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YATR - Yet Another TiVo Remote application

7045 Views 20 Replies 4 Participants Last post by  Fofer, 
O
Since this new remote application (written in python) solely uses the iPad RPC interface, it is currently limited to the Premiere platform.


Features:
  • A GUI based loosely on the TiVo Slide remote,
  • "Jumps" to TiVo's VOD providers,
  • Keyboard support.
There's not a whole lot that this remote provides over some of the other remote applications, but I'd like to expand that with adding in "scrub" navigation capabilities, and more.

Downloads are here, and this is the Project homepage.
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Fofer
This is great! Thanks so much for sharing your work on this, orangeboy. It looks magnificent!

I have been using wmcbrine's "TiVo Remote 0.26" (latest version found here.) It works great with my MacBook Pro and my TiVo Premiere, but I'd been wondering if a better looking alternative was out there, and it looks like your project might be it.

A few questions:

I tried to launch your application on my Mac (running OS X 10.6.7) via Terminal.app (the command being "python Remote.pyw") but nothing happened and nothing launched. Would there be any way for you (or someone else following along who understands this stuff) to build this as an applet, as wmcbrine did? Or maybe tell me how to launch it? :eek:

Also, wmcbrine discussed his discovery of CC_ON and CC_OFF codes here. Basically these allow you to toggle on/off Closed Captioning in a much nicer/easier/faster way than the old Info-menu method which involved navigating a few buttons on the actual peanut remote. As someone who takes advantage of CC quite regularly, I really like having that one-button toggle in his app. Can the same kind of button be added to yours?

Lastly, you mention "keyboard support." Does this mean it can be used to enter text in TiVo's search fields? I'd love to see a screenshot of that.

Again, thanks for your fantastic work here. It's very much appreciated.
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Fofer said:
This is great! Thanks so much for sharing your work on this, orangeboy. It looks magnificent!

I have been using wmcbrine's "TiVo Remote 0.26" (latest version found here.) It works great with my MacBook Pro and my TiVo Premiere, but I'd been wondering if a better looking alternative was out there, and it looks like your project might be it.

A few questions:

I tried to launch your application on my Mac (running OS X 10.6.7) via Terminal.app (the command being "python Remote.pyw") but nothing happened and nothing launched. Would there be any way for you (or someone else following along who understands this stuff) to build this as an applet, as wmcbrine did? Or maybe tell me how to launch it? :eek:

Also, wmcbrine discussed his discovery of CC_ON and CC_OFF codes here. Basically these allow you to toggle on/off Closed Captioning in a much nicer/easier/faster way than the old Info-menu method which involved navigating a few buttons on the actual peanut remote. As someone who takes advantage of CC quite regularly, I really like having that one-button toggle in his app. Can the same kind of button be added to yours?

Lastly, you mention "keyboard support." Does this mean it can be used to enter text in TiVo's search fields? I'd love to see a screenshot of that.

Again, thanks for your fantastic work here. It's very much appreciated.
Click to expand...
Thanks! I have never worked on a Mac, so I'm not really sure how to construct an "applet". However, one thing to try is simply rename Remote.pyw to Remote.py, which will show a python console, and any error messages. This wasn't mentioned in initial post, but there is a "Getting Started" wiki page that may help shed some light on the subject.

I'll look into what it would take to get CC_ON/CC_OFF worked in, as well as some of the new "jumps" that moyekj discovered.

As far as keyboard support, yep, when in Search, what you type on the keyboard get sent to the TiVo. It hadn't occurred to me until just now, but I'm wondering if text entry via the RPC method in some of the other apps (custom RSS, youTube, etc.) can now be done.

I'm a bit indisposed this weekend, looking for a new place to call home in a town 1,000 miles from my current address.
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Fofer
Thanks for that! I got it going:


The graphics looks a little weird though, as you can see. Not sure why, perhaps the Mac deals with transparent GIFs differently?

It works great, though. Ideally in a future version, the editing of IP address and MAK can be done by a preferences pane?

Very much looking forward to seeing this evolve. Thank you for making it and sharing. I'll see if I can get interested Mac users in here, to see if they can assist turning this into a (easier to launch) applet.
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O
Fofer said:
Thanks for that! I got it going:


The graphics looks a little weird though, as you can see. Not sure why, perhaps the Mac deals with transparent GIFs differently?

It works great, though. Ideally in a future version, the editing of IP address and MAK can be done by a preferences pane?

Very much looking forward to seeing this evolve. Thank you for making it and sharing. I'll see if I can get interested Mac users in here, to see if they can assist turning this into a (easier to launch) applet.
Click to expand...
Indeed, those do look odd, and may be a bit "difficult" to fix. tkinter accepts GIF and PGM/PPM images. To get around this, I think most use PIL, or "Python Imaging Library", which isn't in python's standard library. I like to have very few (if any) pre-requisites for myself and end-users, so tend to use the resources within the standard library. I'll see what it will take to include PIL within the app, so additional downloads won't be necessary to get it to look correct on all platforms.
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T
When you say, "solely uses the iPad interface" do you mean it is based on the same design and protocol as the iPad TiVo app or do you mean it can only be used on an iPad? Can it be used on a PC with Python?
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O
tzroberts said:
When you say, "solely uses the iPad interface" do you mean it is based on the same design and protocol as the iPad TiVo app or do you mean it can only be used on an iPad? Can it be used on a PC with Python?
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Yes, I made a poor choice of words. It uses the same protocol as the iPad, but is written in python, and runs on a PC, and runs not so well on a Mac (see Fofer's post and image).
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T
orangeboy said:
Yes, I made a poor choice of words. It uses the same protocol as the iPad, but is written in python, and runs on a PC, and runs not so well on a Mac (see Fofer's post and image).
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Thanks for the clarification. Are you sharing the source code with the public, just mainly wondering what command you are sending to get direct to netflix, on demand, etc.
By the way great looking UI, cool idea.
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T
Through read previous posts on
http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?t=462980&page=3 thead, it looks like the RPC protocol is completely different from the standard TCP previous documented by TiVo http://www.tivo.com/assets/images/a...CP_Network_Remote_Control_Protocol_073108.pdf

Can anyone confirm this? So there is no IRCODE or KEYBOARD command that will jump to netflix or any of the cool functions available on orangeboy's app
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O
tzroberts said:
Thanks for the clarification. Are you sharing the source code with the public, just mainly wondering what command you are sending to get direct to netflix, on demand, etc.
By the way great looking UI, cool idea.
Click to expand...
Source can be found here. And specifically, I'm using "uiNavigate", as outlined here.
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Fofer
I just wanted to report that I tried this great app again under Mac OS X 10.7 Lion. It still works, but it also still has the same visual glitches it had under 10.6 Snow Leopard (as screenshotted above.)

Any luck of using the "Python Imaging Library" instead? I'm happy to beta test. :)
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Fofer said:
I just wanted to report that I tried this great app again under Mac OS X 10.7 Lion. It still works, but it also still has the same visual glitches it had under 10.6 Snow Leopard (as screenshotted above.)

Any luck of using the "Python Imaging Library" instead? I'm happy to beta test. :)
Click to expand...
My stuff finally arrived in Missouri a few days ago, but I still haven't had a chance to build out my office yet. This weekend is time for "hometime" projects. I have my entertainment center about complete, and will be doing the office this afternoon. I'll be able to do a bit more developing once all that is done. Hang in their!
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Fofer
Thanks, man! Much appreciated! Glad to hear you're settling in. Enjoy...
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D
Orangeboy - Thanks for the great remote control. It works great on my PC but extends slightly below the screen. Is there a way to drag the screen and make it slightly smaller?
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D
2
Attached are two (2) files which you can use to modify Orangeboy's YATR. I basically modified two of his files so the entire remote would display on my screen and to allow me to select which Tivo to control.

The steps to use these files are:
1. Install YATR then download these two files.
2. Place the file RemoteSmall.txt next to the file Remote.pyw
3. Change the file from a .txt to a .pyw such as
mv RemoteSmall.txt RemoteSmall.pyw
4. Place the file label background small.gif in the folder ./Assets/gifs/remote along side the file label background.gif
5. Edit the file RemoteSmall.pyw and change the mak to the mak key for your Tivo account
6. Edit the file RemoteSmall.pyw and change the IP addresses to those for your machines and, change the text "Which Tivo (1= ... to match what you call your Tivos or if you just have one Tivo comment out the line as specified in the code so you don't have to answer the question.

Thats it! Just double click on RemoteSmall.pyw to run it.

View attachment RemoteSmall.txt

Grey Font Audio equipment Auto part Circle

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Fofer
Cool, thanks DougD! Gonna try playing with it now.

Quick question though, you mention the file "label background.gif" but it is attached to your message as " label background.jpg"

Any chance you can reupload the original GIF?
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D
Well I've tried several times to attach it as a Gif but it keeps attaching as a .jpg. I think it will work if you just rename the file to label background small.gif. Try it and please let me know if that works
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Fofer
I tried that and unfortunately it doesn't work. Seems like this forum is converting the file to JPG and renaming it back to GIF isn't good enough. Any chance the actual GIF can be hosted somewhere? I'll put it on my webspace if you want.
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D
Attached is the same file renamed as a pdf. Hopefully you can download it and rename it as a .gif

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Fofer
Yep, that did it. Thanks. I got it working. Very cool.

I am hoping orangeboy comes back to see the nice improvement you've offered here. Perhaps he can integrate them into his version too.

I'd also love to know if there's any chance to try the "Python Imaging Library" he talked about because this remote app has the same visual glitches on Mac OS X that I posted about above and it would be nice to see if those can be fixed.
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