[Prabash]

Hello
My name is Prabashwara and I am a Software Engineering Student from Sri Lanka. For the past few years, i have been using XBMC or Kodi, Mainly on linux but also on windows and since recently on the raspberry pi. I have also used the XBMC remote app several times which is what gave me this idea for a project for my first GSOC

Updating the Kodi Remote App for Android

Name: Prabashwara Seneviratne
forum/e-mail: [email protected]

Summary: The official XBMC Remote App for android has not been updated for several years now and as a result it has a outdated design and does not function fully on certain newer android devices (as per user reports on Google play store). My aim with this project is to create an updated version of the XBMC remote app for android with a much more modern design (Android lollipop esque) and also implements several new features such as share button integration, media downloading to local device and Google now integration.

What will the project focus on: This project will focus on creating an updated version of the Kodi remote app that has a modern "Material" design which is intuitive and also very user friendly. Moreover, it will very functional and be able to control all aspects of Kodi (Videos, Music, TV, Pictures) uniquely. The key part of this project will be the development of the android app itself and using the JSON-RPC API to communicate with Kodi.

Benefits: Users will be able to fully control Kodi very conveniently using their smartphones and also have the ability to "push" content to Kodi with just a few taps.

Goals: Create a fully functional remote app with a library view, separate views for separate media types (i.e Videos, Music, TV, Pictures) complete with playback and other controls,
share button integration, Google now integration and media downloading to local device.

Requirements: A knowledge of Android and Kodi's JSON-RPC API.

Possible mentors:

Right now, I am setting up a Android Developement Envrionment to compile the Official XBMC Remote app. So far, I have been coding mainly in Java and I wanted to use GSOC as a chance to learn something new (Which in this case would be Android ) as well as give back to the community.

Any feedback/suggestions/guidance on how I should go about this project is greatly appreciated.

[Memphiz]

Bad timing - we already have a New official Remote for android nearly done

[AchimTuran]

Here is the link: https://github.com/xbmc/Kore

But why not improve Kore? It's very good and much faster than yatse, but for me there are several functions missing. When I did the last test e.g. functions for PVR where missing. Also there is no touch control such we have in yatse.

[Memphiz]

Thats something syncd would need to decide imo - he maintains it actively and i am sure he has a todo list

[AchimTuran]

Thats something syncd would need to decide imo - he maintains it actively and i am sure he has a todo list

Sure he definitely should decide it. These were just a few ideas that I had or features that I miss.

Here is his user profile

[Prabash]

Wow. Kore looks really awesome and I would love to be a part of that project. But, i have another idea that i would like to propose (in a different thread of course ) for a xbmc plugin, if that's alright.

[steve1977]

What about a new app for IOS? The current official one has not been updated in ages and not even renamed to Kodi. Design update would be one thing and also some new features would be great to include.

[Memphiz]

I still find this Kinds of post unsuitable for a GSOC Project. The official ios Remote is maintained by joethefox - he is around - the Project is not dead - there is a dedicated thread for that remote to Post your feature requests to.

[da-anda]

@Prabash - if you'd like to improve Kore go ahead and start your coding engine. Might be a good idea though to have a chat with synced so that not both of you are working on the same feature. Everybody is welcome to improve any of our projects, be it Kodi itself, one of our websites (which are also on github) or Kore.

[Prabash]

Thanks for all the input guys. I just sent a message to syncd about kore and am waiting for him to reply

[Prabash]

So after talking with syncd, who said that he was exploring the idea of implementing streaming support in kore, i thought of implementing this feature into kore so that users could in addition to using kore as a remote, use it to stream media directly to their devices. In addition to this, i could also add transcoding support into kodi, by extending the kodi's JSON RPC API to support setting up a transcoded stream, so that users would be able to select different kinds of streams depending on where they are streaming the content from (i.e a local or a wan network) or allowing the stream type to be selected automatically depending on the bandwidth available.
What do you guys think?

[Montellese]

See http://forum.kodi.tv/showthread.php?tid=221503 for another proposal for on-the-fly transcoding.

[syncd]

As discussed with Prabash, the Android remote needs support for file browsing and PVR functions, but these are already planned/under way.

Apart from that, the "big" feature that i would like it to have is adding video/music playback, but this should be aligned with the transcoding on Kodi, to guarantee that it works in all scenarios. Once transcoding is supported, adding it to the remote involves solving some UI issues, and decide on how to handle some other stuff (like subtitles), but i think that most of the work is on the transcoding part.

One other thing: i haven't followed the headless discussion, but would it make sense to make the remote a thin client of it? At first sight i'm a little worried that it might clutter up the UI, and maybe we're cramming too much on only one app, but i'd like to know some opinions from someone that is more familiar with that than me.

[Kib]

Adding the ability to configure a headless instance from kore would be amazing.
Personal opinion here, I have no programming/mentoring opinion on gsoc proposals.

[steve1977]

I still find this Kinds of post unsuitable for a GSOC Project. The official ios Remote is maintained by joethefox - he is around - the Project is not dead - there is a dedicated thread for that remote to Post your feature requests to.

I didn't say that the project is dead nor did I want to imply that joethefox is inactive. He has been doing an amazing job and I really love the remote.

Just like what is going on with Android these days, it does feel though that the IOS app also deserves an update. Starting with it still being called XBMC, going on with topics like a more modern GUI, supporting UPNP-play-to, or filtering movies by years.

Joethefox may be the perfect mentor if some developer would be interested to pick this up?