Hello everybody,

I want to present a "little" project I was working on in the last 3 Month:

I called it vmcMote. It's a native IPhone / IPod Touch application to wirelessly browse the Vista Media Center music library, play/enqueue tracks, create playlists, etc. A rudimentary "Remote Control" functionality is also included.

What's included:
- Now Playing View (Supports skip, prev, play/pause, jump to track by click)
- Music Library (Based on a local database. Advantage are very small messages after the initial sync - Features: Album, Artist, Genre view, Full Search. Play/Enqueue Albums and individual Tracks. Album Covers ... )
- Playlist Browser / Editor.  Tracks are added from the library. Playlists can be rearranged etc. (Playlists are Iphone only! Sync is not planned, but perhaps backup to server)
- Remote Control. Provides the most important buttons of a normal MCE Remote. Virtual Keyboard is included.
- Settings

Here are a few screenshots:

 

 

  

 
You can find more screenshots at: vmcMote Interface Screenshots (Be carefull, a few of them in the first interface gallery are already outdated)


Most things work. I am already using it. The program is stable and pretty responsive. Not as responsive as apples remote program, but almost. This is most likely a side effect of the platform independent nature of most of my code. Only the GUI is written in Objective-C, everything else is c++ code.

What needs to be done:
- Password protection
- Modifications at the server side
- Incremental updates (I suspect this to be a lot of work)
- A few minor tweaks in the library view
- Polish the remote view (especially the Green Button ;-) )
- Add a few settings etc.
- Final testing

This looks not very much, but will certainly consume one or two more weeks. I hope I will find the time.

About my motivation: I recently built my first dedicated Media Center PC and wanted to select Music without the TV running. Well, I own an Iphone, and apples remote application works great with ITunes. "ngrc" (great Idea by the way) provides this functionality for the Media Center, but it is incredible slow on my machine. Pages take unfortunately forever to load.
Well, I had too much free time in the last months (I am currently searching a job after finishing university. Unfortunately, I want a very special one ;-) ) Therefore, I decided to program a native music remote for the IPhone by myself.

I am planning to bring this to the AppStore when it's done. The price will be somewhere between 3,99 and 6,99. I hope that is acceptable. It will be not free because I simply would like to get a bit compensation for the incredible amount of time that I hat to invest in this project (400+ hours).
I am not aiming at commercial success by the way. My motivation to program this was simply that I wanted this application and nobody else did it.

I already presented this a few weeks ago in the German media center community. Therefore, everybody who is able to understand German can get a lot more information there: Link to the discussion thread

I hope you like my little program.

Greetings, Thomas

News (May 2009): vmcMote is available on the App Store. See vmcMote.blogspot.com for more information.

Very cool. This is definitely better than a web-based app.

That looks like a great start!  I'll certainly be trying it out as soon as it's available.

I really cant' say too much yet because I haven't even used the app, but here are a couple of suggestings (if you're taking them) just based off of the screenshots:

I think it's more than fair to charge a bit especially given that these things take time (I know).  One thing to keep in mind about charging for an app. is that people will expect it to have a certain amount of polish.  The thing I have most in mind here are the buttons.  No offense, but they just aren't very polished looking.  The screen looks a bit cluttered, and it's hard to distinguish the different buttons with just a quick glance.  I would love to see the button icons changed to look more like the rest of the buttons on the iPhone (the smooth gradients, and effects when you push them).  IMHO, it would be nice to have a much simpler screen with just the arrows, back, the green button, and maybe info.  Then have the play/pause buttons show up with an overlay (like how the iPhone works for the iTunes remote, or iPod functionality).  Alternatively, maybe think about having a section that slides out, or you slide to the next page to display all of the buttons.

Please don't feel like I am bashing your app, I am just making suggestions based solely off of the screenshots.  It looks like it has the potential to be a great app, and that's why I am even bringing it up.  If you are able to make the button interface look nicer, I think you will be more successful in selling it for the higher price.  I also understand if you just want to be done with the app for a while, but the lower price might be a better option here.  Keep in mind that people are willing to pay more for something that is prettier (myself included). 

 

Only other feedback - and I know this is probably just dreaming here, but it would be great if you were able to integrate mcShoutCast into this as well.

Can't wait to try it. 

I will be in line to buy once it gets on the app store.  How long does it take to get something on the app store?

It's time for a progress update:

- Redesigned connection start screen (now supports server selection)
- Settings reworked and completed. You can now switch between offline servers, delete old servers, all settings work now
- Delete tracks in the playlist editor works now (via swipe. I had to re-implement the swipe/delete, consumed some time )
- Optimized library browser (bigger album cover in album overview, track length is shown, a lot of bugs fixed ...)
- Stability optimizations
- Remote buttons: new green button
- New icon
- Now playing view: 2nd modus -> cover mode inclusive slider to jump to a certain position in a track
- Now playing view: in list mode: Shows now playing track, playtime and position in list now on top, at touch: list is scrolled to now playing
- I worked on the installation: Works as following at the moment: extract ZIP-file -> run install.bat as admin. Installation and server worked on two non-development machines.

Last but not least:
I designed a simple website for the project: vmcmote.blogspot.com

I intend to link the server there in the feature. The website also contains a whole bunch of new screenshots of the latest vmcMote BETA. Check them out!


Last:
@ryan.tollefson:
You are right; the remote buttons are certainly not the nicest on earth. I designed them to be easily visible and easy to target. In my experience from testing, they serve this purpose pretty well. Furthermore, the buttons glow when touched. I will probably redesign them and their layout some time in the future. But this is in my eyes not the most important task. A well functioning application is much more important in my eyes.

Greetings, Thomas

Good work fella, I'll be downloading this for sure.  Looks musch better the ngRC!

This looks brilliant. Really looking forward to buying this from the app store!

I can see that this could be amazing with the new 'play to' feature in Windows 7 if they impiment that in media centre. Multi room audio could finally be used, all controlled from the iPhone / iPod!

This looks like a great app. I just picked up an iphone this weekend and the first thing I did was look for a MCE remote app for it. I'm trying out Intelliremote, and although it works OK, it is really lacking in features. I really would like to have something more like www.mceguru.com except on the iphone. I think the way mceguru has 2 way communication for all the media libraries is great. I see that you already have this working for the music library, but it would be great to add the other aspects like videos, pictures, guide, etc. I also think it would be great to have something like cover flow, but now I'm getting way ahead of things. Keep up the good work, and I hope this hits the app store soon, because I want to try this out before I have to dump $25 on intelliremote.

A short update:
I just recently moved to Munich and started a new job at April, 1st. Due to relocating and all the trouble around it, I had no time to work on the App. As soon as I will get internet access in my new appartment (approximately in 1 week), I will try to find the time to fix the last few bugs and submit the app to Apple. Then, Apple has to approve it. In total, I expect at least another 3 to 4 weeks to pass by before it is available in the App Store.

Sorry that you have to be patient for another few weeks. I developed this in my spare time, and I simply have almost no time left at the moment.

Greetings, Thomas

PS:
- There will be no videos, pictures, ... library access in my app. I do not see the point. You need a switched on TV to consume these in a proper way. If you want to consume them on your phone, you can use ITunes. I see the point in terms of guide access. Problem is: Microsoft encrypts the guide data on the disk and I can get no access to all guide data by means of the SDK. A workaround (external guide source for example) is no option as my spare time is very very small from now on due to my new job.
- I personally see no point in sepending 25 bucks to emulate an infrared one way remote

Some of you probably already read on my project homepage that I submitted vmcMote to Apple two weeks ago.

Yesterday, I received the approval emails

vmcMote is now available on the App Store: direct link

There is also a free Lite version available called vmcMote Lite. More information can be found on the project hompage: vmcMote.blogspot.com.
I encourage you to test the free version before you buy.

I hope you like the app.

Greetings, Thomas

It looks really good. The 2-way communication is key!! Does this work with Windows7? I'm a little disappointed that you don't see the benefits of including the video library, guide data, etc. My video library includes over 1000 items, and when my GF decides on a movie to watch it can take a VERY long time to decide. I'd love to be able to keep watching TV while she browses...

Edit- Just tried it on 7MC, and it doesn't work. Too bad... :( I look forward to the next release!

Nice to hear that somebody likes my app

Well, I did not test the server on windows 7, as I do not use Win7. Too bad it does not work without modifications
Let's be honest. I will probably support 7MC some time in the future. At least when I will migrate to Win 7 on my own media center. But, as I already wrote on my website, my time for this project is pretty limited since almost 2 month now. This time, I started my Ph.D. position at a big german car manufacturer. In consequence, my spare time for this project went close to zero. Therefore, I will and can not promise if and when I will support 7MC, sorry.

However, as I already wrote in the german mce community forum, I am planning to release an update with rudimentary support for radio streaming in the near future. I need this feature as I am now living in a part of germany where the over the air stations suck

Greetings, Thomas

Great idea of an app.  This will work perfectly for me listening to music outside, since I don't want to pay for something like Sonos.  I have an issue though, the iphone app isn't auto-discovering my media centers.  I have two in fact, and neither are showing up on my Wifi.  I've tried different listening ports and telnet'd to those ports to verify that they are listening.  vmcmoteserver.exe is running.  Everything seems fine, but it's not finding them.

Any idea? I woudl love to use this app.  Thx.

Hi csonier,

server discovery is done via discovery broadcast packets transmitted by the iPhone App. The server answers with his identification. The broadcast nature implies that the servers and the iPhone have to be in the same subnet. I do not know your network configuration, but there could be the problem. Broadcasts between the devices have to work in your network.

Otherwise, I never had to open up the ports for this exchange everywhere. Allowing vmcmoteserver.exe to communicate was allways enough. However, the discovery listen port on the server side is 12324. Make sure that this port is accessible.

I hope this information helps you to get it running.

Greetings, Thomas

Hi, i just bought this app (didn't see the free version sadly  )

installation went fine and the iphone can see the sever but whenever i try to synchronize with the server to get the music library i get 'the reception was not successfull' message. It seems to fail at the '1/3 on server preparation' stage.

the remote buttons work fine so i know that the remote is connected

any ideas how to get this working?

thanks