Roku Developer Program

[YungBlood]

Has anyone developed a java based Roku remote program that includes a keyboard?

I hate programming in Java... So I'm hoping someone has done this already. I don't want to have to run an android emulator to have a roku remote... and the roku remote I have on my phone doesn't have a keyboard / text input.

[greno]

My Roku Remote app for Android supports keyboard input, and I believe some of the others do as well.

The app lets you enter text two ways - you can enter a string at a time with your normal on screen or physical keyboard, or if you swipe the main screen to the left, you will see a keyboard that you can use to send one character at a time.

-Gregg Reno
Jigawatt Labs

[gonzotek]

You could also try Remoku (new version's about 99% ready for public beta, new domain: remoku.tv ). It's been tested to work with Safari under iOS 4 and 5, Chrome, Firefox 4+, and Internet Explorer 8+. I expect it to work with most other modern mobile/desktop browsers(I've tried it with a Kindle Touch, not a great experience for a remote, but it functions 🙂 ). You could have a look at its source, but fair warning, it's badly in need of cleanup. 🙂

[YungBlood]

"greno" wrote:
My Roku Remote app for Android supports keyboard input, and I believe some of the others do as well.
-Gregg Reno

Gregg,
I love your android app! But I'm looking for something that runs on my Linux desktop. From what I understand, android apps are java based, could they be made to run on other platforms?

"gonzotek" wrote:
You could also try Remoku (new version's about 99% ready for public beta, new domain: remoku.tv ). It's been tested to work with Safari under iOS 4 and 5, Chrome, Firefox 4+, and Internet Explorer 8+. I expect it to work with most other modern mobile/desktop browsers(I've tried it with a Kindle Touch, not a great experience for a remote, but it functions 🙂 ). You could have a look at its source, but fair warning, it's badly in need of cleanup. 🙂

Gonzo,
I tried it. It doesn't seem to work for me under ice weasel 3.5.16 (Equivalent to firefox 3.5.16). However it does work on Epiphany 2.30.6. But I don't see a text input feature.

[gonzotek]

"YungBlood" wrote:

"greno" wrote:
My Roku Remote app for Android supports keyboard input, and I believe some of the others do as well.
-Gregg Reno

Gregg,
I love your android app! But I'm looking for something that runs on my Linux desktop. From what I understand, android apps are java based, could they be made to run on other platforms?

"gonzotek" wrote:
You could also try Remoku (new version's about 99% ready for public beta, new domain: remoku.tv ). It's been tested to work with Safari under iOS 4 and 5, Chrome, Firefox 4+, and Internet Explorer 8+. I expect it to work with most other modern mobile/desktop browsers(I've tried it with a Kindle Touch, not a great experience for a remote, but it functions 🙂 ). You could have a look at its source, but fair warning, it's badly in need of cleanup. 🙂

Gonzo,
I tried it. It doesn't seem to work for me under ice weasel 3.5.16 (Equivalent to firefox 3.5.16). However it does work on Epiphany 2.30.6. But I don't see a text input feature.

You should see a text field above the home and back buttons (it's just a rounded-rectangle at the moment, I need to give it a little text icon). You should be able to just click on it and start typing. Also, if the text field isn't focused, you can use the keyboard for control: arrow keys do what you'd expect, enter=select, home=home,i=info, < and > are rev and fwd, space=play/pause, z=instantreplay, esc=back.

Documentation is high on my todo list. :).

/edit-to-add: And thanks for the browser report! FF3.5 is pretty old at this point, I've already made the decision not to support IE7 and other older devices with the main app (I'm considering a 'super low-fi' version that shoots for more primitive browsers). Not sure if I should try to include ff3.5 too. Epiphany is webkit-based nowadays, I didn't look hard for the engine version, but it appears to be fairly up-to-date from the Epiphany features description in wikipedia.

[YungBlood]

Found it, and it almost works... 🙂 However one small critical thing for me doesn't work. The forward slash "/". I haven't tried all the symbols & accents, but without the forward slash, it doesn't help me at all... 😞 I've got a bare-bones / very basic web browser... and it's very slow. So I was hoping to be able to type in a starting web address from my computer. I see I can even paste text into that field... which is great! Now if only it would take the slash... 🙂

Btw, here's the string from my browser...
Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux x86_64; en-us) AppleWebKit/531.2+ (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.0 Safari/531.2+ Debian/squeeze (2.30.6-1) Epiphany/2.30.6

[YungBlood]

Ok, I dug around the internet, and found a way to upgrade my iceweasel/firefox... my new string is...
Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux x86_64; rv:9.0.1) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/9.0.1 Iceweasel/9.0.1

[greno]

Although my app is writen in Java, a majority of the code is for the Android UI and wouldnt be transferable. Better to start from scratch.

[YungBlood]

Ah, I had an idea that might be the case... I have thought about getting into android programming, since I have one, but I haven't read up on it yet.