Sony Playstation 3

[jimbodude]

I got a PS3 for Christmas - it is pretty sweet.  Now, I want to make LinuxMCE control it - mostly for BluRay playback and power control.  Has anyone else thought about doing this?

There is no IR receiver on the PS3 (what a shame...) - all communication is done via Bluetooth.  There is a bluetooth remote with 51 buttons ( http://www.us.playstation.com/PS3/Accessories/SCPH-98046 ) that covers all the important functionality.  Since there's no easy way for LinuxMCE to talk Bluetooth for device control (that I know of), I started looking for ways to control it with IR.  There are some pretty good solutions to turn IR signals into PS3 Bluetooth commands or to add an IR receiver to the PS3's USB ports (these look the most promising: http://www.schmartstuff.com/ ).

There are a few issues:
1) Controlling the power state of the PS3 is tricky - there are not discrete On and Off commands.  Any button pushed on the controller/remote turns the device on.  There is no "Off" button on the remote - you have to access that via the menus.  These issues are both handled by Shmartz's model 500.  The model 1000 also watches the power state to give you discrete On/Off control.
2) The PS3 has a lot more functionality than movie watching, which means we have some setup work to do before the movie plays. I'm not sure where that setup work fits.
3) The PS3 starts playback immediately when a disc is inserted.  How do we know to bypass the setup work from point 2 in this case?
4) There are 51 buttons on the PS3's remote.  A lot of them don't fit into standard LinuxMCE commands or on to the usual LinuxMCE orbiter remote screens.  Do we have any devices with custom remote screens?  I'd assume that maintaining custom remote screens would be quite a pain, and should be avoided.

If anyone has any comments, other concerns that I have missed, or experience with this issue - I'm all ears.  I will probably buy the Shmartz 1000 and see what I can do with it sometime around the end of January.

[jimbodude]

Here's a different description of the problem with more products and reviews:
http://www.remotecentral.com/reviews/ps3_control_roundup/index.html

[PlatypusPedersen]

Are you planning on using the OtherOS functionality, or stream the media to the PS3 with Mediatomb via the Core?

[jimbodude]

...Neither... I plan on using LinuxMCE's IR control features to send IR commands through the Bluetooth converter to the PS3, which is connected directly to my speakers and projector (which are both already controlled by LinuxMCE).  This is a fairly typical way to control an external device with LinuxMCE.

http://wiki.linuxmce.org/index.php/Control_a_TV_or_cable/satellite_box#How_to_use_it
http://wiki.linuxmce.org/index.php/Have_LinuxMCE_automatically_control_the_TV_and_Stereo

http://wiki.linuxmce.org/index.php/Roku_Netflix_Player

[Stoney3K]

Having Bluetooth device control can be a good addition to the feature set. Last time I checked, Nintendo was shipping gyro remotes with a very well known console of theirs. The documentation on that controller is quite extensive...

[jimbodude]

I don't see bluetooth control being terribly useful for the Wii - it would basically be just to power it on and off, since the control lag would ruin any gameplay and there's not much in the way of media to playback...  The only other component (that I know of) that uses bluetooth for control is the PS3.  No sense wasting lots of development effort to support 1 and a half devices...  Better off going with one of these IR to bluetooth converters for now, I think.

I ordered the 1000, it's in the mail.  Should be here next week.

[phenigma]

I'd be very interested to hear about your experiences with it when it arrives.

J.

[los93sol]

I'd like to see someone properly support the PS3, by making an MD out of it, now that'd be useful, but just controlling it I don't think is very useful at all.

[dlewis]

I agree with los93sol... Just controlling it doesn't do much. Making it a MD, fully using the HD and all of it's features would work better.

[phenigma]

Sony has dropped OtherOS support in newer consoles and many developers have walked away from Linux development on PS3.  Personally I'm dissappointed but I don't think we'll see much development or support for Linux on PS3 any more.  PS3 Slim consoles do not support OtherOS anymore so no new PS3s will run linux.  From a resource standpoint it would be much more usefull for LMCE going forward to concentrate on supporting other hardware than the PS3. 

That being said...  I'm still interested in being able to control it from the XMB.

J.

[wierdbeard65]

Will the PS3 play nicely with the uPNP server in MCE? Not a full MD, but still access to your media!

Assuming the answer is "yes", can MCE also make live media available via uPNP as well? I'm hoping to put the TV (Sat) feed onto my core and then use a PS3 for playback....

[phenigma]

I don't want to hijack Jimbodude's thread so if we want to continue upnp configuration discussion we can open a new thread but...  I havn't used upnp within lmce yet (I've looked briefly) however I have successfully watched mythtv dvb recordings on my ps3 through the built-in mythtv upnp server and using mediatomb on a standalone NAS.  I don't believe you can watch 'Live' tv through upnp.  If you are in Europe you could look into PlayTV which is a dual-dvb tuner add-on for PS3, not available in NA and it doesn't support ATSC so it wouldn't work in NA, and it's not lmce integrated.  MediaTomb requires configuration to ensure proper on-the-fly-re-encode of many file formats to be compatible with ps3.

J.

[jimbodude]

The Schmartz PS3IR-1000 arrived yesterday.  I'd suggest this device to anyone who wants to use their PS3 as a BD player in a LinuxMCE environment.  Nice device - very easy setup, very small size (about the same as the USB-UIRT), comes with a simple postcard size directions sheet with everything you need to know to get it hooked up and paired with the PS3.  I popped it in, got the pronto codes from the website, made a new template, and it "just works".  I had no need for the Windows-based software that they distribute for it. 

The template should also work with the PS3IR-500 since they use the same codes, but you will lose the power sensing features for discrete on/off (remember to also buy or make the power sensing cable if you want that functionality - it is NOT included with the device).  I didn't program in the game play codes (triangle, square, circle, cross, start, select, PS button) into the template, since there's no matching commands, and no spot for them in the UI.  It might be funny to play a game using the Orbiter as a controller, but probably not too useful.

Since the PS3 starts playback/gameplay immediately when you insert a BD/game, I'm not having any problems getting what I want on the screen.  Also, the BD and DVD remotes on the Orbiter each have menu navigation, so you can move around the PS menu manually if you need to.  There is no easy way to have a "watch movie now" button, and it doesn't seem too useful - so I'm going to let it go.

I'll let you all know when this is available in sqlCVS.

[dlewis]

Please also create a wiki if you think it's needed.

[jimbodude]

Everything is working.  The template number is 2094.  I'll wiki about it when I have time.

It uses the BD remote.  The "Home" button (Guide command) does the same thing as the PS button on the controller, everything else should be self-explanatory.  Buttons that are not available are:
Circle, Square, Triangle, Cross (the 4 on the right of the game controller), L1, L2, L3, R1, R2, R3 (the triggers and joystick press buttons), Return, and Start.  All the rest are in the template, even if they don't show up on the remote.  The BD remote covers the features the best, so that is what I used.  Feedback welcomed.