Roku Remote Control Script
- April 23rd, 2009
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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.
Thanks for sharing this. Really useful. Iam gonna try this out.
Brilliant. How do I get the device IP?
Thanks!
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!!
“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.
Fantastic, thanks a lot for posting this!
You can also get the IP address from the Roku menu, under Settings->Player Info.
This worked in a snap! I’m able to watch movies again while still on the phone with Roku tech support. Thanks!
This is fantastic, it works great. Thanks for sharing!!!!
Awesome, thank you. Worked like a charm when I couldn’t find my Roku remote.
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—–
@Paul Wright
The link is working now.
Thanks! Works great!
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.
@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.
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.
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!!!!
This is awesome! Thanks very much!