Android SoulMote for Android (unofficial remote)

I've uploaded a new version today which fixes a crash bug that some users may experience trying to list movies.
In addition I've added a safety check which should fix the crash bug that was caused on empty sources.

Looks great, is is tablet optimized?

Cheers!

(2012-07-24 17:50)e2zippo Wrote:  Looks great, is is tablet optimized?

I use the Samsung GT-P1000 tablet for development. It looks great on the tablet.

I've coded the main menu, remote and bookshelf views to auto scale themselves to fit any screen size (the resources were taken from the iPad version so they should look good on android tablets as well). The only side effect I've noticed is sometimes the directional buttons are 1 pixel off from the scaling breaking the perfect circle (but its a minor issue).

Try it out and see how it looks on your tablet. If you feel something is off do let me know. SoulMote will keep improving all the time and feedback is welcome.

Looks pretty cool, good job.

But out of curiosity, how come you decided to release your own android remote rather than contributing to the official android remote? The official remote is open source, but unfortunately no commits have been made in over 4 months. It is already pretty stable and full of features (Thousands of people are already using it). It just needs talented developers like you to add some more functionality from time to time to keep it up-to-date.

Source is hosted on github: https://github.com/freezy/android-xbmcremote

Thanks

PS. Like I said, I am just curious to find out :-)

EDIT: I also posted a similar question on YATSE's android widget/remote thread right here: http://forum.xbmc.org/showthread.php?tid...pid1154822

(2012-07-24 21:04)aptalca Wrote:  But out of curiosity, how come you decided to release your own android remote rather than contributing to the official android remote? The official remote is open source, but unfortunately no commits have been made in over 4 months. It is already pretty stable and full of features (Thousands of people are already using it). It just needs talented developers like you to add some more functionality from time to time to keep it up-to-date.

Late in 2010 I purchased an XBMC remote for my iPhone (called XBMC Remote). Sadly not long after I purchased it, the developer stopped updating it, and I started having problems using it with XBMC 10. So I decided to make my own remote. That's how SoulMote was born. Fast forward 35000 users and I started getting requests to bring SoulMote to Android. I began porting SoulMote as part of a learning experience, as I had never written a native Android app before. I kept the code as close to the iPhone/iPad version as possible. This allows me to make improvements to both versions quite quickly, and it sometimes also helps in squashing bugs on both os's.

I use any money I make from the remote to continue to improve it. My greatest pleasure has been the positive feedback I have received on the iPhone/iPad version. I hope in time that the Android version will give users the same positive experience.

(2012-07-24 18:10)dwagner Wrote:  

(2012-07-24 17:50)e2zippo Wrote:  Looks great, is is tablet optimized?

I use the Samsung GT-P1000 tablet for development. It looks great on the tablet.

I've coded the main menu, remote and bookshelf views to auto scale themselves to fit any screen size (the resources were taken from the iPad version so they should look good on android tablets as well). The only side effect I've noticed is sometimes the directional buttons are 1 pixel off from the scaling breaking the perfect circle (but its a minor issue).

Try it out and see how it looks on your tablet. If you feel something is off do let me know. SoulMote will keep improving all the time and feedback is welcome.

Sounds great, I'll defenitely give it a go and give some feedback!

Cheers!

(2012-07-24 23:57)dwagner Wrote:  

(2012-07-24 21:04)aptalca Wrote:  But out of curiosity, how come you decided to release your own android remote rather than contributing to the official android remote? The official remote is open source, but unfortunately no commits have been made in over 4 months. It is already pretty stable and full of features (Thousands of people are already using it). It just needs talented developers like you to add some more functionality from time to time to keep it up-to-date.

Late in 2010 I purchased an XBMC remote for my iPhone (called XBMC Remote). Sadly not long after I purchased it, the developer stopped updating it, and I started having problems using it with XBMC 10. So I decided to make my own remote. That's how SoulMote was born. Fast forward 35000 users and I started getting requests to bring SoulMote to Android. I began porting SoulMote as part of a learning experience, as I had never written a native Android app before. I kept the code as close to the iPhone/iPad version as possible. This allows me to make improvements to both versions quite quickly, and it sometimes also helps in squashing bugs on both os's.

I use any money I make from the remote to continue to improve it. My greatest pleasure has been the positive feedback I have received on the iPhone/iPad version. I hope in time that the Android version will give users the same positive experience.

Oh, I see. I didn't realize it was ported from ios. Now that explains the bookshelf look

Thank you for the explanation. I appreciate it.

Keep up the good work and good luck with the development.

dwagner for some reason I am not able to connect to my xbmc. I am able to connect through the official remote so I know the issue is not the connection information. Is there any setting that needs to be looked at?

(2012-07-25 22:02)hunkyn Wrote:  dwagner for some reason I am not able to connect to my xbmc. I am able to connect through the official remote so I know the issue is not the connection information. Is there any setting that needs to be looked at?

Hi, lets work through the issue. Please give me some more info:
1. Which version of XBMC are you running and on what OS.
2. Are you running on the standard port 8080?
3. Do you have a username and password on your XBMC setup?
4. Do you add the host manually or through the Discover option. If manually what do your use for the host.

(2012-07-25 22:20)dwagner Wrote:  

(2012-07-25 22:02)hunkyn Wrote:  dwagner for some reason I am not able to connect to my xbmc. I am able to connect through the official remote so I know the issue is not the connection information. Is there any setting that needs to be looked at?

Hi, lets work through the issue. Please give me some more info:
1. Which version of XBMC are you running and on what OS.
2. Are you running on the standard port 8080?
3. Do you have a username and password on your XBMC setup?
4. Do you add the host manually or through the Discover option. If manually what do your use for the host.

dwagner, i fixed the problem. The issue was the auto correct on keyboard made the first letter in username capital and that was causing the issue. It took me a lot of time but i figured it out in the end . Sometimes we concentrate on everything except for the important one.

Thank you for all your efforts