Remote Control via Tablet PC

Hi,
I have a couple of questions, one on how to send commands to MCE controller through a third party software? For example to launch My Movies, on a computer that the third party software is not running.
The third party product software has the Abilty to send command line augments and a start function, but is typically is used to control a web browser locally on a Tablet PC.
The second question is how I communicate with the MCE Server to send commands from the client on a remote computer? If that can be accomplished how would I trigger that function in the background without the commands being visible?
The goal is to get away from sending IR commands.
Any input would be appreciated.
Sincerely,
Michael Gregorakos

Michael,

How you send commands to MCE Controller is different for each 3rd party software.

If your software can launch a command line app I bet there is a program out there somewhere that will take a command line argument and let you craft a network packet.  A quick web search found this:

http://nemesis.sourceforge.net/#windows

Docs: http://nemesis.sourceforge.net/manpages/nemesis-tcp.1.html

I have not used this myself, but I think the following command will work:

    nemesis tcp /D 192.168.0.44 /p 5500 -P payload.txt

where 192.168.0.44 should be the ip address of the machine running MCE controller, 5500 is the port MCE Controller is listening on, and payload.txt has a single line with the command you want to send.

I'm not sure what you are asking in your second question.

FWIW, I found a tool that works: netcat:

http://joncraton.org/blog/netcat-for-windows

This will work from the command line with MCE Controller:

C:\dev\utils\bin>echo notepad| nc 192.168.0.5 5150 -w 1

Few things to note: 

- "-w 1" is the only way (I could find) to make nc exit when done. It is a 1 second wait.  May not work for you.
- You must not put a space after the command and the pipe "|" character (or it will be interpreted as "notepoad " and won't work)
- nc 192.168.0.5 515o -w 1 < cmds.txt also works (where cmds.txt includes commands to send)