Is this possible? "Hey Homey, play {song/artist/album} in iTunes"

BasPost

Yesterday, my wife wanted to play a song in the living room, we have to unlock our iPhone/iPad, open the Harmony Remote app > select activity "Listen to iTunes" > go the iTunes "Remote" app, select a song. Takes a long time.

Our setup:

• MacMini with iTunes (always on) This is our mediacenter with Plex etc. HDMI connected to Onkyo.

• Onkyo TX-NR636 (Hybrid Standby, HDMI Passthrough disabled: saves a lot Watt!!)

• Harmony Hub

Is it possible to use Homey to play a song in iTunes on the MacMini?
It should power on the Onkyo and select the right HDMI port (BD/DVD in my case) and play the required song from iTunes.

The advantage is that you don't have to use Airplay, Bluetooth or iDevices, because it plays directly from the Mac mini without interference.

In don't have HEOS or Sonos yet because of $$$

Otherwise, it should also could be done with Plex Home Theater on the MacMini, because my iTunes Library is synced with Plex, BUT I have Plex Home enabled with pin protected users, don't know it the "Plex for Homey" app can deal with that

p0nts

This is almost the same situation as the video below, the only difference is that you would like to use itunes instead of plex to play your media.

You might as well import your itunes library into plex, problem solved.

reference to the video: (from 40 seconds)

p0nts

I see you already imported the library into plex, I bet the pincode option will be included into the "homey plex app", and otherwise you can remove the pincode (I did, I hate it :P)

BasPost

p0nts said:
This is almost the same situation as the video below, the only difference is that you would like to use itunes instead of plex to play your media.

You might as well import your itunes library into plex, problem solved.

That's what I already mentioned, the question is, how will the Plex for Homey app deal with the Plex Users within a Plex Home setup. I have children accounts without pincode and parent account with pin protected acces to Plex.
If you don't what I'm talking about, check : https://support.plex.tv/hc/en-us/sections/200641063-Plex-Home

And still my main question is, can control of iTunes be done with Homey

BasPost

p0nts said:
I see you already imported the library into plex, I bet the pincode option will be included into the "homey plex app", and otherwise you can remove the pincode (I did, I hate it :P)

Never will do that! My kids are very young and they don't have to see: "The Walking Dead" or "Spartacus" and the Horror movies. Also those background pictures they don't see that way.

p0nts

Bas,

Im not entirely sure but I think that the plex api does not require a pincode, all you have to do is provide the internal IP address of the plex device, and then homey should be able to get any information without the use of a pincode.
Which means that your kids can request information that you normally dont allow them to watch, which is not optimal.

https://code.google.com/p/plex-api/wiki/PlexWebAPIOverview

https://github.com/Arcanemagus/plex-api/wiki/Plex-Web-API-Overview

Maybe someone who already worked with the plex api can clarify this.

BasPost

p0nts said:
Bas,

Im not entirely sure but I think that the plex api does not require a pincode, all you have to do is provide the internal IP address of the plex device, and then homey should be able to get any information without the use of a pincode.

https://code.google.com/p/plex-api/wiki/PlexWebAPIOverview

Maybe someone who already worked with the plex api can clarify this.

That's correct, but to start a movie or song in this case, Plex Home Theater (or Plex web?) has to start up and log in to an account to play the media.

MikeOne

Hey Guys,

I'm actually working on the Homey Plex app at the moment. The provided Plex (http) API is fairly limited and I have so far (no documentation available really) not seen an endpoint that caters for the parental pin code. It is on my list to investigate this scenario so at this point I'm not even sure if the pin code is honoured by the API (in other words, if the PMS actually cares about the PIN code if addressed).

I'll do my best to have this included as an additional feature, but seeing that there are many other high priority issues that need to be resolved first, I can't make any promises. Once the Homey Plex API has been released (it will be open sourced) - the community is welcome to assist :-)

bvanderg

I'm actually working on the Homey Plex app at the moment.

Awesome! I would definitely use it! (Can't help you though. Not a developer, just a gear enthusiast)