Current iOS App (iPod Touch/iPhone/iPad) controlled receivers? - Page 5

The iPad app has been approved for sale on iTunes. It should be released when iOS 4.2 is released.

Great! I really like the Beta version I have been testing. I am looking forward to getting the latest and greatest version. You have gone all out to make this a user friendly and indispensable tool. I use a harmony 890 to control my equipment so I thought I would have only limited use for this app. Not so. The zone controls, the network controls and the neat way to change sound modes makes this indispensable for me. Thanks for your efforts.

Ray

There's an "Onko Tron" app for Onkyo '07 and '08 networked receivers already available for iPhone.
raylock, is that your app? It says by Paul Gardiner and it's €3.99
I'd rather buy your app, but if that's your's I'll buy it instantly

Edit: Sorry, I meant rworne, not raylock as the app designer.

Do these Onkyo apps work on other products?

Can you do macros on these? Ir / serial with a global cache?

No, but for example Denon and Pioneer have their own apps.

App is written by rworne (see his posts above). It is my understanding that it will be available as soon as the new operating system is released for the iPad. Should be in the week or two. I was one of the beta testers.

So how was it?

This might be the reason I buy something that is made by Apple...

Things are still alive. Upcoming enhancements (post iOS 4.2 release):

RI Control for Onkyo BD/DVD players and iPod Dock.

First screenshot:

rworne,
Just wondering if this has the ability to control two different Onkyo processors if I add another one down the road?


Also, do you have any plans for a windows program?


Thank You

Detection of multiple AVRs is two or three updates down the line. That is, I do have two AVRs here, but I was planning on having it do one or the other. I will take the multiple units under consideration though.

I don't have plans for a windows version, but there are already a few of those out there.

Bought the OnkoTron app for iPhone.
I understand this is not rworne's app, but made by someone else.

It works, but the functionality is quite basic. Basic input switching, volme controls and muting. It does show the current input and output formats for sound and video and lets you change the PLIIx, THX and other sound formats directly from a list or by similar buttons that are in the Onkyo remote. It doesn't however have selections for PLIIz or Audyssey in the direct list, but with the 'remote buttons' they can be cycled. Also the subwoofer and centre speaker levels can be adjusted along with bass and treble for at leas front speakers if I remember correct.
www.onkotron.com has more info.

rworne's app sems to be having much more functions from the looks of it. So if I was to buy the app again, I'd probably wait to see what his app is like.

If somehow you could go back to a main screen or have a toggle to go between the multiple AVR's that could be handy.

Just wondering about another thing, if the AVR is in standby mode, will this software work to turn on the unit and control its functions?

Thank You

The plan is:

When two are detected at first start up (or if uPnP detection is on), it asks which to use. Otherwise it does the one in settings.

If you hit the "ON" button, it takes the AVR out of standby. If you hit a particular input, say hit the BD/DVD switch, it turns the unit on and goes to that input.

Sounds good, thanks.

At this point I only have one Onkyo, but it would be nice if it could control more then one (selectable/switchable), I am glad rworne is considering it...

As for a Windows based program, not that this would run on a phone or maybe it would but I have only tried it on Vista... I am using NRcontrol, it works well and provides some reasonable control over the network. I have yet to try it with my Viewsonic airpanel via RDP but that should work as well.

The other program I tried was a web based program that used XAMPP (server service) to pass the controls along but I could not get it to work and couldn't find any support for it either.

Thanks, I will have to look into NRcontrol.

I've been watching the progress of this in another forum and it looks quite nice. My only issue with it is the lack of portability. I see little difference between sitting in front of the computer controlling an AVR and just going to the AVR itself.

Then again, I've been known to code or use the web while something is playing.

oRemote was an experiment that lead to something. I am an embedded SW programmer by trade, mostly working with C and C++ (C++ mostly for organization purposes).

I always kicked around the idea of doing an iOS app. After seeing the lack of one for my AVR in the iTunes store, I found something to try out. It took me about 4-5 weeks to get something that was reasonably ready for release. It would have went faster if I didn't have to learn all the new idiosyncracies and gotchas in iOS. Many evenings were just spending 4+ hours to solve one stupid problem. It's hard to search for a solution when you don't even know how to ask what's wrong. Other evenings were spent conentrating on one new feature (like the picker wheel) and learning that.

The final product is pretty solid, I haven't had it crash on me for quite some time. It doesn't like it when the network disappears and it is made active - like when you put it to the background, go somewhere (like to work) and bring the app to the foreground. It wakes up, looks for the IP address of the AVR on the new network and exits.

The only issues now are translating the GUI into something functional for the iPhone/iPod touch. I'd really love for this to be universal, but that would exclude anything that cannot run 4.2. Right now I'm working on a 3.1.2 and up compatible iPhone/iPod version that will run on the original iPhone and iPod touch (wouldn't it be great taking one of those out of a drawer and repurposing it to be a remote?). The problem is, while the code that runs everything is pretty much the same, it causes some problems because 3.1.2 has some issues and some features are unsupported - like the faux VFD font.

Then typical fork problems happen: stuff fixed in the iPad version needs to be brought over to the modified iPhone files. I expected the iPhone version to be near-complete now, but these issues take their toll.

Note that for all the effort in making the iPad version, I am expecting rather poor sales of the app. I'd be greatly surprised if it went past "dozens".

The iPhone version, when complete may sell a hundred or so - over a year.

Now consider I picked up some Onkyo stuff just to play with so I can test features: iPod dock, HD Radio module, and recently an Onkyo BD-player (though I got that for $99, so I can't really complain aside from it's no different than sub-$100 players made by the same OEM, Funai). I even pushed forward a purchase of a 708 just to get the new net capabilities. Add more than 150 hours sunk into development, and you see I'll never get my costs back.

But it was still worth it for the experience.

I am looking forward to the iPhone app. I appreciate all the work people do to get software going for other home theater enthusiasts. I have the iPhone 4 and the 3G sitting in a drawer, so it would be nice to use that as a remote
I think that having it universal would be fine (requiring OS 4.2 may not be too bad).

If you continue to keep the program updated with bug fixes, suggestions etc.. I am sure some of the users here would not mind sending paypal donations (I know I would be willing to). Maybe you will get lucky and the iPhone version will sell better than expected

rworne, I applaud your efforts and results with oRemote and if I already had an iPad I would jump at this app, but the iPad at over $800 it is a luxury and possibly a device I would have to use to the exclusions of others I already have.

I work in the IT industry and as you know it is mostly PC or proprietary stuff here, not many Apple devices here. Heck the company I work for uses Blackberry for the corporate phone so anything Apple would be purely an extra.

This is not to say I will never buy an iPad but it would be an extra thing to carry in addition to a Windows based laptop and Blackberry phone...

BTW, I apologize if my post regarding NRcontrol is viewed as a hijack, it was not meant to be and I believe that it does not compete with your offering in the oRemote.

Interesting comment:


I have UMPC that I use with NRconrol and it is only slightly heavier then an iPad, it is wireless and portable. I also have a number of Viewsonic airPanels, I will have to try the 10" version (iPad sized and weight) to RDP into the network and see if I can run NRcontrol from it.

Again, no intent to hijack your thread, just adding to the oRemote interest level I hope!

This is not my thread.

Everyone has their own reasons for what they want. I have no issue with discussing other methods of AVR control, including competing ideas/implementations.

I only posted what I did above about the costs to let people know I am aware that I have no expectations of recouping my costs. It was an experiment that I could undertake. I write similar Windows apps at work for testing equipment. The iOS one sends out commands to an AVR when you hit a button and looks for a response, but it could also easily send it to a power supply, servo, anything.

So I had a problem where there was no issue of what the end product would do. All I needed to worry about was the implementation - which in the beginning I had little clue. You can go back in this thread and literally watch the GUI start to take shape. I spared everyone images of the earliest builds which were just simple white screens with an oval "ON" and "OFF" button in the middle.

Donations are not necessary, but thanks for the thought. If it winds up being liked, I can always do a Denon port. I looked over Denon's network protocol and it should fit in with minimal fuss.

I'm running out of new features to cram into the iPad version now, so once it goes live, I put in the latest update and get to work finishing up the iPhone version. The open beta's about two weeks late. I hate maintaining two separate forks. I've also been resting a bit after the iPad development. The beta testers can back me up on this. They saw new beta updates nearly every morning at 2 or 3 AM for weeks. And I hold a day job too.

I've been picking nits out of the code, getting rid of a few oddities - most of them are things popping up on the display due to multiple inputs.

Yes, if you are watching a DVD, Pandora and the iPod dock blissfully run in the background on the AVR, sending out updates over the network. Every once and a while, something would sneak through the filters and you'd get Pandora album art popping up when watching a DVD.

Anyhow. A dumb little feature here, but it can display the Audio Mode, whether it be Theater-Dimensional, Stereo, Direct, or Straight Decode - or whatever.

But Direct and Straight Decode don't mean too much by themselves. So now it detects these modes and displays the true output, in this case DTS-HD Master Audio. The other screen shows the RI control screen, in "easy mode", since there does not seem to be too much feature support in HDMI CEC for BD/DVD players right now. So it just displays what seems to be supported. I suppose once the app is released I'll be hearing from people about it.

Oh, and if you customize the input button title, Like "VCR/DVR" which is really "Video 1" now displays on screen whatever you customized it to, instead of the generic "Video 1".

Since the App has already been approved, to speed up the release I have to hold off until 4.2 is formally released by Apple. The day that hits, this new version goes in as an update.

Hi
I just purchased Onkyo 708 two days ago. While I like the receiver, I notice its not able to display any of my music file which with unicode (non English character name). Will this software Rworne able to display and read music file that's not in English?

That was one of my questions when I started as well. No. Unicode characters show up as "*" on the Onkyo, and that is precisely what it sends to my App.

It's a shame, because the iPad and iPhone have excellent Unicode support.

This is truely a shame on Onkyo. How can they left out of support on unicode characters... I guess I will need to get external media player to play my music collection from the server...

I've got a list of grievances with how some things are supported. There's a Chinese language option on the Onkyo, but I have no idea what that does as far as unicode or Big5 or whatever encoding they may use.

The Network protocol somewhere did specify only certain characters are supported, mainly characters 32-127 (decimal) in the ASCII set.

I haven't quite decided where to put these. If you look closely, the app now sports a speaker layout graphic that is identical to the one on the AVR.

I'm open to suggestions on where to put it.

I just gave that idea a shot. Change Onkyo 708 OSD to Chinese. Still it doesn't display any Chinese character that's encoded in BIG5 or unicode. I suppose if I connect my ipod to Onkyo through usb connector, the result would be the same..

Don't get your hopes up on that. I have tons of content on my iPod, quite a bit of it is Japanese with Unicode or SJIS character encoding. None of it works.

Every once and a while Pandora starts playing something with a character that the Onkyo doesn't like - that's a "*" too.

I haven't decided on leaving this in yet or not, but as of now I have this working in slightly better than a half-ass fashion.

The app will "remember" for lack of a better term the last menu state. Unfortunately, the AVR likes to send the cursor position info update before sending over the new menu (if it is needed) so the problem is I need to know what is there beforehand when there is no guarantee of it.

Add to this the problem of not being able to control the menus - as in I cannot force a "refresh".

I might just hobble this so it will display only the station currently playing. I really wanted it to work like the Onkyo screen, *sigh*