Roku Remote Control Script
Hooray for necessity. My Roku digital video player remote controller stopped working yesterday. While it’s pretty cheap to replace I needed to find something I could use in the interim. Since the device will let you telnet to port 8080 and feed in remote commands, my first attempt was to use setup a few bash aliases using netcat like so:
alias ru='echo "press up" | nc -n $rokuIP 8080'
alias rd='echo "press down" | nc -n $rokuIP 8080'
alias rl='echo "press left" | nc -n $rokuIP 8080'
You get the idea. However this got tedious fairly quick and the idea of explaining the use of netcat or telnet to my wife seems frightening.
Instead of living in fear I put together a script using Autoit. Now the Mrs . and I have a UI that resembles the remote we’re waiting for. It’s pretty basic and self explanatory. Just enter in the appropriate IP of the device and start using.
You can grab the script and compiled .exe by clicking here.
May 20th, 2009 at 11:18 am
Thanks for sharing this. Really useful. Iam gonna try this out.
June 7th, 2009 at 3:57 am
Brilliant. How do I get the device IP?
Thanks!
July 5th, 2009 at 6:44 pm
Worked for me – I kind of doubted this would work but I can’t find my darned remote. Can get a movie tonight now
Thanks!!
July 6th, 2009 at 12:36 pm
“Brilliant. How do I get the device IP?
Thanks!”
You can get it by looking at your routers DHCP / leased IP logs. Probably the easiest way.
Another way would be to port scan your network for port 8080 and then trying that IP. http://nmap.org is the best and it’s ported for just about all OS’s out there.
August 2nd, 2009 at 4:39 pm
Fantastic, thanks a lot for posting this!
You can also get the IP address from the Roku menu, under Settings->Player Info.
November 23rd, 2009 at 7:41 pm
This worked in a snap! I’m able to watch movies again while still on the phone with Roku tech support. Thanks!
November 26th, 2009 at 12:33 pm
This is fantastic, it works great. Thanks for sharing!!!!
November 29th, 2009 at 11:15 am
Awesome, thank you. Worked like a charm when I couldn’t find my Roku remote.
December 28th, 2009 at 11:11 am
Got a Roku for Christmas. This seems like a handy thing to have.
Unfortunately, seems like the link no longer works. Is the program available elsewhere?
—–paul—–
December 29th, 2009 at 8:56 pm
@Paul Wright
The link is working now.
January 30th, 2010 at 2:08 pm
Thanks! Works great!
February 13th, 2010 at 1:15 pm
Thanks a million it worked like a charm. Since my remote is missing I had to use a network scanner to figure out my roku’s ip address.
I blogged by story at http://tswe.blogspot.com/2010/02/lost-your-roku-remote.html.
thanks again.
March 22nd, 2010 at 8:52 pm
@Scott
I downloaded the stript yesterday and it worked great but that was after spending several hours trying to figure out how to find the ip address.
TO FIND THE IP ADDRESS- 1. Click the link provided by Scott.
2. Click on the “SoftPerfect Network Scanner” link.
3. Scroll down and click “Download” on right side of page.
4. Install and run the scanner.
5. Set the ip range (I read somewhere that most of them should look something like 192.168.1.??, so I set the range from 192.168.1.0 to 193.0.0.0 and started scanning. After a second it should give you a few ip addresses and one of these will be the one for your roku player.)
-To find out which one is the correct one open the rokuRemote application and click Tools > Settings and try the different ip addresses until one works.
Thanks to Scott for the link.
May 19th, 2010 at 6:55 pm
Awesome! Thanks for putting this up here. This will work perfectly. Now I can mess with the kids while they’re watching NetFlix! You should put a paypal donation button up or something.
May 26th, 2010 at 6:27 pm
Thanks so much – that is an awesome app – I have never accessed IP addresses or routers, etc and was able to get it going.
Thanks again for posting this info!!!!
June 16th, 2010 at 6:58 pm
This is awesome! Thanks very much!
August 28th, 2010 at 3:16 pm
Brilliant! This saved me a trip to find a universal remote, which probably wouldn’t have the Roku code any how. Plus this is much more fun!
September 30th, 2010 at 6:50 am
Hey,
Any chance you can turn this into an iPhone app?
November 28th, 2010 at 9:54 pm
@jasmel: Unfortunately I this off so long and someone else beat me to it. I believe it is called the DVP remote. It works pretty good and can manage multiple devices.
December 5th, 2010 at 6:03 pm
Dude you rock!!!! thanks, just what I needed!
January 2nd, 2011 at 12:28 pm
Hey Glen!
First comment in 2011!
I’ve also misplaced my remote, and I’ve been using the not-so-perfect Android app in the mean-time and it certainly has its flaws.
THe idea of a web-app, similar to this seems like a fun idea, and theoretically all it would need is a script to send telnet commands — something I’ve already written for my LED Sign project (http://bunnywarez.com/catalog/sign.php).
Is there a source for the remote commands listed somewhere? You’ve posted three of them here, and this suggests to me that this might be a pretty simple project to build (famous last words).
Thanks again for building and posting this project. It’s really inspiring!
jovino
bunnywarez.com
January 14th, 2011 at 3:46 pm
I have the remote and the Android app… but I just downloaded this because I can. Thank you! (FYI – running Ubuntu 10.10 and works great without having to move it to Wine.)
January 14th, 2011 at 4:40 pm
Thank you! This is awesome. Now I can use my roku this weekend while I wait for a new remote to be delivered.
February 28th, 2011 at 11:10 am
Thank you! I’ve got 4 kids at home and we lost the roku remote. Just downloaded and ran your script (used the SoftPerfect Network Scanner suggested by Scott Wickham to find the Roku’s IP address)…
Bless you!
Laura
April 30th, 2011 at 9:05 am
This is a cool tool. I lost my remote last week and already burnt $1.99 buying the iPhone App. Is there anyway you can share rest of the commands with me.
June 3rd, 2011 at 7:16 pm
I am normally not very good with computers but I came home tonight to find that my dog chewed up my Roku remote. I decided to look online for a solution before flipping out and found this and was so happy that I could still watch my movies without remote till I order one. Thank you to the person that posted this cause I would have been lost without my Netflix
June 28th, 2011 at 7:42 pm
Is there a Roku Remote Control Script for macs?
August 10th, 2011 at 8:58 pm
Glen – thanks for the app, 20 minutes to find your site, install, configure and watch. I knew that your app was good when the hardest problem people had was finding the Roku IP address
September 6th, 2011 at 1:22 am
I tried this and its not working… found the list of IP addresses but when I hit save to file the IP on the “remote” does not change and nothing happens. Not sure what I am doing wrong. My roku is pretty old, could that be the problem?
September 6th, 2011 at 1:53 am
update- getting error message TCPConnect failed:10051, I do have the correct IP address
September 24th, 2011 at 11:04 am
THIS IS AMAZING!!!
THANK YOU!!! THANK YOU!!! THANK YOU!!!
November 5th, 2011 at 7:36 am
Thank you! You have a beautiful family.
November 11th, 2011 at 4:10 am
Thanks so much for writing this program. It works excellent!