[APP / MANGO] Samsung TV Remote Control

Grab this in the marketplace here!

I purchased a D-series Samsung 2011 TV a week or so ago (UN55D8000 to be specific) and noticed that iOS and Android both had remote control apps available, so I figured that the Mango release would be a great opportunity to try out sockets on WP7. I used the SamyGo project as a base for the TV's communication format and the great UI posted here (he asked for a WinMo version earlier in the thread, so I figured the images were meant to be used) to create a WP7 version of the remote.

The app requires you to be on the same network as the TV (Wi-Fi or wired via USB) because it uses a UDP Multicast socket to find the TV, receives the response(s) via UDP Unicast, then initiates a direct TCP connection to whichever TV you choose. I was pretty excited to get to blaze a trail through Mango sockets land to develop this .

Here are the TV's that this should work with:

• LED 6500 series or higher (model code starts with 'U')
• LCD 650 series or higher (model code starts with 'L')
• PDP 6500 series or higher (model code starts with 'P')

When in doubt, look for an option like "network remote" on the TV's menu. You may try toggling this off and back on if it doesn't work right away.

edit: Some notes:

• Make sure the TV is on - the remote cannot turn on the TV because it has to talk to a server that the TV only runs when it's on.
• If the TV is in its "Smart Hub" program, it may not work - I noticed in my testing that if the TV was in its internet tv/smart hub mode, it would not prompt me to authorize the new remote. So if you have troubles, try exiting any programs the TV is running and try again.

edit: Update 1 posted:

• Added timeouts and retries to TV searching - the app will attempt to re-search for TV's every 2 seconds. After 10, it will give up and allow you to either enter demo mode or refresh and try again.
• Added ability to exit demo mode - now if you press the 'refresh' button while in demo mode, the app will do a real refresh and look for TVs again instead of requiring you to exit and restart. Note that if you try to refresh without being on WiFi, no TVs will be found.
• Pressing 'power off' will drop back to the tv list - instead of just sitting at the controls screen, powering off your TV will drop back to the list of TVs and automatically remove the one that was just powered off. You can refresh the list if there are other Samsung TVs on the network or you turn yours back on.
• Added device lock/multi-task resume detection - the app will automatically attempt to reconnect to a TV when resuming if you were connected to one when the app was deactivated. Note that there's currently no timeout for a TV connection attempt, so if your TV has been powered off, you'll have to exit the app and restart it to connect to a new TV.

edit: Update 2 posted:

• Added text input - there's a new QWERTY button on the navigation page that will allow you to input text on the phone and send it to the TV. NOTE: This only works in areas where the TV actually supports it. The YouTube app is not a supported area, unfortunately. It doesn't even work with the actual TV remote's keyboard. If anyone knows of a way to make this work, please let me know, but for now I'm assuming the TV just doesn't support text entry in all areas.
• Minor 'searching for tv' fixes - the app should try a bit more aggressively to find TV's during its 10-second searching window. Previously it was giving up too soon, so now it has had a new motivator installed and is ready to go to work.

edit: Removed the .xaps posted here as they were way out of date. This is a free app available on the marketplace from the link above.

Feedback quite welcome.

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