[App] Samsung Smart TV by Casper Boone - main discussion topic

Da_JoJo

H and J series and also the evolution kits 2014 and up are not supported .. this is due to change in networkprotocols from samsung, it requires a pincode and some additional encryption which ppl where not able to figure out yet.
this seems to work though: https://www.samygo.tv/

woei

Hi @casper , are you able to release support for the D series anytime soon? I appreciate you're very busy, but it would make my Christmas and I will buy you a beer! (if you post a donate link somewhere, or live in the vicinity of north-east Brabant ;-))

Clipper

Hi @casper, I too would appreciate your effort to release support for the D series.......Will more beer help? :-)

happyhp

I have danish beer! 

Jschuetz

Tizen support would be perfect. 

posthok

@Casper Thought you finished the Samsung app?

DieterKoblenz

Da_JoJo said:

H and J series and also the evolution kits 2014 and up are not supported .. this is due to change in networkprotocols from samsung, it requires a pincode and some additional encryption which ppl where not able to figure out yet.
this seems to work though: https://www.samygo.tv/

Some people have figured it out, there are some 3rd party apps which use the pincode.  Further more here is some insight: https://forum.samygo.tv/viewtopic.php?f=74&t=7707&start=30

Not enough to create a Homey app though..

posthok

@DieterKoblenz Casper told me recently that the app was ready to go to the appstore

DieterKoblenz

posthok said:

@DieterKoblenz Casper told me recently that the app was ready to go to the appstore

Yes. But not for the H series (except channel and source)

RichardR

UE55D8000 and a few beer from me to 

Jschuetz

Maybe this helps https://github.com/andrei10k/new-samsung-remote

posthok

Believe Casper isn't working at this project anymore.

casper

posthok said:

@DieterKoblenz Casper told me recently that the app was ready to go to the appstore

That's not what I said . There needs to be some work done first for a good release, but I explained that I already have a working version for the D-series.

Which basically involves the following (with 'technical' details):
* Create a new UPNP based pairing procedure so the paths to the resources for switching channels/sources, getting channels and getting details about the tv can be determined dynamically. This will probably add support for more models (no guarantees of course ) and removes the need to enter an IP address. At least for the F and D series this will work. So far I'm not satisfied with the UPNP device discovery (it sometimes doesn't find my tv), help is welcome here .
* Fixing a bug that causes the app to crash, which should simply be fixed with adding a try catch block in `samsung-tv-sources.js`. (TypeError: Cannot read property '0' of undefined  at /samsung-tv-sources.js:74:108)

In case anyone would like to contribute to these two steps, PRs are welcome of course (and I'm also available for discussing potential solutions first, if you want to). Regardless, I hope to get to work on this myself asap as well, but haven't had many 'quiet moments' the past few months .

casper

Put the temporary 'working' version for the D-series in a separate branch if you'd like to play around with it: https://github.com/casperboone/homey-samsung-smart-tv/tree/d-series. (some knowledge of git / athom's dev tools required, cannot give support for this, sorry).

casper

Jschuetz said:

Maybe this helps https://github.com/andrei10k/new-samsung-remote

Really glad to see Samsung switched to a more modern implementation for their newer TVs. At the moment I'm focussing on the TVs <2015. However, when there's time (and a TV from 2015-2016 to test on), I will definitely look into adding support for these newer models with different communication techniques.

woei

Even with their new API they think about controller a TV in a user/remote control centric way in stead of a programmatic way in my opinion.

Why can you only execute volume up/down and channel up/down for example? I would expect in this day and age I should be able to send requests with a repeatable and reliable outcome, like "volume 17" and "channel 33". An API client is not going to know the current positions of any of these values, is it? So how would you make sure that this is the volume and channel after an API call? Do a volume down 200x and then 17x up, just to make sure it hits 0 first?

Or am I just interpreting the readme wrong on andrei10k's github? Am I being unreasonable of what an API should support?

casper

woei said:

Even with their new API they think about controller a TV in a user/remote control centric way in stead of a programmatic way in my opinion.

Why can you only execute volume up/down and channel up/down for example? I would expect in this day and age I should be able to send requests with a repeatable and reliable outcome, like "volume 17" and "channel 33". An API client is not going to know the current positions of any of these values, is it? So how would you make sure that this is the volume and channel after an API call? Do a volume down 200x and then 17x up, just to make sure it hits 0 first?

Or am I just interpreting the readme wrong on andrei10k's github? Am I being unreasonable of what an API should support?

Welcome to the wonderful world of Samsung TV "APIs", where nothing works as expected . The solution you describe would be the only option indeed. In the current app I have to do something similar for switching channels. It is not possible to let the TV switch to channel 405 with one command. Instead I have to issue 3 different commands (one per number, so indeed from a remote perspective) with little timeouts (i.e. 1 second, otherwise the TV doesn't register all of them, and even with the timeout it still misses a number sometimes). 

There might be possibilities to do this with UPnP 'commands' (see page 65 of https://www.informatik.tu-darmstadt.de/fileadmin/user_upload/Group_SIT/Publications/Thesis/jmuller_msc_final.pdf for instance). But they are all poorly (or not at all) documented, so there's a lot of trial and error needed to get that to work (if it works at all). For instance switching sources works like that at the moment.

woei

casper said:

That seriously makes me think about switching brands in the future. This and the fact that my 4 year old Samsung is showing vertical bars on the edges...

jtebbens

casper said:

In case anyone would like to contribute to these two steps, PRs are welcome of course (and I'm also available for discussing potential solutions first, if you want to). Regardless, I hope to get to work on this myself asap as well, but haven't had many 'quiet moments' the past few months .

I got a try/catch in place, currently testing. When ok will make PR so it can merge your version.

jtebbens

Ok seems to work, you have a PR @casper

jtebbens

Ok for those that face the crash like me:
(TypeError: Cannot read property '0' of undefined  at /samsung-tv-sources.js:74:108)

Try this patched version:
https://github.com/jtebbens/homey-samsung-smart-tv

Normally it would crash within a few hours but its stable for 24 hours now. So yeah try it in the mean time.

Qx5

jtebbens said:

Ok for those that face the crash like me:
(TypeError: Cannot read property '0' of undefined  at /samsung-tv-sources.js:74:108)

Try this patched version:
https://github.com/jtebbens/homey-samsung-smart-tv

Normally it would crash within a few hours but its stable for 24 hours now. So yeah try it in the mean time.

Awesome that was exactly what I needed. Will try it tonight!

casper

jtebbens said:

Ok for those that face the crash like me:
(TypeError: Cannot read property '0' of undefined  at /samsung-tv-sources.js:74:108)

Try this patched version:
https://github.com/jtebbens/homey-samsung-smart-tv

Normally it would crash within a few hours but its stable for 24 hours now. So yeah try it in the mean time.

Still stable (cc @Qx5)? If so, I will release a new version including the fix tonight.

casper

New flow cards 



Also in the newest version
- Fix for failing retrieval of sources (usually when tv is off)
- Improved stability in initialisation of devices (in case you're tv crashed (i.e. rebooted) when pairing or when restarting the app, that should be fixed now)
- Conversion to ES6 / some refactoring in the code base

jovink

Still No support for "J" version (2016) i suppose. 

FvHuizen

Hello Casper, any idea if SAMSUNG UE60KS7000 will be supported soon. When i try to connect the whole app disappears from Homey and have to reinstall it.

Qx5

casper said:

Still stable (cc @Qx5)? If so, I will release a new version including the fix tonight.

Stable since the fix 

Qx5

casper said:

New flow cards 



Also in the newest version
- Fix for failing retrieval of sources (usually when tv is off)
- Improved stability in initialisation of devices (in case you're tv crashed (i.e. rebooted) when pairing or when restarting the app, that should be fixed now)
- Conversion to ES6 / some refactoring in the code base

You're new version also seems to run smoothly. I like the new flow cards a lot! My receiver didn't always turn on automatically and that's fixed now!

casper

Forgot to hit publish again, but 0.1.0 is available now.

olive

Hi

D series not compatible