Roku Developer Program

[renojim]

I would think the ECP could be extended to add things like this. I don't see why it's necessary for it to only be able to send key presses that can be sent by the remote. For example, add a "jumpFirst" and "jumpLast" command. While they're at it, they could add a "jumpN" where N specifies a number to jump from the current location.

-JT

[WillEV]

Having both launch parameters for the channels and also extra commands that could be sent to the channels themselves would be extremely useful.

I might be missing something, but I don't see any way to get feedback about what the Roku is currently doing - which channel it's in, whether it's on the nav screen, playing a movie/song (and which one?), etc.

Is this possible?

[TheEndless]

"WillEV" wrote:
Having both launch parameters for the channels and also extra commands that could be sent to the channels themselves would be extremely useful.
I might be missing something, but I don't see any way to get feedback about what the Roku is currently doing - which channel it's in, whether it's on the nav screen, playing a movie/song (and which one?), etc.
Is this possible?

Not currently. At the moment, you're limited to sending keys, querying for installed apps and icons, and launching apps.

[WillEV]

Is there any update on whether these channels (Netflix in particular) are going to have external control and launch added to them?

[RokuKevin]

The Netflix channel does not yet recognize any ECP launch parameters. No update yet on when we will publish a version that does.

--Kevin

[gonzotek]

"RokuKevin" wrote:
The Netflix channel does not yet recognize any ECP launch parameters. No update yet on when we will publish a version that does.

--Kevin

Thanks for the update Kevin. For what it's worth, I know there are a bunch of developers who are very much looking forward to this.

[WillEV]

Still hoping for this - I've got about 20,000 customers for this system that would buy a Roku straight away if this were possible.

[WillEV]

I see that the v3 of the SDK has now included support for passing parameters directly to a running BrightScript app.

Is this something that could be used to control Pandora, Netflix etc with the capabilities described earlier?

Still looking for the ability to launch Netflix/Hulu/Pandora with a target playback movie/show/station; ideally would then be able to query for currently playing data as well.

Thanks

Will

[TheEndless]

"WillEV" wrote:
I see that the v3 of the SDK has now included support for passing parameters directly to a running BrightScript app.

Where'd you see that? There are the new socket components, but an app would have to explicitly implement a listener in order to accept parameters that way. I'm not aware of any other way to talk to a running app..?

[EnTerr]

"TheEndless" wrote:

"WillEV" wrote:
I see that the v3 of the SDK has now included support for passing parameters directly to a running BrightScript app.

Where'd you see that? There are the new socket components, but an app would have to explicitly implement a listener in order to accept parameters that way. I'm not aware of any other way to talk to a running app..?

Building completely proprietary protocol via sockets for each channel is brain-dead. There is (alas only partial) solution in SDK 3:

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. The external control server places these name-value pairs into a BrightScript associative array and passes them directly through to the currently executing channel script via a Message Port attached to a created roInput object. Please refer to Section 3.1 below for more detailed recommendations on how to pass your data. Messages of type roInputEvent have a GetInfo() method that will obtain the associative array. The arguments must be URL-encoded. This command is sent via a POST with no body.
Example: POST /input?acceleration.x=0.0&acceleration.y=0.0&acceleration.z=9.8

This ensures only one-way communication, injecting data from outside to running app. But there is no way to query status - this being the kind of synchronous invocation (http request - needs to pause and wait for result while message is passed to queue and wait to be handled and reply returned - then retuen that back) it seems against messaging implementation in brightscript (from the little i have seen). Which is a dirty shame, because i have been looking recently at the external control protocol of DirecTV DVRs - it reports status very nicely, what program is playing now, what's next on which channel etc