Author | Thread |
User 14.07.2008 12:37:29 |
This posting is older than 6 months and can contain outdated information. I've been playing with Remote Buddy on my iPhone 3G, since the Remote app available through the AppStore doesn't work for my network setup (I have multiple static IP addresses through my ISP, and my desktop, which I want to control is on one, while my wireless network is on another). The feature set for Remote Buddy seems to be pretty good, but the Now Playing screen for iTunes seems to be mostly broken. It does not show the title of the song, artist, volume, cover art, or any other information on "Now Playing", and the play/pause button doesn't correctly display whether iTunes is playing or not. The "Playlist" screen works to switch tracks, but refuses to let me remove tracks from the playlist, and the buttons on the top of that screen both have issues: the back arrow to "Now Playing" displays as "Now pla...", and the "Edit" button has single-pixel-wide vertical lines randomly descending to the top of the button text. I'd love to be able to use Remote Buddy on my iPhone (especially if you're able to offer a native iPhone app), but the lack of track information and playlist editing really hurt what seems to be (otherwise) a pretty good product. Has anyone else reported these issues, and is this in the process of being fixed?
| These entries from the FAQ may be relevant to this topic: Behaviours - Support for iTunes® & AirPlay® You can enable/disable this functionality at "Preferences > Behaviours > iTunes® > Options". You can also set the duration of the display there.
Hardware
- Please make sure you have the latest version of Remote Buddy installed. If in doubt, download the latest version, quit Remote Buddy, delete it, empty your trash, then copy the downloaded version of Remote Buddy to your harddrive and start it from there.
- Please make sure, that you have installed the latest version of the Remote Buddy drivers. You can install the drivers using the Setup Wizard (=> access it via the Remote Buddy pulldown menu).
- Check your Remote Buddy settings in the Hardware category. Your remote control should be listed there and the lamp next to it should be green. If you don't find your remote control there, either the Remote Buddy drivers were not installed or installed in an outdated version - or - there is a general problem with the device. For USB devices, plugging the device to another port or resetting the PMU and/or SMC-unit of your Mac® (=> find guides on how to do this for your Mac® in the support area of apple.com) may help. If you can't find it under "USB" in the System Profiler (=> /Applications/Utilities) either, a hardware defect is as well possible.
- Check the batteries of your remote control.
- If your remote control has an on/off switch: make sure that your remote control is switched on.
- If your remote control requires additional receiver hardware: make sure that it is correctly attached to your computer and that it turns up in System Profiler.
- If you use an Apple® Remote, you should also check your system settings. Quit Remote Buddy, then open System Preferences.app > Security. Please make sure that the option to disable the infrared receiver is NOT active and click on "Unpair" should you have paired your Apple® Remote with your Mac®. After that, start Remote Buddy. If your Apple® Remote still doesn't work with Remote Buddy, please also check its preferences for the Apple® Remote. They can be found at Preferences > Hardware > Built-in IR receiver. If support for multiple remote controls is enabled there, ensure that your remote control is checked in the right table (=> you can find the correct entry for your remote control by pressing a button on it).
- If you are using a Keyspan™ RF Remote for Front Row, re-pair its remote control and receiver by simultaneously pressing the small knob on the back of the remote control and the knob on the receiver stick (the knob looks like the blinking LED, except it does not blink).
Hardware - Apple® Remote
To enable you to use all capabilities of the IR Receiver of your Mac®, Remote Buddy is using its own driver. In contrast, all other applications with integrated Apple® Remote support usually use the OS X Apple® Remote subsystem.
As long as you're running Remote Buddy, Remote Buddy and its driver are responsible for turning the received button presses into actions. As soon as you quit Remote Buddy, this task is again handled by the OS X Apple® Remote subsystem.
If other applications don't use the interface to the OS X Apple® Remote subsystem correctly, this can lead to the effect that nothing happens when you press a button on your Apple® Remote. For as long as you're running Remote Buddy, issues like this are covered by Remote Buddy and it's driver and are therefore not visible to you. However, as soon as you quit Remote Buddy, the OS X Apple® Remote subsystem is back in control and any issues caused in it by other applications become visible.
Therefore Remote Buddy is neither the cause of the issue nor is it responsible for it. Instead, the cause of the issue exists independently of Remote Buddy. It's located elsewhere and can also only be solved there.
Although our products can't cause any such issues, we're regularly contacted about such issues and asked for help. In order to make locating and fixing the cause of such issues as easy and efficient as possible, we've developed a free diagnostics tool: Remote Control Diagnostics. It can locate issues with a single click and will provide you with information about the issue as well as with instructions on how you can fix it.
Hardware - iPhone™ / iPod® touch / AJAX Remote
Currently, these browsers are officially supported by the AJAX Remote:
- Safari® on iPhone™ with OS 3.0 or later
- Safari® on iPod® Touch with OS 3.0 or later
- Safari® 4 or later
The AJAX Remote is using the latest web standards (like CSS3, which is often only supported sufficiently by Safari®) to utilize the available bandwidth and CPU power efficiently.
IMPORTANT: to use the AJAX Remote, your setup needs to meet all of the AJAX Remote requirements!
Thanks for your interest in the future of Remote Buddy. Of course the iPhone™ SDK is also of interest to us.
Please understand, though, that we don't talk about future products or plans prior to to their close-to-complete-realization or release.
If you want to stay up to date on this topic, we recommend to follow us on Twitter or subscribe to our newsletter or RSS feed (find all links at the footer of the product page). News will be available here, first.
These are the most frequent causes for this kind of problem are:
- The AJAX Remote is not active. Please check in Remote Buddy's preferences, that you have enabled the AJAX Remote and that it shows the status "active".
- The OS X firewall is active and blocking incoming connections. Please read the entry "How can I define a rule to allow access to port 8888 with active Firewall?" for a step-by-step howto for fixing this problem.
- Bonjour® only works LAN-wide. In order to reach your computer by its Bonjour® name, it needs to be located in the same IP subnet - which in this case means that it must be connected to the same WiFi network. If your computer is connected to the same LAN (wired connection) as the WiFi Access Point, but not to the WiFi Access Point itself, your computer and your device are located in different subnets, whereas Bonjour® services usually can't be announced beyond the boundaries of subnets. Furthermore, the iPhone™ does only support Bonjour® addresses starting with firmware version 1.1.1. Older firmware releases can't make any sense of them.
The solution - in both cases - is to directly enter the IP of your computer on your device. Complete URLs for all network connections/interfaces of your computer can be found directly within Remote Buddy under "Preferences > AJAX Remote".
- A firewall / router does not forward connections. If you are trying to access your computer from the Internet, only a direct connection using the IP of your internet connection is possible.
- If your computer has a direct connection to the Internet without any intermediate router, Remote Buddy will show the correct IP address of your computer under "Preferences > AJAX Remote".
- If your computer is connected to the Internet through an intermediate router, only that router knows your current IP on the Internet. Furthermore, you need to make sure, that it forward connections to port 8888 to your computer. Please consult the manual of your computer to learn whether your router supports that function and how you can set it up.
- Our service for you: you can let our server tell you your current Internet IP at http://www.iospirit.com/myip/.
| User 14.07.2008 13:53:17 | Re: AJAX Remote + iPhone 2.0 | |
This posting is older than 6 months and can contain outdated information. Thanks for asking. Please check the FAQ entry on missing coverart, titles, etc. with iTunes 7.6.x or later. There's a bug in iTunes that renders iTunes' AppleScript support unusable (for all apps, not just Remote Buddy) as soon as you have ringtones in your library. Removing them solves the problem instantly. Best regards, Felix Schwarz
| User 14.07.2008 19:48:15 | Re: AJAX Remote + iPhone 2.0 | |
This posting is older than 6 months and can contain outdated information. Weird. Previously, I had previously written AppleScript that I use over SSH, and ringtones do not prevent that from working, just as quickly as it did before I had ringtones: [mordeth@entropy ~]$ itunes p [iTunes] Playing "6月の沖縄 (Live)" by Buck-Tick, from the album Dress (Bloody Trinity Mix). [mordeth@entropy ~]$ itunes p [iTunes] Paused. Current song: "6月の沖縄 (Live)" by Buck-Tick, from the album Dress (Bloody Trinity Mix). (The "itunes" command above is a bash function which calls ApplesScript saved as a .scpt file.) However, deleting my ringtones seems to fix most of the problems I was having with Remote Buddy, but I'm still seeing "Now pla..." and the lines on the playlist "Edit" button. How does one go about viewing "radr://" links? Googling for it has been most unhelpful. (I have ADC membership, already.) Edit: Also, while Remote Buddy will delete the last song from an iTunes playlist, this is not displayed on the "Playlist" screen... Last edited: 14.07.2008 19:54:59
| User 14.07.2008 20:03:12 | Re: Re: AJAX Remote + iPhone 2.0 | |
This posting is older than 6 months and can contain outdated information. AFAIK scpt files are compiled AppleScript, whereas Remote Buddy often needs to compile AppleScript on-the-fly to get certain information from iTunes (i.e. on a specific track with a specific ID). Radar-Links are only viewable by Apple Staff. The text in buttons is capped at a particular width, so there's still space available for the title of the current list. The Edit button displays just fine on the Mac (OS X 10.5.4), iPod Touch (firmware 2.0), iPhone (firmware 1.1.4) for me. Since it's really just HTML and PNG glued together via CSS, I'm afraid I can't offer you an explaination why your iPhone 3G would display it any different. Best regards, Felix Schwarz
|
|