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RRemote - A software remote control for your Roku device or television

I wrote this application because Roku discontinued their officially supported Windows Store app and I have this nifty touch screen setup next to my bed where I read the news, etc., and often lose the physical remote.

First, for the non technical people who stumble upon this project a brief description of its capabilities and limitations. This program can control almost every feature your Roku offers and automatically discovers all of the available Rokus on your network. For this to go smoothly two things HAVE to happen. A) Your Roku and the computer running this software MUST be on the same subnet and B) your network must not block multicast. B is simple enough as most home routers do not block multicast. A however is a little more challenging. Some routers put Wifi and wired devices on different networks, you can be connected to different Wifi networks, most home devices have their IP address assigned via DHCP, and the list goes on. Keeping it short, for the best chance of success one of these two rules should be enforced: 1) Your computer running this software and all the Roku devices you want to control need to be wired into the same network 2) Your computer running this software and all the Roku devices you want to control need to be all wireless and connected to the EXACT same wireless network name (SSID). Anything beyond one of those configurations and things might not work and is beyond the scope of this document or what I'll provide help on. If you require this kind of help find somone who understands networks. You can also add a Roku device manually to this program but be forewarned unless you explicitly assigned your Roku's IP address (static IP) durring setup it might change someday, seemly at random, and you'll have to have to find out the new address and add it again. That's just how DHCP networks work. A final hint is you may want to look into putting your Wifi system in bridge mode which will combine the wifi and wired networks. That's useful for fixing a lot of other common communcation problems experienced by users of Sonos and a multitude of other home entertainment/automation hardware.

Now for the more technical stuff.

This program works by:

1. Discovering all the Rokus on your network, recording their connection info
2. Periodically checking that those Rokus are still online and connectable
3. Allowing you to manually add a device by IP address
4. Allowing you to select a single Roku to control at a time and displaying all of the channels installed on that device.

Discovery: All Roku devices require an internet connection to work and each device has an exposed set of commands you can use to control it. If you know the IP address of your Roku you can use any internet browser to send those commands. For instance if your device has an IP addres of 192.168.1.134 then typing this URL into your browser, http://192.168.1.134:8060/query/apps, will list all currently installed channels. You can learn more about these commands here: https://developer.roku.com/docs/developer-program/debugging/external-control-api.md

IP addresses are assigned either by DHCP, where a device broadcasts a request to be assigned an address and the nearest router responds with one, or are setup statically, i.e. you manually chose the address and configured the subnet, gateway, and/or DNS settings. DHCP addresses are only good for a short time which in many cases is 7 days. After that your Roku (or any device using DHCP) sends out a request for another assignment. Typically the router assigns the same address as before but that's not guarenteed. Power outages, resetting your router or having your Roku off for an extended period of time make it more likely it will be assigned a different address. To combat this address uncertianty Roku uses a multicast UDP protocol called SSDP (Simple Service Discovery Protocol) to allow you to find all the available devices on your network. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simple_Service_Discovery_Protocol

This program sends out a SSDP packet which all Roku devices on the same network respond to with their connection details. Multicast by default only works inside of the subnet it originated from. For example if the computer running this software is at 192.168.1.101 and the Roku is at 192.168.1.102 then SSDP will work fine. If your Roku is instead at 10.0.1.102 (because many wifi networks are on different subnets than the wired components) then SSDP will most likely fail. As long as there is not a firewall blocking communication between these two subnets then you can always just manually add the IP address of the Roku to this program and control it.

Every 15 minutes this program rediscovers all the available Rokus updating the list of devices and removing ones not found. Manually added Rokus can only be removed by clicking the delete button (a button at the top of the program that shows a - symbol).

Once you select a Roku the list of apps (channels) installed on it are downloaded and displayed.

Some of the buttons might not work for your particular Roku. The volume, channel, mute, and input buttons mostly only work on TVs with embedded Roku software such as the ones made by TCL. The power off button only works on TVs connected via HDMI and the TV must support CEC or the branded equivilant of CEC (for instance Samsung calls it AnyNet+). More info can be found here https://www.howtogeek.com/207186/how-to-enable-hdmi-cec-on-your-tv-and-why-you-should/ Find My Remote only works with compatible Rokus and special Roku remotes.

The virtual keyboard functionality works just like the other buttons and is UTF-8 compatible meaning it can send characters like the Euro symbol.

This program is written in C# for UWP apps using Visual Studio 2019 and follows the MVVM design pattern. The Roku Client code is based off a different GitHub project that I just can't seem to find again to give proper attribution and contains some improvements. It is designed to be compatible with most screen types, zoom levels, and and orientations.

To be continued...