EventServer

XBMC can recieve commands through our internal EventServer. But what is this EventServer, why is it needed and how do I use it?

Introduction

Why?

With the ports becoming a reality it's harder to support all possible remotes inside the standard codebase, especially without having a performance drop. Many people doesn't need one remote but craves the other, and without forcing the user to compile there own build this is an impossibility. The solution is to make remotes plug n' play, which is why the Event Server was born.

What is an Event Client and Event Server

XBMC acts as the Event Server which listens for commands from the Event Clients. The Event Client is currently remotes or gamepads but can be anything that want to send commands to XBMC. To keep this communication as fast and plug n' play as possible UDP was chosen. UDP is used in network games and is one of the lowest layers of network communication, this grants low latencies and very little overhead.

These commands are completely crossplattform and makes it possible to have a Event Client on a XBMC for Linux that sends the commands to XBMC for Xbox and it will respond as if it were sending these command to XBMC for Linux.

Pros and Cons

Some of you may have noticed this seems to be alot like our WebServerHTTP-API and here's pros for the Event Server

• Always active on localhost which makes it much more stable for remotes (Not usable for XBMC for xbox).
• Event based were the httpapi is request based.
• Much easier to implement in programs
• Can distinguish between different clients and can therefor be used simultaneously, ie for games with split screen.
• Mappable through keymap.xml if the client chooses so.
• Will notify the user when a connection is made
• Capable of displaying notifications on demand.

There are some cons with this approach aswell:

• Currently Event Server cannot send any information back to the clients but it's something that will be incorporated.
• Event Server is not designed to be able to send raw commands like playurl "foo". This might change in the future.

Setup

XBMC

Enable Remote Events If enabled XBMC's Event Server is activated. Remote Events Port This is the starting port for the port range that Event Clients can use. Remote Events Port Range This is the port range we can listen to Event Clients. Maximum Number of Clients The maximum of simultaneous remotes connection at one time. Receive events from other computers If enabled the Event Server will listen for connections beyond localhost. Initial Repeat Delay (ms) If a Event Client sends a held button this is the delay before it will be repeated. Continuous Repeat Delay (ms) The above buttons repeat speed.

Event Clients

The Event Clients and Event Server are in heavy development so for up-to-date information refer to the README.txt.

Most of the Event Clients have the ability to be setup using arguments in the command line. Among the standardized arguments are:

• --address were both IP or DNS should be working. localhost are standard.
• --port were 9777 is standard.

The Event Clients can choose which controller type it will be recognized as were the possibilities are:

• Mouse
• Keyboard
• Xbox DVDRemote
• Xbox GamePad
• LIRC (Only on Linux)
• Joystick

The one that is most interesting is the joystick which is perfectly mappable using this convention were foo is the Event Clients name (Chosen by the Event Client). The Event Client sends a button id which is a number ranging from 1 - 65554 and is also able to send an axis.

<joystick name="foo">

 <button id="1">ACTION1</button>
 <button id="2">ACTIOn2</button>
 <axis id="1" limit="-1">ACTION3</axis>
 <axis id="2" limit="+1">ACTION4</axis>

</joystick>

See Editing keymap.xml for more information on how to customize the keymap.

PS3 Sixaxis and Blu-Ray Remote Support

There is also initial support for the PS3 controller (sixaxis) and the PS3 Blu-Ray remote.

Pairing of the PS3 Blu-Ray Remote

The remote needs to be paired initially with the 'ps3_remote.py' program in this directory which you can continue using if you do not want to run 'ps3d.py' as root. The disadvantage of using 'ps3_remote.py' is that pairing is required on every run. Once initial pairing is done, 'ps3d.py', when run as root, will automatically detect incoming connections from both the PS3 remote and the Sixaxis controller.

Pairing of the PS3 Sixaxis Controller (TODO)

The pairing of the PS3 controller is not yet handled automatically. It can however be done using the program "sixaxis.c" available from:

http://www.pabr.org/sixlinux/sixlinux.en.html

Once pairing for either or both has been done, run the ps3d.py program as root after disabling any existing HID servers that might currently be running. The program requires root privileges since it listens on Bluetooth L2CAP PSMs 17 and 19.

Using the PS3 Sixaxis Controller

Currently, all that is supported with the Sixaxis controller is to be able emulate the mouse behavior. Hold down the PS button and wave the controller around and watch the mouse in XBMC mouse. Tilt it from left to right (along your Z axis) to control horizontal motion. Tilt it towards and away from you along (along your X axis) to control vertical mouse movement.

That's all for now.

WiiRemote

The executable depends on libcwiid and libbluetooth and is compiled using

1. g++ WiiRemote.cpp -lcwiid -o WiiRemote

The WiiRemote will emulate mouse by default but can be disabled by running with --disable-mouseemulation The sensitivity of the mouseemulation can be set using the --deadzone_x or --deadzone_y where the number is the percentage of the space is considered "dead", higher means more sensitive. Other commands can be listed with --help

The WiiRemote is mappable with keymap.xml where button id's are the following:

1=Up

2=Down

3=Left

4=Right

5=A

6=B

7=Minus

8=Home

9=Plus

10=1

11=2

The name is by standard WiiRemote but this can be changed with the --joystick-name

J2ME (Java Phone Application)

To use the J2ME client only CLDC 1.0 and MIDP 1.0 is needed. The client will also need bluetooth and must be able to initialize the connection. For compilation of the Java Application see Clients/J2ME Client/README but precompiled versions exists in our forum.

The Client is mappable in the same manner as PS3 in keymap.xml but with the name J2ME (<joystick name="J2ME">). The KeyID's generated in terminal when running j2me_remote.py.

Known Working Event Clients

All clients are able to talk to any server on any O/S, still the clients are often O/S specific.

Linux

• PS3 Bluray Remote
• PS3 Sixaxis GamePad
• WiiRemote
• J2ME (CellPhone)

Mac OSX

• PS3 Bluray Remote
• J2ME (CellPhone)
• AppleRemote

Win32

• PS3 Bluray Remote
• J2ME (CellPhone)

Known caveats

• Most of the clients are using python and PyBluez/Lightblue and both are needed to be installed.
• PyBluez only works with broadcom chipsets on Win32.