[MAC] HOW-TO use Sony PS3 Bluetooth Remote to control XBMC for Mac

I'm hoping to finish the basic implementation for Linux by tomorrow or the day ofter, and hopefully it will work on OSX with no changes. A safe estimate is 1 week, if everything is smooth (maybe 2 weeks including some documentation and some simple examples in Python).

Oh sweet! I thought it would be far away in the future. Then I'll just wait for that to come alive before doing anything.

d4rk has added basic support for this in linux branch.

Ive been wondering what the event server was but that was a good explanation above.

Wow, this is great!
I have no experience with cocoa, but I will look at it as soon as the code becomes public.

btw; does the Sixaxis work with the same events?

First off, thanks for all the work you all are doing intergrating the PS3 remote into xbmc. This is a great, cheep, and easy remote control solution.

Do you think it would be possible in future releases for the software to stay paired with a remote even after the "ps3remote" app is closed?

sogorman Wrote:Do you think it would be possible in future releases for the software to stay paired with a remote even after the "ps3remote" app is closed?

I think once they implement the modular coding for OSXBMC that issue will be resolved. If I understand correctly each remote will have it's own module similar to a plug in that can be part of OSXBMC directly but still be independent so that new builds are not effected. It'll be a nice clean solution. This will allow you to just launch OSXBMC and the desired remote will just work without having to launch (or pair) anything else.

What I'm really waiting for would be config options to map any OSXBMC command to any button on the remote.

=)

sogorman Wrote:Do you think it would be possible in future releases for the software to stay paired with a remote even after the "ps3remote" app is closed?

It is possible and I have it working under Linux, no sample code has been committed yet though. It's just a simple matter of the program talking to the remote to also act as a Bluetooth HID server, so that it can "wake up" when a button on the remote is pressed for the first time. This of course is after the initial pairing. The only drawback is that this process needs root privileges.

BTW, _tv_, the event server is now part XBMC, there are some examples in C++ and Python under tools/EventClients. There's also a simple example of using the PS3 remote (a script originally written by brandonj). Feel free to take a look if you want.

I have taken look for it and it looks good but I'm pretty busy now with other things. I might make the program with python+lightBlue because no bluez under os x. Or just some Mac OS X prefpane with alltime backgroundrunning process so you could launch xbmc with ps3's playstation button or something. But I'll really look for this next week when I hopefully have more time. Thanks for your great work!

I just tested new event servers ps3_remote.py and it works flawlessly after I got lightblue installed to correct python. Seems that my proggram is now officially obsoleted . Nice work d4rk and others with that event server! Everyone who was intrested in my ps3remote, I suggest you to install lightblue (readme, but use sudo /usr/bin/python setup.py install) and try the python script found in d4rk's links posted before.