Forum Discussion

casolorz's avatar
casolorz
Roku Guru
8 years ago

Does ECP Input allow me to send any commands I want?

As I mentioned on another thread, I want to hire someone to make a Roku channel for my Android app. I'm trying to figure out how the two will communicate with each other. Seems to me like ECP has an Input command (https://sdkdocs.roku.com/display/sdkdoc ... lAPI-input) that will allow custom messages but the developers I'm discussing this with seem to disagree. Am I reading the documentation wrong? 

My idea in this case is that the phone will launch the channel using ECP and then send a custom Input command with some basic information of what to do (like play a video, skip forward, request playback state) and then the Roku channel will respond to the app on a web server the app will have running for it. Does that make sense or is this not possible with brightscript? 

Thanks. 
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4 Replies

  • casolorz's avatar
    casolorz
    Roku Guru
    8 years ago
    "squirreltown" wrote:
    https://sdkdocs.roku.com/display/sdkdoc/roInput

    Yeah I saw that but since I'm not a Roku developer and I'm trying to hire some and they all tell me it is impossible, I just want to make sure I am not crazy. It is possible to send custom events, right? that is how I am reading the documentation. 
  • destruk's avatar
    destruk
    Streaming Star
    8 years ago
    Perhaps they haven't kept up on changes since Roku Firmware 3.0 was released.

    Since Firmware version 3.0:
    • input enables a developer to send custom events to their Brightscript application. It takes a user defined list of name-value pairs sent as query string uri parameters....

    blah blah blah...
    I'd suggest perhaps the developers you are working with have never used this feature before - but pointing them repeatedly to the documentation which shows how to implement it ought to help get it done.  Also keep in mind for Scenegraph this might need to be done in a task thread as it involves getting data over the network.  I haven't tested it in scenegraph.  If roInput is blocked or deprecated for scenegraph then you might be in trouble.