Remote Buddy
Overview
Supported applications
Supported hardware
EyeTV remote controls
iPhone™ / iPod® Touch
Supported mobile phones
Awards, raves and reviews
FAQ / Forum / Support
Pricing / License packs
Premium Edition
For Developers
Release notes

Latest version: 1.12

 Download a FREE 30 day trial version.

 Only 19.99 € incl. all V1.x updates.
(price includes 19% VAT for orders from within the EU)

All purchasers of a version 1.x will receive all V1.x updates for free!

 

Remote Buddy ships as a Universal Binary.

System requirements

  • A supported remote control.

  • Requires a PowerPC™- or Intel®-based Macintosh® computer with Mac OS® X v. 10.4.6 or later. Compatible with OS X 10.5 "Leopard".

  • For the installation of licenses: an Internet connection.

Subscribe to our newsletter to stay up to date on the latest developments.

A remote control
Control more than 95 applications, system parameters and Remote Buddy itself - just like with any other supported remote.
A presenter trackpad - touch your presentations!
Touch the live updating mini version of your desktop to reposition your mouse cursor on screen. Access multiple screens, toggle Mousespot, perform mouse clicks or navigate your presentation.
A keyboard
Type text on your Mac® through your iPhone's browser.
Browsing Remote Buddy's menu
Access the fully configurable, powerful menu that has made Remote Buddy so popular - animated, AJAX-based, right on your iPhone™!
An iTunes® remote & media playback device
Livesearch, music library browsing, editing playlists, switching AirTunes™ speakers, playback of compatible iTunes® media directly on your device ("streaming"), rating songs, viewing covers, setting volume, repeat, playback position and shuffle - there's hardly an aspect of iTunes®, that you could not control through Remote Buddy's AJAX Remote.
Launching VIDEO_TS folders on your Mac®
Interfacing with Remote Buddy's Movie Library, the Movies section is showing any covers it can find, and starts playback of your selections in DVD Player or VLC.
Zap in EyeTV and start playback of its recordings
Browse your channels and recordings and see your Mac® switch to them as you touch them.
What is the AJAX Remote and how does it work?
The AJAX Remote is a virtual remote control, that is integrated into Remote Buddy and gives you access to Remote Buddy's menu and functionality through a web browser. Its name descends from the technology at the core of the virtual remote: AJAX ("Asynchronous JavaScript and XML") - a technique, that allows the creation of bandwidth-efficient, highly dynamic web sites.

The mini webinterface Remote Buddy dynamically generates is loaded into a browser - for example that of an iPhone™ or iPod® Touch - and offers direct access to the diverse functions in Remote Buddy. The webinterface is delivered to the browser by a webserver, developed from scratch by IOSPIRIT and which runs directly on your Mac®. The direct integration into Remote Buddy offers significant advantages such as a very high speed, efficiency and extremely low reaction times in a (W)LAN of often just a few milliseconds.

Set up the AJAX Remote in 4 easy steps
1. Open preferences 2. Enable the AJAX Remote 3. Set a password 4. Open in the browser
After downloading and starting Remote Buddy, click on its icon in the menubar and select "Preferences". In the toolbar, click on "AJAX Remote", then activate the checkbox in front of "Enable AJAX Remote". Now, as seen in the image, set a password for the AJAX Remote. You can now open the AJAX Remote in the browser on your iPhone™/iPod® Touch. Therefore, please enter the listed URLs: the Bonjour® URL first, then the Ethernet/AirPort® ones.

The AJAX Remote requires your iPhone™ / iPod® Touch to be logged in to the same WLAN (also called "WiFi" or "AirPort®" by Apple®) as your Mac® and the ability to directly communicate with one another.

Screenshots
What should I do if I experience problems with the AJAX Remote?
If you should run into problems during AJAX Remote usage, and those have not already been dealt with in the Remote Buddy forum or FAQ (please always search for a solution there, first), or if you have an idea or wish to improve Remote Buddy, we're looking forward to an email from you.

Remote Buddy FAQ > Hardware - iPhone™ / iPod® touch / AJAX Remote
  • Avoiding routing problems

    As soon as you employ several base stations, switches, hubs, DHCP-server or similiar, the complexity of your network can increase dramatically - and with it also the number of possible error sources, including the unconscious creation of multiple IP subnets, between which traffic can't or can't properly be routed.

    The simplest setup is thus, if your Mac® as well as your mobile device are booked into the same WLAN. Depending on how the base station is constructed, it may also be possible to connect your Mac® via a LAN cable and only connect your mobile device via WLAN. The latter works quite well with an AirPort Extreme® base station and often offers the advantage, that with less wireless clients, the remaining wireless clients enjoy higher data throughput.

    Intelligent choice of WLAN channels and identifiying wireless noise sources

    The software iStumbler allows you to obtain detailed information on the WLAN networks in your surrounding - including signal strength, noise level, the WLAN channel and the frequency used. The iStumbler Spectrum Widget, available on the same page, you can get a display of which networks are using which channel and at which scale. If several networks overlap, this can lead to collisions that can slow down or interfere network connections. By knowledgably choosing a channel for your WLAN connection, you can thus work around these influences of your surrounding and increase the reliability of your network. There is also an article with pictures on this topic over at macgeekery.com.

    Leaving Wireless LANs aside, Bluetooth® devices can also be a source of interference. Theoretically, WLANs and Bluetooth® should not interfere with one another, but since they are using the same radio frequencies, this can not be completely excluded. We have received a handful of reports, that deactivating Bluetooth® and/or switching the WLAN to another channel has solved the WLAN problems.

    A list of other, physical sources of interference can be found in the collection of links at the end of this article.

    Possible solution for extremly instable connections / 802.11b/g (54 MBit/s) vs. 802.11n (130 MBit/s)

    [Update 02/18/2008]: OS X 10.5.2 contains updated WLAN drivers that have solved the issues with 802.11n-connections with all Mac®s that were able to test it with. The following information may thus have become obsolete with this operating system update.

    Based on reports from users and our own, consistent experiences with our own Mac®, we conclude that the combination of a 802.11n base station with 802.11b/g-capable clients (like the iPhone™ / iPod® Touch and older Mac®) can lead to unstable to unusable connections.

    Examples:

    • We could never use our MacBook® Pro (Santa Rosa/LED-LCD revision) as a (802.11n, 130 MBit/s) base station, as the packet loss ranged at 97% and more. As soon as we connected with the same MacBook® Pro to an AirPort Express® base station (in mode "802.11b/g compatible", 54 MBit/s), we had an absolutely stable and reliable connection with 0% packet loss.
    • Our iMac® has always been usable as a rock-solid and very stable base station. Its built-in WLAN does only allow 54 MBit/s (802.11g), though.

    You can learn about the speed of your WLAN connection by starting the Network Utility (in /Applications/Utilities) and pick the network interface en1 (=> for AirPort®) in the "Information" tab. If the displayed speed is 54 MBit/s, you have a 802.11b/g connection, if the value is 130 MBit/s, your connection is a 802.11n one.

    Instructions: Adapting the settings of AirPort® / AirPort Extreme® base stations

    1. Start the "AirPort Utility" (to be found in /Applications/Utilties and on the CD accompanying your hardware) and wait until your base station has been found.
    2. Choose your base station, then click on the button "Manual configuration" in the lower left.
    3. Make sure "AirPort" is selected in the window's toolbar and choose the tab "Wireless".
    4. Now pick "802.11b/g compatible" as "Radio Mode".
    5. Click on the "Update" button in the lower right of the window and wait until your base station has restarted.
    6. Done.

    Instructions: Adapting the settings of other base stations

    Change the radio mode of your base station from 802.11n to 802.11b/g. Please consult with the documentation of your base station on how to make this change or ask the maker of the hardware for that info.

    Instructions: Adapting settings of a Mac® used as base station ("Internet-Sharing")

    We're sorry, but for the time being we don't know of a way to get a current Mac®, which acts as a WLAN base station, to use a particular speed setting. You can possibly get the same effect, though, by using a WLAN USB stick which is limited to 54 MBit/s in hardware.

    Selected Apple® support documents related to this topic

    Here, you can find a compilation of support documents, that we often recommend:

 
Legal notice | Privacy policy | TAC | Shop information | Imprint | Contact

© 2004-2009 IOSPIRIT GmbH. All rights reserved.