AppleTV control via network (using iPhone remote protocol?)
Posted: Fri May 08, 2009 10:46 am
Okay; I really hope this hasn't been asked before, because I don't seem to be very good at using the search system on this forum for some reason..
Does anyone know if anyone has figured out the protocol that the iPhone Remote uses to talk to and control the AppleTV? I'm betting Apple hasn't published it (and never will), and I suspect Apple has it encrypted somehow, but that hasn't stopped people from figuring this stuff out in the past.
Basically what I want is for Indigo to be able to tell the AppleTV to pull up playlists and play them. I can send IR commands to it (via a GC-100), but the menu system and remote are pretty ambiguous - there's no way to know if you're really at the "main" menu or not without looking at the screen.
I'm hoping for a more "robust" communications; even better would be the ability for me to poll for "what are you doing/playing right now?" like I can with iTunes.
And now let me explain why I want the AppleTV to play the music and not iTunes via streaming.. iTunes is too unpredictable. Most of the time it will launch fine and connect to the AppleTV, but sometimes it won't. It will pop up some random dialog that I can't dismiss with AppleScript. Or sometimes it will come up with Remote Speakers deactivated. Or sometimes it just won't come up at all. I'm at the point now where I actually have an Applescript execute an "do shell script 'killall iTunes'" if it stops responding (I think my library size has something to do with it; over 3TB of movies/television shows -- I've been slowly ripping my DVD collection over to the AppleTV format; 3 400 disc DVD changers take up too much room )
[It's a shame Apple won't release some sort of "AppleTV Daemon" that can run in the background on my Mac, that can accept Applescript and serve out data to the AppleTV]
Does anyone know if anyone has figured out the protocol that the iPhone Remote uses to talk to and control the AppleTV? I'm betting Apple hasn't published it (and never will), and I suspect Apple has it encrypted somehow, but that hasn't stopped people from figuring this stuff out in the past.
Basically what I want is for Indigo to be able to tell the AppleTV to pull up playlists and play them. I can send IR commands to it (via a GC-100), but the menu system and remote are pretty ambiguous - there's no way to know if you're really at the "main" menu or not without looking at the screen.
I'm hoping for a more "robust" communications; even better would be the ability for me to poll for "what are you doing/playing right now?" like I can with iTunes.
And now let me explain why I want the AppleTV to play the music and not iTunes via streaming.. iTunes is too unpredictable. Most of the time it will launch fine and connect to the AppleTV, but sometimes it won't. It will pop up some random dialog that I can't dismiss with AppleScript. Or sometimes it will come up with Remote Speakers deactivated. Or sometimes it just won't come up at all. I'm at the point now where I actually have an Applescript execute an "do shell script 'killall iTunes'" if it stops responding (I think my library size has something to do with it; over 3TB of movies/television shows -- I've been slowly ripping my DVD collection over to the AppleTV format; 3 400 disc DVD changers take up too much room )
[It's a shame Apple won't release some sort of "AppleTV Daemon" that can run in the background on my Mac, that can accept Applescript and serve out data to the AppleTV]