How about controlling Xbox Media Center (XBMC) via it's HTTPAPI?
It seems fairly simple and should be a pretty robust solution:
http://www.xboxmediacenter.com/wiki/index.php?title=WebServerHTTP-API
Cheers,
James
James,
Great idea, didn't realise that it had this API. Should be possible.
Probably could even just be done with a Ruby device rather than a C++ one.
Got a few things at a higher priority at the moment - but someone else(you?) might be willing to give it a try.
Regards
Darren
It seems it should be done similar way as for Dreambox. It can be controlled via Infrared and via Ethernet as well.
I've taken a brief look into this as I have XBMC installed here, seems to me there are 2 (minor) issues.
1. XBMC mangles filenames with a colon ':' in them, these are by default used in links to NAS storage for example. No big deal as these can be renamed in the web admin.
2. The only way I could find to set the position of the playing file is in percentages, which I suspect will be way to crude for the "follow me" functionality.
Simple wgets could even be used to control it, for example getting and setting the volume:
# wget -q -O - 'http://xbox/xbmcCmds/xbmcHttp?command=GetVolume'
<html>
<li>100</html>
# wget -q -O - 'http://xbox/xbmcCmds/xbmcHttp?command=SetVolume¶meter=50'
<html>
<li>OK</html>
Just in case you're wondering: yes, I have added an entry for "xbox" in my /etc/hosts file. ;) I think this would make a very nice orbiter-less media director.