Hallo,

i wanted to tell you about ngRC. It is a remote control Software that enables a browser capable device, like Sonys PSP or Apples iPhone to act as a remote control.

What are the main features?

• MediaCenter-like Skin on your mobile device
• Lets you browse through your music library, play music, etc.. without the need to switch on your TV
• Lets you remote control you Media-Center (every function that are on your normal IR-Remote Control are now within your mobile device)
• Now you have a WiFi-Remote Control
• Extender Support (lets you switch between your different extenders, with only one Remote-Control)
• Control your music in any room
• Multiple Skin-Support
• OpenSource Software

Just download and try:  www.sourceforge.net/projects/ngrc

Here are some screenshots:

 

I am looking forward to your feedback!

looks interesting, I will have to give it a try.

What platforms on the mobile devices does it support?

at the moment PSP and iPhone/iPod touch, PC/Notebook, Tablet PCs. Other devices can be used, when making a special skin for that device.

As soon as the device is able to show websites, it is possible to run ngRC on it.

I can't get it to work.  Nothing happens.  There are no instructions that I can in the download or in the forum.  How do you get it to work?

Sorry, forgot this! My WebSite is, with instructions, is in work....

Here is a small guide, it's very easy, as soon as you know, how it works:

1. after running the installer, a windows service is installed, you have to start it (either by heading to control panel, services..., or with a reboot)
2. after starting the service, you have to start the media center interface (stop it before, when it's running).
3. ehshell should tell you, that the ngRC-AddIn is running now on a specific port. When starting an extender, the same should be shown with another port
4. For testing start up your browser and type in http://your-ip-of-your-mediacenter:8080/ngrc
5. when this is running, try the same address on your mobile device
6. The interface itself should be intuitive and self self-explanatory.
7. one hint: to change between the extenders, have a look at the settings in the main window.

Hope this helps. Have fun using it.

Thanks.  I have a router.  I assume I need to open port 8080, or is it 7755?

no,it's 8080 (there is webserver on that port running, serving the WebSites). The other port is only local. It is for communication between web-pages and MediaCenter AddIn

schulzor2004:

no,it's 8080 (there is webserver on that port running, serving the WebSites). The other port is only local. It is for communication between web-pages and MediaCenter AddIn

I am able to connect to http://127.0.0.1:8080/ and also to http://media-center-ip:8080/ from the same machine that media center is running on.

However I am not able to connect from my mobile device to http://media-center-ip:8080/ nor am I able to connect to that url from my laptop (macbook pro using firefox). I even tried connecting directly to http://media-center-ip:8080/ngrc/skins/psp/index.jsp but that failed also.

Is there some security setting where only local connections are allowed ? Any suggestions on how to fix this ?

schulzor
Is it possible to change the port to something other than 8080 as i already have a server running on that port?

KMD
If you have windows firewall running you will need to create an exception for port 8080 to allow the traffic out/in, that would be why you can access it locally but not from the network.

I got this working with my iPhone, and I'm liking it a lot.  Thanks!

For those still struggling to get it working, I found that I had to uninstall and reinstall it.  Maybe the trick is to open 8080 in the firewall before the install, I'm not entirely sure. 

Man, if the developer of this application got together with an iPhone developer (either for jailbroken iPhones or for the new iPhone SDK) I could see some real potential here.  Imagine a coverflow UI for remote access to your MCE.  That would beat the hell out of the Sonos UI!  I'd imagine it would require a cached store for the music collection on the iPhone, but it would definitely be the best iPhone app I've ever used!  Heck, even trying this out with a drop-down list would be neat on the iPhone as it uses that big "dial" thing for drop-down lists.

Nice work with this, looking forward to see how it evolves.

Aaron



 

Hi all,

thanks for your feedback.

to change the port, you have to modify the tomcat configuration: go to the ngrc install directory: ...\tomcat\conf\server.xml, in there look for 8080 and change all occurences to what ever you like. After that restart the tomcat process (control-panel/services...)

ngRC is skin-capable. So when there is somebody who is able to create a special skin for the iPhone, that uses the iPhone-Special features, I would be happy. Within the installation there is a document that explains the skinning-feature of ngRC. It is not very hard, because everything is basing on HTML/CSS. And as I know, the iPhone can be programmed the same way. Looking forward for help on that!

 

@ Danno:  you'd only need to open (forward) that port (at the router) if you want to be able to use this from outside of your house (port-forwarding has absolutely nothing to do with what you do within your LAN.)

@ gazzer:  unless that web server (runing on port 8080) is running on that machine (and, I kinda hope your Media Center isn't also a general-purpose webserver ), it won't matter.

@ schulzor:  looks very cool.  Must give this a whirl (I do have a PSP or two laying around here....)

Thanks to everyone.  I had to open port 8080 on my Vista Firewall (it was turned on).  Once I did that I could open the address from another laptop. I could see my music, but didn't see any video.  Perhaps this is because I use shortcuts and don't monitor those folders.   I'll also try it on my PDA (Windows Mobile) and my Nokia 700. 

Looks promising!

I got it to work on my iPhone for the Media Center PC, but not on my extender.

On the extender a dialogue box pops up saying "...port 7756" but I do not see that under settings in ngRC.

Any suggestions?

Excellent tool, works perfect on my ipod touch. Thanks!