[hjhamala]

UPDATED:

I have started as a vacation project to make new app widget for the official xbmc-remote application.

Remote Widget is based on the apps remote with no media buttons. It takes 3*4 space in the home screen of the device.

Now Playing Widget is has previous, next, stop, pause/play buttons and also buttons to launch tv show, movie and music librarys from the application.

Both widgets seems to now work as planned.

Roadmap:
- both widgets need definetly better graphics, maybe some volunteers?
- Now playing widget needs to test thoroughly that it doesnt drain unnecessary power via polling.
- Different media types works funnily in Now Playing. For example movies genre is in the artist field. This is caused by the original application and is easily fixed.
- Merge to official branch
- Error handling logic
- Fix NowPlayingPollerThread. The current implementation from the official branch doesnt seem to handle connection errors right

Code:

try{
       currPlaying = control.getCurrentlyPlaying(mManagerStub);
    } catch(Exception e) {
sendEmptyMessage(MESSAGE_CONNECTION_ERROR);
return;
}

This never triggers.

Code can be found in GitHub:
https://github.com/hjhamala/android-xbmcremote

APK for the interested (both widgets) can be downloaded from: https://docs.google.com/open?id=0B00mzdT...jkzZzVuYXc
Upgrading the Google Play version is not possible because signing key is different so uninstall of official version must be done first.

This is my first venture to the android development so please be gentle to me

[Bram77]

android-xbmcremote crashes on my phone if I touch a remote button (Galaxy Nexus running Jelly Bean 4.1.1 AOSP).

[hjhamala]

android-xbmcremote crashes on my phone if I touch a remote button (Galaxy Nexus running Jelly Bean 4.1.1 AOSP).

Hello Bram

Could you test another version?:
https://docs.google.com/open?id=0B00mzdT...UtrZVR3RkU

WrongConnectionState error wasnt catched correctly so it might have crashed the widget because the original code tries to display a wifi settings window.

I noticed from this thread http://=http://forum.xbmc.org/showthread...id=118624] that a regular remote didnt work with you either in beta 1. Does the regular remote work with my build which is based on beta 3?

I have tested widget in 4.1 AVD with Galaxy Nexus settings. I dont have any real Jelly Bean devices so emulator is only way to test 4.1 devices.

[Owel]

Can you provide any Screenshots of this app/widget?

[hjhamala]

Can you provide any Screenshots of this app/widget?

Hi
Here are two screenshots showing the widget in different orientations.
https://picasaweb.google.com/11830624909...20/1372012

Graphics are based on the original remote so stretching is quite noticiable in the landscape orientation. Fortunately making new layout is quite simple after I have some time to work with it.

[hjhamala]

It looks like that NowPlaying widget is quite simple to make. I have attached a screenshot showing current version of it. It shows also new buttons which I have started to make with Inkscape. Using vector graphics make generating different sizes of png files very easy. Service that updates widget needs more work. It should not update a widget if the widget is not visible or the screen is off.

[Tolriq]

Unfortunately there's no single api that exist to know if a widget is visible or not

Good luck adding widgets to official remote was quite fun to achieve near perfects one for Yatse Widgets

[hjhamala]

Unfortunately there's no single api that exist to know if a widget is visible or not

Good luck adding widgets to official remote was quite fun to achieve near perfects one for Yatse Widgets

You are a time saver Now I know that it is waste of time to google about how to know when the widget is on screen. Your widget looks great by the way.

[Tolriq]

What is too bad is that even in Jelly Bean they still don't give any way to do that ....

They really want widgets that do not refresh often

To save you a little time too, you should put the option to refresh now playing time every x second in option since remoteviews updating can take quite some resources depending on the user launcher.
This can really eat battery a lot until google gives us a way to know if widget is visible or not

[HenryFord]

I just leave this here so you can star the issue and may be informed about further changes:
http://code.google.com/p/android/issues/detail?id=5529

[hjhamala]

I have updated first post with new version of app which now has two different widgets. It seems that maybe only now playing widget is after all necessary. Picture of the new now playing widget is attached to this post. I know that it doesnt look professional but it hopefully keeps getting better.