I know this has been mentioned in a previous thread, but thought I would bring it up again for the heck of it.
In setting up my strings of lights and testing that they were working correctly, plugged into the right channel, etc, I thought it would have been extremely convenient to have an iPhone app that replicated the control panel functions. This would give you the same functionality as the control panel and allow you to turn on/off specific channels, connect to specific controllers, etc.
What I am going to be doing is using a remote control app on my iphone that remotely controls my desktop computer over my wireless network where I can then use the hardware function of the control panel to turn on/off the lights, etc. It just would be easier to do if it was an app that was designed for the iphone.
Is there a way to control LOR units from one's own software short of reverse-engineering the protocols? Would really be nice to have an SDK. Then a web interface or iPhone-style app would be pretty trivial...
Just having a web interface on the HWU would be awesome -- then I could connect from my iPhone and test circuits, instead of dragging the laptop outdoors... I suppose I could try to get VNC going like you suggested...
Last edited on Fri Oct 30th, 2009 08:49 pm by Tim Fischer
Not a programmer. Would if I could. Would need to tie into the desktop computer running the LOR control panel.
Easiest way would be to build a web page server/service into the control panel program that would allow you to access the hardware control via a web page. You could then access the web page from any device on your (wireless) network, including the iPhone, or any wireless PDA/smartphone device.
The challenge is that it needs development on both sides. There needs to be some app on the show PC to accept the data from the iPhone app, and send the commands to the controllers.
With a VNC client on the iPhone, and a VNC server on the show PC, you should be able to do everything you could from the show PC. It is just slow and tedious.
-klb- wrote
With a VNC client on the iPhone, and a VNC server on the show PC, you should be able to do everything you could from the show PC. It is just slow and tedious.
That was my plan for this year. Have done this for other purposes, so figured I could do it with the hardware control panel. Just not overly easy to navigate and click on specific channels to turn them on/off, etc.
I think best option (as I mentioned above) is to build into the control panel utility a web service that allows you to access the hardware control panel functionality via a web page. LOR can do all of that programming themselves on their end. No app is really needed then. It can even be built around the iPhone web app specs.
