Media Remote makes it possible to send media key inputs to your PC from any device via a website. This means that you can use your smartphone as a remote control for your sound system connected to your PC.
This implementation is independent of the media player you are using as long as your system supports media-key input.
MediaRemote consists of three parts:
receiverto react to media key inputswebsitewhich acts as the user interface to send inputserverto act as a relay to pass input coming from the website to the correct device
MediaRemote uses WebSockets as the underlying transfer technology. This makes it possible to connect your devices immediately and transport messages in realtime. As soon as a new receiver is started you will see the device listed on your website.
The basic architecture is shown in this graphic:
For now the MediaRemote receiver only works on Linux because xdotools is only available for this platform. See Issue #1.
MediaRemote does only send key-input to the receiver, it is not possible to know if the input has been handled. It is also not possible to receive information regarding the playing audio like artist or song title.
Python
The scripts are written in Python therefore it must be installed on your system. For Linux systems this should already be the case.
Additionally there are some python packages required, which can be installed with
python3 -m pip install -r requirements.txt --user
xdotool
The receiver script uses xdotool to send keycodes to the pc.
Depending on the linux distribution it can be installed with something along the lines of:
sudo apt install xdotool
To start using MediaRemote just download this repository or use Git to clone it like this:
git clone https://github.com/BeayemX/MediaRemote.git
cd ./MediaRemote/
The receiver is your device where your music is playing and which will react to the media key inputs. You can use as many receivers as you want. They just have to use the same token but have a unique device name.
To start listening for input you have to start it like this:
cd ./src/receiver/
python3 ./receiver.py
You can also use the provided SystemD-service-file in /examples/ for starting MediaRemote automatically when booting.
Configuration
Copy (or rename) the example files to their actual paths
cp ./examples/receiver_config.json ./src/receiver/config.json
The token you use in your receiver/config.json must be entered in the website to connect your devices.
The device in the config file will be used as the value in the select-field of the website.
Depending on where you host the server.py you may have to adjust the uri in the config file.
Host the src/website/ anywhere so it exposes the website to the device you want to use as the remote. The website will have a dropdown field where all your connected devices will be listed.
Devices will automatically populate the dropdown field as soon as they connect to the server and they will automatically be removed when they disconnect.
The website also works as a Progressive Web App.
When accessing the url via a browser it should look like this:
Configuration
Copy (or rename) the example files to their actual paths
cp ./examples/website_config.js ./src/website/scripts/config.js
Depending on where you are running the server.py you may have to adjust the URI in src/website/scripts/config.js.
The server serves as a relay server. Its only purpose is to register receivers and send inputs to the correct device. One server can be used to route multiple receivers. It must be available on an address that the receiver and website can connect to.
Start the server like this:
cd ./src/server/
python3 ./server.py
Configuration
Copy (or rename) the example files to their actual paths
cp ./examples/server_config.json ./src/server/config.json
The server should run just fine with the default configuration. But if there is a need to define a specific network address or another port, this is possible in src/server/config.json.