XBMC4Xbox Remote - Android app

If you need any help with XBMC4XBOX, such as installing or using the software, please post it in here.
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Dan Dar3
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Re: XBMC4Xbox Remote - Android app

Post by Dan Dar3 »

@Fastlane
Ok, fair enough - there might be a chance where in fact the problem is with sending the "play" command - can you send me a screenshot with the error from your phone / tablet (usually by holding Volume Down + Power) or select the text from the error panel and send that to me. My email is either in the first post or in the About section of the application (click on it to send me the email).
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Re: XBMC4Xbox Remote - Android app

Post by Fastlane »

Ok, maybe I didn't describe the error clear enough...if I select a video file nothing happens...it doesn't even display an error...therefore I can't provide a screenshot
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Re: XBMC4Xbox Remote - Android app

Post by Dan Dar3 »

@Fastlane
Ok, please send me a screenshot by email anyways with a bit of details on what you do there - discussing it here in one liners holds little value for other users, thanks.
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Re: XBMC4Xbox Remote - Android app

Post by Dan Dar3 »

Early beta, download from here:
(link removed - see version 2.9.7 final below)

Code: Select all

v2.9.7 (Sun, 15 Jun 2014):
 * Fix: Cannot share / play "youtu.be" URLs (thanks sahib12);
 * Fix: Widget > Currently playing thumbnail (thanks AwesomeNurd);
 * Fix: Movies > Files > cannot play video files (thanks Fastlane);
 * Add: Commands > Screenshots
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Re: XBMC4Xbox Remote - Android app

Post by sahib12 »

Awesome! Will try it very soon :D
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Re: XBMC4Xbox Remote - Android app

Post by sahib12 »

Just tested and sharing youtube vids work perfectly now :D btw can you only share youtube videos? Because share via xbmc4xbox comes up a lot with media like the dailtymotion app. But when i try to share it it comes up with youtube and says playback false. Was just wondering, is it just youtube vids you can share?
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Re: XBMC4Xbox Remote - Android app

Post by Dan Dar3 »

@sahib12
Had another look and yes, it appears you could "share" URLs from DailyMotion app, but those would not play as they are the HTML pages, not the video URLs.

I've done some clean-up to limit what can be played / shared with the remote app (updated APK at the link above) so it won't show up in DailyMotion share list, hopefully I haven't broken the YouTube part, see this help page below where I added some links to test YouTube URLs and other media URLs.
https://sites.google.com/site/xbmc4xbox ... e-playback

If you are interested in sending from DailyMotion app, that would need a working plugin for XBMC4Xbox and to find a way to trigger it from the HTTP API, similar to YouTube - e.g.

Code: Select all

http://XBOX:80/xbmcCmds/xbmcHttp?command=ExecBuiltIn&parameter=PlayMedia(plugin://video/YouTube/?action=play_video&videoid=DIlyQPFLdR4)
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Re: XBMC4Xbox Remote - Android app

Post by sahib12 »

Ah i see. So some media files can be shared, sweet :D thanks for the info man and nice tutorial you got there.
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Re: XBMC4Xbox Remote - Android app

Post by leary123 »

Hi Dan.. Any news on getting the new beta up on the store.. The playing from files option is just final bit for myself and couldn't not pay for the premium version after all your hard work :) .. Tried the beta on my phone for file playing of the file browser and it works perfectly :)
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Re: XBMC4Xbox Remote - Android app

Post by Dan Dar3 »

Version 2.9.7 is out (finally! I know... :-)
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Re: XBMC4Xbox Remote - Android app

Post by Dan Dar3 »

If your device is running Android 2.1 or 2.2 please do not update, as it will result in crashes when loading images and thumbs. If you have updated and you have the problem, you can rollback and install 2.9.6 from here: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B0jFNY ... sp=sharing

PS: Raise your hands up who doesn't love Android API fragmentation, yaaaayyy!
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Re: XBMC4Xbox Remote - Android app

Post by Emegra »

Hi guys

I instatlled XBMC4XBOX on my phone (Samsung Galaxy) and an Android tablet and both worked perfectly however suddenly it wont start up on the tablet, each time I try to open it I get this message " Sorry! The application XBMC4XBOX Remote (process com.dandar3,xbmc4xbox.remote) has stopped unexpectedly. please try again", no matter how many times I retry the same message appears, I've tried uninstaling & reinstalling and also tried reinstalling using the .apk



Any help would be much appreciated

EDIT

False alarm I got it working by reading the above post, I did think I already tried that but I must have used the wrong .apk



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Re: XBMC4Xbox Remote - Android app

Post by Dan Dar3 »

Yeah, about that, I had a look at it last night and turned it on all sides, but I think its only fair to announce it straight.

It's always been a pain in the backside supporting different versions of Android - each newer version comes with some more APIs and classes to support the new features and you can only choose to use them conditionally (if older version do it this way, if newer version the other way) or not to use them at all. But recently with more Android programming libraries (like OkHttp for example) dropping support for Android 2.1 and 2.2 it just makes it harder if not impossible to use them anymore, and then that means a lot more effort on my side to either look for new ones and change my code to use them, until those will go the same way, or keep two different versions of the project, which will mean almost twice the amount of work to support a small number of people - by Google Play statistics, Android 2.1 = 18 installs, Android 2.2 = 38, out of a total 2,444 installs.

I think I will be able to solve this for now using an older version for certain libraries, but as soon as a new version of these libraries comes up with fixes or features I will want to use, I'm afraid I will have to update. So, just as a heads-up, I would say that probably version 3.0.0 or so will only support Android 2.3 and later. Sorry.
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Re: XBMC4Xbox Remote - Android app

Post by Emegra »

There's no need to apologise it's clearly no fault of yours, the old version works flawlessly, I have my music piped to outdoor speakers in the garden and before if I wanted to change albums, or adjust volume I had go inside switch the TV over to xbmc and make the changes it was a PITA but now it's so easy with this app, we had a garden BBQ yesterday and all the kids were fighting over control of the tablet they were amazed by it

Thank you for making this app :)



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Re: XBMC4Xbox Remote - Android app

Post by fxmech »

How about taking on adding an xbox-friendly FTP client to the remote for administrative purposes? :D
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Re: XBMC4Xbox Remote - Android app

Post by Dan Dar3 »

@fxmech
I have thought about adding a File Manager feature to it, but then again I thought it would very little used as there are so many much better file manager apps for Android that support FTP, and at the same time using one from your phone/tablet is a bit of a task. Personally, if I were to do anything other than having to pull a log file out (for which there is a separate feature), I'd probably use my PC for it.

If by "Xbox frieldy" you mean one that will consider the file system limitations, I think it's a much better idea to actually take it with your favourite FTP client application and create a ticket with them. This has been discussed before for FileZilla for example, it would fairly easy for the FTP client to identify the FileZilla FTP Server in Xbox by the connect response and assume certain file limitations and act on them, than having to implement the same in this remote app.

I find it hard at times not to take my computer and throw it into the wall at the amount of frustration developing for Android brings - Google has half-arsed implemented features along each Android version and it's frustrating to take them all into account (not just the Android 2.1 and 2.2 thing - imagine that Android 2.1 is API7 and Android 4.4 is API19, and yes each API adds or changes functionality), then they brought the Support library that helps a little at least with the ActionBar look and feel as well as some other "compat" features like say Notifications, but you always find all sorts of bugs that do not behave on certain versions. To add to that, I recently started using the Google Play Services library, which comes as an update to your mobile directly from them (was meant to make it easier for them to deploy features that otherwise each app would have to package them), and that breaks now at any time with any half-arse tested updates, and it happened already a few times, so brace for that as well. Then recently they started breaking quite regurarly the SDK tools, not to mention the brilliant idea of moving to Android Studio which after about a year of development on their side, it's still in beta and you can't even create a working new project!!! So, to summarize my position :-) I'm barely able to keep this working and continue slowly with the features that I think would be more useful, adding ones that will barely used but will require a ton of work in development and maintenance, will not be looking forward to that.

That being said, please don't be put off by all this to ask for any features - even if I say no I will consider them and I'll try to explain why I think I will not implement them, or maybe in some cases we might be able to come to a compromise. I'm only really doing this for you - the users (as melodramatic as it sounds) - and the challenge of owning/developing a project, and God be my witness if most of you would not be using Android and instead I don't know Microsoft Windows Phone :-), I wouldn't think for a second to delete this Android project and start again from scratch :-) Now that would be cathartic, for 5 minutes at least :-)
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Re: XBMC4Xbox Remote - Android app

Post by Dan Dar3 »

v2.9.8 is out. No new functionality, just fixing the crashes on Android 2.1 and 2.2
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xbmc4xbox remote

Post by MrCreosote »

i can only use the dvd remote functions on xbmc4xbox at the moment. network scan fails to find the xbox. i've tried using xbmc4box beta 4 and the latest nightly, and i've tried my mobile (running cyanogenmod 7.2) and a archos 80 cobalt tablet, running a stock android 4.0.4 rom, and i'm getting the same results with either.
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Re: XBMC4Xbox Remote - Android app

Post by Dan Dar3 »

@MrCreosote
I merged your post into this one, which is the "official" support thread.

Now, you say the DVD Remote functionality works, which means that you have edited the entry, specified the correct IP address, and probably left the HTTP settings to defaults. This particular requires requires the Event Sever that you seem to have enabled correctly: https://sites.google.com/site/xbmc4xbox ... ent-server

The rest of the functionality though requires the HTTP Server to be enabled. One of the reasons why I might not find your XBMC4Xbox in a network scan is that you may use a HTTP port either than the default 80, or a non-default username and password (xbmc/xbmc) - see this help link and check those values in your XBMC4Xbox configuration: https://sites.google.com/site/xbmc4xbox ... web-server. Or manually edit the entry in the app accordingly - https://sites.google.com/site/xbmc4xbox ... nual-entry

When you try to access the features that require HTTP Server enabled, you will get an error message on the screen that should point to the solution. Please send me a PM with more details or even better, an email - see the first page on this thread for contact details.

PS: These help links are available from the Main > (Actionbar) ... > Help menu.
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Re: XBMC4Xbox Remote - Android app

Post by MrCreosote »

thanks, i didn't think i had changed my network settings from the default, but i re-installed xbmc and remote is now fully functional on the tablet. on my mobile it still can't find anything with network scan, but i don't think the problem is with the remote app, as i'm having other network issues with other apps on the phone. think i might try a different custom rom.
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