Apr 23 2009

Roku Remote Control Script

rokuremote

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.