I don’t know how the game controllers work, but that’s not much help for those of us who already have dedicated iPads in rooms as controllers. What about adding support for generic bluetooth keyboards? If we just had a way to map generic keyboard presses to remote buttons in the app, boom. I’d totally hack my own hard remote to use for the basics in some places.
–Donnie
Hmm, it occurs to me this might have limited value depending on whether Roomie can stay alive enough to process keystrokes when the screen is locked. I’m pretty sure Roomie will have to be the foreground app for this to work, but would it still work when the screen is locked?
–Donnie
First, some of the game controllers are wireless such as the SteelSeries Stratus. So there is no conflict between that and a dedicated iPad. As an iOS API, we also expect those to continue to get better over time.
We could certainly treat a Bluetooth keyboard in the same way, and today we support them for keyboard entry with devices that support it. Roomie would have to be running for it to be treated as anything.
Thank you.
Interesting, I had no followed the game controller scene quite enough to know there were any that didn’t physically attach to an iPhone/iPod. Makes sense, though, that something like the SteelSeries Stratus would exist.
And yeah, I forgot to followup, but I did research to see if there was any difference between “screen lock” and “background” in terms of the app, and unfortunately there really isn’t. Until there is, we’re kind of hosed on the idea of a hard button remote connected via Roomie on an iOS device.
There are other ways go go around Roomie to do the same thing, but that obviously diverges from the advantages of Roomie in the first place. So my next best step would be to make my own “game controller” that I could snap on the side of any iPad. Might have to buy a Stratus and see if I can repackage it easily.
–Donnie