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Why Nobody Can Copy Apple
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Search Results for: mcec
Smart Home + PC = Better Working from Home
Since the dawn of time I’ve considered the PC (and related devices like Macs, printers, etc…) to be part of my smart home. For some reason, most traditional smart home offerings have treated PCs et.al. as somehow disconnected. Sometime after the dawn of time (2004), I built MCE Controller (mcec) as a way of ensuring my home PCs could be as tightly integrated as my whole-home audio system or lights. MCE Controller is a little …Continue reading
winprint 2.0
Ever since I started programming on an Apple ][+ in 1981, I’ve had a thing for printing. My earliest apps focused on printing and my first money-making endeavor was “Tapes”, which printed casette tape ‘J-cards’ for all the mix-tapes of great ’80s music we made for the girls. Whenever I learned a new programming language or OS, the first app I’d write was Spit, an app for printing my source code all pretty (it “spits” source …Continue reading
MCE Controller V2 Released
I spent some time the last few weekends hacking on a product I first developed in 2004: MCE Controller. MCE Controller lets you control a Windows Home Theater PC (or any PC) over the network. It runs in the background listening on the network (or serial port) for commands. It then translates those commands into actions such as keystrokes, text input, and the starting of programs. Any remote control, home control system, or application that can …Continue reading
Goodbye GitHub: MCE Controller now on CodePlex
I love git. I love GitHub. But GitHub doesn’t seem to appreciate open source projects that require hosting more than source code. MCE Controller is an open source Windows app intended to be used by non-developers. This means it has an installer, online documentation, and requires a discussion forum for support for end users. GitHub never really provided great support for this kind of project. For example, there is no forum/discussion feature (although some claim …Continue reading
MCE Controller 1.7 Released – Now Supports RS-232
By popular demand (shocking, I know), MCE Controller now supports RS-232 in addition to TCP/IP connections. This means that you can now control any Windows PC via the serial port. MCE Controller is an open source application I built for my home control system. It makes it easy to integrate Windows PCs with other devices and control systems. Any device that can send strings over TCP/IP or (now!) a serial port can now send commands …Continue reading
MCE Controller 1.5.0 Released–Send Unicode chars
MCE Controller allows you to remotely control another Windows PC on your network. For example it allows you to simulate a press of any button on the Windows Media Center IR remote control from another computer; if MCE Controller receives the string “mypictures” it will tell Media Center to go to the “My Pictures” page. Today a user asked how to send Unicode characters such £ and € and I added this functionality to the …Continue reading
Control Your HTPC Via The Network
[UPDATED: Feb 11, 2012 – Version 1.4.0 Released] MCE Controller enables the remote control of a Windows PC over the network. It runs in the background on a Windows PC listening on the network for commands. It then translates those commands into actions such as keystrokes, text input, and the starting of programs. I wrote MCE Controller in 2003 for my own home control system. In 2004 I released it publicly so others could use …Continue reading
MCE Controller supports the Windows key
MCE Controller, allows you to simulate a press of any button on the Windows Media Center IR remote control by sending a text command to a TCP/IP port on your Media Center computer. For example if MCE Controller receives the string “mypictures” it will tell Media Center to go to the “My Pictures” page. I wrote this app in back in ~2003 for my own use so I could integrate Media Center with my Crestron …Continue reading
MCE Controller v1.1 Released – and now open source
I built MCE Controller as something that would be useful for my own home. I had minor aspirations of making it do more than it does, but the reality is that I don’t really have the time nor the inclination (it works beautifully for me as is). Until today I have resisted making it open source for the simple reason that I didn’t really understand what it would take to put the source out there …Continue reading
MCE Controller 1.0.4 Released
I’ve released an update to MCE Controller that fixes a bug where it would prevent Windows logoff and shutdown. Head over to http://www.kindel.com/products/mcecontroller to download it. MCE Controller allows the Media Center application of Windows Media Center Edition (MCE) to be integrated into an advanced control system by enabling programmatic control of the user interface via a TCP/IP connection. To put it simply, MCE Controller, allows you to simulate a press of any button on …Continue reading
When programs just work
I don’t get to write much code anymore. When I do I get an amazing amount of joy out of it. Tonight I realized that my MCE Controller, which I hacked up to enable me to control my Windows Media Center machine via Ethernet from my Crestron system has simply “just worked” since I released version 1.0.1 in February. I’m struck with how easy it was to write using C# and the .NET Frameworks in …Continue reading
MCE Controller doc ommission
I forgot to mention a key (pun intended) command that MCE Controller supports in the 1.0.3 documentation. The “key:” command allows you to simulate any alphanumeric keyboard key press. For example “key:3” is the same thing as pressing the 3 key on the keyboard. This command is implemented internally in MCE Controller rather than via the MCEControl.commands configuration file; which is why I forgot to document it. I will update the readme file next time …Continue reading
The Green Button
Wow. I’m impressed. It was just a week or so ago that The Green Button had issues with the hoster and now they have the site up and running on a new host. New look & feel. Most content appears to have moved over. Great work folks! The Green Button is a community website for Windows Media Center Edition (MCE). MCE is the coolest version of Windows you can get for home use. It includes …Continue reading
MCE Controller 1.0.3 Released
No code changes. Just added an installer using the very cool NullSoft Scriptable Install System. Wow, that was easy! Download and install from http://www.kindel.com/products/mcecontroller/
New MCE Controller Version
Tonight I posted version 1.0.2 of MCE Controller. Basically one new feature: The ability to shutdown, restart, standby, or hibernate the system. See the V1.0.2 readme at http://www.kindel.com/products/mcecontroller/1.0.2/Readme.htm. The product page is at http://www.kindel.com/products/mcecontroller. Looking for feedback!
MCE Controller v1.0.1 Released!
Today I released the first public version of MCE Controller. MCE Controller allows the Media Center application of Windows Media Center Edition (MCE) to be integrated into an advanced AV control system by enabling programmatic control of the user interface via a TCP/IP connection. To put it simply, MCE Controller, allows you to simulate a press of any button on the MCE IR remote control by sending a text command to a TCP/IP port on …Continue reading
MCE Controller
In my post on XMLSerialization I mentioned that I was working on an app to enable control of MCE remotely over a TCP socket. I call this app MCE Controller and it’s basically done. Here’s what it does: Runs as a taskbar icon and allows you to view a log of what it’s doing by double clicking on the icon. Supports 45 commands. These include all MCE keyboard shortcuts (equivalent to all of the remote …Continue reading
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