Kodi Driver

The Kodi driver has been released. You'll see the driver listed in the Software Updater and the SmartRemote, Moonlight Tablets and Moonlight Phones sample user interfaces contain pages for interacting with Kodi. Please make sure you install the latest myServer along with the Kodi driver.

Installation and Configuration instructions are over here .

One thing you will notice is that we left buttons on the scenes to directly control volume and mute on the Kodi player. These probably are not required since the external amp will be responsible for that. Nearly every Kodi api command is supported. We've only exposed the ones that we think are used on a daily basis on the sample pages.

Have a look and let us know what needs work.

 

I have setup the driver, and I can control it from Driver Command Testing.

The remote shows the Kodi application in my room.  When I select it, the Kodi page is displayed.  However, none of the buttons work.

The log file shows the following command is being sent:

AV|{{active_kodi_{{clientname}}}}~Down

Which is translated to:

AV|~Down

Taking a closer look at the server variables, the clientname of the remote is sr1.  the clientname of the dashboard is dashboard-fx-h6pt.

The server variable active_kodi_dashboard-fx-h6pt = 7.  The server variable active_kodi_sr1 does not exist.

Digging a little deeper, the activate source macro is trying to call SelectDevice, referencing the server variable familyroom_kodi_id.  This variable does not exist.  I would have thought that adding the device to the room would create this variable.  If the device is not being selected, I can understand why it is not working.  After manually adding this variable, the remote is functioning as expected.
 

Reselect the room and those variables should get created. The SetActiveRoom|<room name>> command needs to be run in order to refresh the room variables. That gets run when the room activation macro is run. I think I'm going to put a SetActiveRoom|{{activeroom_{{clientname}}}} in the index.html page load command. This should prevent the need to go back and re-select the same room just to refresh variables. The overhead of doing this is low. I'll test that today.

davep wrote:

Reselect the room and those variables should get created. The SetActiveRoom|<room name>> command needs to be run in order to refresh the room variables. That gets run when the room activation macro is run. I think I'm going to put a SetActiveRoom|{{activeroom_{{clientname}}}} in the index.html page load command. This should prevent the need to go back and re-select the same room just to refresh variables. The overhead of doing this is low. I'll test that today.
 

I was being lazy and simply rebooted the remote after doing all the updates on the server and MyDesigner.  When the Kodi application appeared in the room, I thought I was good.  It sounds like what you are suggesting is the right fix.
 

I really like how you show what is playing, and the progress bar.

I use Kodi for live TV, and you display the name of the show and the progress, but no artwork.  Given that the Guide has both channel artwork and even individual show artwork, it seems like there should be a way to include a graphic when playing a TV show.

A button to display the Guide, and another to display the list of recorded shows, would be good.  But I understand that not everyone that uses Kodi has a PVR back-end.  Is there a way to query Kodi to see if TV is configured, and only display the buttons if they are needed?

I know I can create my own custom page.  I was thinking of assigning those commands to the Macro keys.  I am just trying to figure out if it is possible to get a usable remote with only the sample pages.
 

Server variables for all the artwork for now playing media are being created. We're only showing the poster or album cover on the sample scenes. If you expand the server variables under each player you'll see all the available now playing variables.

I think for right now it would be better to modify the sample kodi pages with buttons that best fit your needs. When the phase 2 version of driver is released it will introduce media browsing on the clients. At that time it will be easier to implement the logic to hide and show things based upon what is being browsed.