Tag: music

Home Theatre Device Control

Posted by – October 25, 2010

Home theatre devices do not like to play nice together. They each use separate protocols and methods for command and control, and finding documentation or sample code on how they work is often difficult.

I have written two small libraries and put them up on GitHub for devices I have come in contact with:

The code for the Viewsonic Pro 8100 will let you control every feature documented in the manual over a serial connection. Reading data back from the projector is not yet fully functional, however.
The code for the Onkyo Receiver should be compatible with other Onkyo devices using their ISCP protocol over Ethernet. With a bit of elbow grease, that library should also be useful for those wishing to control their Onkyo serial devices.
If you find either library useful, please drop me a note — and patches are always welcome!

qmmp

Posted by – December 6, 2009

I’ve gotten to rather like qmmp. It offers a nice balance of simplicity and functionality, and has the added benefit of being modeled visually after my favourite windows based media player, winamp. To make this style more complete, i’ve added the official Winamp base skin.

QMMP with Winamp base skin

QMMP with Winamp base skin

The classic skin came from here. Just download the .zip and place it in ~/.qmmp/skins, open up the settings, make the switch, and you’re good to go.