2015-03-22, 04:01
I am new to Kodi but one of the things of I really wanted to realize on my HTPC was an option to display real-time traffic in the area around my home.
It was pretty easy to implement and I think it's a really nice feature that others here may enjoy also.
I'm running Kodi on Lubuntu but I think this will work on Windows and most Linux distros (but probably not OpenELEC).
1. Install Chrome.
2. Go to Google Maps, select your area of interest and turn on the real-time traffic display. Save the final URL.
3. Install the Chrome Launcher addon. This is available in the SuperRepo repository.
4. Add a new item to your main menu. Confluence users would edit the file:
/usr/share/kodi/addons/skin.confluence/720p/Home.xml
5. Insert (maybe next to the Weather option):
<item id="777">
<label>TRAFFIC</label>
<onclick>RunPlugin(plugin://plugin.program.chrome.launcher/?url=URLENCODED_URL&mode=showSite&stopPlayback=no)</onclick>
<icon>-</icon>
<thumb>-</thumb>
</item>
You will need to replace "URLENCODED_URL" with a specially encoded version of the Google Maps URL you saved in step 2. If you're not familiar with URL encoding, just paste your URL into this page:
http://meyerweb.com/eric/tools/dencoder/
and click "Encode" to get an appropriately encoded version.
6. Restart Kodi and select the new TRAFFIC option from the main menu to test. Note that to exit Chrome (and return to Kodi) you'll need to enter or send <Control-W>.
7. Finally, if required, you can bind the TRAFFIC and/or exit-TRAFFIC functions to the desired buttons on your remote.
I hope some of you enjoy this as much as I have!
It was pretty easy to implement and I think it's a really nice feature that others here may enjoy also.
I'm running Kodi on Lubuntu but I think this will work on Windows and most Linux distros (but probably not OpenELEC).
1. Install Chrome.
2. Go to Google Maps, select your area of interest and turn on the real-time traffic display. Save the final URL.
3. Install the Chrome Launcher addon. This is available in the SuperRepo repository.
4. Add a new item to your main menu. Confluence users would edit the file:
/usr/share/kodi/addons/skin.confluence/720p/Home.xml
5. Insert (maybe next to the Weather option):
<item id="777">
<label>TRAFFIC</label>
<onclick>RunPlugin(plugin://plugin.program.chrome.launcher/?url=URLENCODED_URL&mode=showSite&stopPlayback=no)</onclick>
<icon>-</icon>
<thumb>-</thumb>
</item>
You will need to replace "URLENCODED_URL" with a specially encoded version of the Google Maps URL you saved in step 2. If you're not familiar with URL encoding, just paste your URL into this page:
http://meyerweb.com/eric/tools/dencoder/
and click "Encode" to get an appropriately encoded version.
6. Restart Kodi and select the new TRAFFIC option from the main menu to test. Note that to exit Chrome (and return to Kodi) you'll need to enter or send <Control-W>.
7. Finally, if required, you can bind the TRAFFIC and/or exit-TRAFFIC functions to the desired buttons on your remote.
I hope some of you enjoy this as much as I have!