Use mControl to command your Media Center

[Ted Singh]

We'd like to thank our talented partners, VidaBox (http://www.vidabox.com/), for creating a very powerful extension to mControl. They've created an XML file, which can be used with our Generic Driver to control Media Centers either manually (e.g., using mControl Editor) or within mControl macros.



Need to start a music playlist upon sunrise or press a light switch upon entering a room to set up your preferred Media Center environment, now you can using mControl macros, (which reference an Media Center Controller device through the mControl Generic Driver).

Here's what you need to do to get it going:
1. You'll want to install mControl v2.1 Beta 2.
2. Download and install the MCE Controller (http://www.kindel.com/products/mcecontroller/). This is an open source project. This is the utility that will accept commands from mControl (through the Generic Driver) and then transport these commands to Media Center. You'll want to install this utility on the MCE machine that you're going to control.
3. Download the Media Center Controller XML file (http://www.embeddedautomation.com/md...Controller.xml) and put it in the C:\Program Files\Embedded Automation\mControl\server\plugins directory (or C:\Inetpub\wwwroot\mControl\server\plugins directory if you're using WHS). You'll need to restart mControl for this file to be picked up.
4. Add a device, using the "EA Generic Driver" as an adapter and selecting "EAGA - MCE Controller" as the device. Then enter the IP address of the Media Center you're going to control and 5150 as the port address.
5. Now you're ready to control the Media Center through mControl using manual or macro operation.

Important:
1. Again, we'd like to thank VidaBox for sharing this with us and we'll work with them to refine the solution over time. We are working on a more comprehensive solution to this and it will be available after v2.1.
2. This will not work *unless* Media Center has focus. That is, if you try to control this using mControl Editor, it won't work, because when you're using mControl Editor it has focus, Media Center will have background focus. To test it, you might try using mControl Editor from a different machine or write a simple macro.