Roku Developer Program

[atc98092]

While I made a feeble attempt at building a channel several years ago, I just retired and thought I would give it another go. I have a pretty good handle on Visual Basic, and did some dabbling with .NET when VB6 was depreciated. I did some PHP scripting on web pages to connect to a MySQL server as well, so I'm not a complete newbie to programming. But I can't seem to find where to start with the Roku platform.

I see that Visual Studio can be used for this purpose, and since I had some familiarity with it I thought it would be a reasonable place to start. I have installed the latest community version, and have downloaded the BrightScript extensions from GitHub. But I can't find any menu within VS that matches the images Roku shows for installing the extensions, nor any guidance on starting to use VS for this purpose. So I would appreciate some suggestions on getting VS configured for Roku development. I don't even know if I installed VS with the proper languages since it's not a Windows, Mac or Android based device I'm developing for.

My intent is to create a channel to connect to a DLNA server such as Serviio, and in fact I would probably try to make it specifically for Serviio. So I'm looking for some guidance on opening a network socket and listening for a specific port. I feel comfortable I can muddle my way through connecting to the Serviio API once I can get those basic functions working. 

[TwitchBronBron]

I'm not sure if Visual Studio has any support for Roku development. But Visual Studio Code does (it's a totally separate program, with a very similar name...thanks Microsoft). 

That's probably your issue?

https://code.visualstudio.com/

[atc98092]

That could very well be. Gee, how unlike Microsoft to use similar naming conventions for completely different products. Kind of like how Roku keeps recycling their player names with significantly different hardware. 

I'll give that a try, thanks!