I first put the MPCC plugin together I knew nothing about JSON. I agree the plugin could do with refactoring such that it conforms to JSON-RPC.

 

[DieBagger]

- Their is no way to send continuous keypresses? It would be nice if there was a way to specify key-up/key-down commands, specially for scrolling through lists in mediaportal.

Not yet - shouldn't be too difficult to add though, how do you see this being used, you send a command for key-down and the plugin just keeps sending the key command until it receives a key up?

Excactly, although I think it would be best to have a timeout, so after the client sends key down, the controller repeats the key press until a) client sends key up or b) timeout is reached (e.g. 500ms). If the client wants to scroll longer he needs to send continues key-ups (e.g. every 300ms). This way you don't waste bandwidth by sending a commands every 10ms and don't risk running an infinite-loop when client drops out. Btw, you have a Thread.Sleep(100) after sending a command. 100ms seems a bit excessive.

btw @ Jarrod: for sending key commands you send a post request (has to have content-type application/x-www-form-urlencoded for some reason) with the following json data:

{ 
 "action" : "button",
 "filter" : "left",
 "value" : "",
 "start" : "0",
 "pagesize" : "0",
 "shuffle" : false,
 "enqueue" : false,
 "tracks" : ""
}

to "http://server:55668/mpcc". Possible filter (button) values: Paste2: Next Generation Pastebin - Viewing Paste 1144201

 

[Jarrod]

Is there source code available for the MPCC plugin? I'd like to implement my own protocol to make parsing data easier (mainly remove the HTTP layer and do it all directly over a TCP socket). JSON is nice and all, but HTTP sucks for two way communication with automation systems.

Nevermind, found the source via the link posted earlier:
MediaPortal Universal Web Interface/trunk/MPClientController - ipimp - Project Hosting on Google Code

Perfect thanks.

 

[cheezey]

The MPCC plugin supports both HTTP & TCP comuunications.

 

[Jarrod]

Ahh good to know. Now if only I could checkout the source code to the plugin so I can delve into it easier.
The checkout link in the google code page 404's (both when typed onto a browser or used in TurtleSVN to checkout the code).
Any ideas why I can't checkout the code?

Further to that, trying to install the iPiMP plugin via the MP Extension Manager also fails (404).

 

[DieBagger]

This should work for checking out the source: http://ipimp.googlecode.com/svn/MediaPortal Universal Web Interface/trunk