Hi all
Love this plugin!! I've seen a few posts from people asking about VPNs etc so thought I'd share my experiences and give some people a bit of info about how my particular setup works in case it comes in useful for anyone else
All it does is allow me to launch a US VPN connection transparently from within XBMC, nothing more.
First of all, I'm in the UK and use the BBC iPlayer and ITV plugins. I also have XBMC running on an HTPC with a Harmony remote so "need" to be able to be able to switch to a US VPN without having to get a keyboard and come out of XBMC in order to use this NBC plugin. I use Private Internet Access as a VPN for this.
I was able to connect to a VPN using Advanced Launcher and OpenVPN to initiate the VPN connection but found that in launching OpenVPN it would steal focus from XBMC. I then ended up using Windows built in VPN via RASDIAL (built in Windows VPN dialler), but that had a similar issue as Advanced Launcher was still having to run a .bat file which would steal focus. I then discovered nircmd which will launch a cmd silently without bringing up a cmd prompt window and stealing focus.
I did this a while ago so I may get some of the steps mixed up a bit but hopefully it'll point people in the right direction..
Requirements:
A VPN account (could be any I suppose I just happen to use Private Internet Access)
Windows 7 (don't know about other versions)
Advanced Launcher installed in XBMC
Nircmd - get it from here:
http://www.nirsoft.net/utils/nircmd.html
A bit of a clue about Advanced Launcher (this is more of an overview rather than step by step hand holding)
1. Download and extract nircmd.exe to a location XBMC has permissions to execute it
2. Setup the VPN connection in Windows by following these instructions:
https://www.privateinternetaccess.com/pa...l2tp_ipsec - but give it a simple name when you're setting it up to make it easier to launch it from Advanced Launcher (in my case I just called it "PIA")
3. In Advanced Launcher create a new launcher and call it whatever you want (I called mine "US VPN Connect")
Thumbnails path doesn't matter the main things we're putting in place are the application and arguments settings
Application: E:\utils\nircmd.exe (tells Advanced Launcher to launch nircmd.exe - change the path to wherever you extracted it)
Arguments: rasdial PIA (tells nircmd.exe to launch rasdial and open the "PIA" VPN connection)
Platform: DOS (don't know if this matters..)
That's basically it. As I want to be able to get into iPlayer etc in the UK after I've used NBC plugin I also created a disconnect Launcher in Advanced Launcher by doing step 3 but with arguments: "rashangup" which closes the VPN connection.
This works for me, and hopefully will help anyone else in a similar situation to me
Ideally I'd figure out a way of having this all happen automagically when I open the NBC plugin but if any clever person out there has any ideas how to do that speak up
Cheers
