Remuco is a duplex remote control system for Linux media players and mobile devices equipped with Bluetooth or WiFi. To put it simple you could actually use your mobile phone with bluetooth or Wifi as a remote control for linux media players like Amarok, Banshee, Totem, VLC and more. Sounds cool isn’t it. Lets check it out.
Feature List
- Select songs from your hard drive and add it to your Amarok playlist(for example)!
- Song playback.
- Showing up currently playing song.
- Rating the song.
- Skip tracks back and forth.
- Change Volume.
- Seek tracks and so on.
With Remuco mobile client you could literally do everything that you expect it to do. Now Let’s see how can we install Remuco in Ubuntu. Those who use other distributions, please visit google code’s Remuco page.
Add GPG Key First
- Add PPA key first. SImply goto Terminal and copy-paste the following.
sudo apt-key adv --keyserver keyserver.ubuntu.com --recv-keys 51A6F565
- Done.
Now Add Repository
- Now Goto System > Administration > Software Sources and select Third-Party Software tab and click ADD. And Simply Copy-Paste the following Repo(depending on the version of Ubuntu you use).
For Ubuntu Karmic
deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/remuco-team/ppa/ubuntu karmic main deb-src http://ppa.launchpad.net/remuco-team/ppa/ubuntu karmic main
For Ubuntu Jaunty
deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/remuco-team/ppa/ubuntu jaunty main deb-src http://ppa.launchpad.net/remuco-team/ppa/ubuntu jaunty main
For Ubuntu Intrepid
deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/remuco-team/ppa/ubuntu intrepid main deb-src http://ppa.launchpad.net/remuco-team/ppa/ubuntu intrepid main
- Done
Now Install Remuco package for the media player of your choice
For Amarok
- Install remoco-amarok.( Requires Amarok 2)
sudo apt-get install remuco-amarok
For Banshee
- Install remuco-banshee. (Requires Banshee 1.4 or greater)
sudo apt-get install remuco-banshee
- Similarly you could find similar packages for VLC, Totem, Rhythombox, MPD and so on.
- Just use the tab functionality to get the full list. ie Goto Terminal and sudo apt-get install remuco- and press Tab. Choose according to your needs.
Now Add Remuco to your list of start up applications
- Let’s say, you downloaded remuco-amarok, Now goto System >Preferences >Startup Applications and click ADD. Following window will pop up.
- And fill it as shown in the screenshot above. remuco-amarok in the ‘Command’ field(required) and Remuco in ‘Name’ field(optional).
- Now, when you reboot, remuco app will be automatically started. To start Remuco manually, simply type remuco-amarok in Terminal.
Download and install Mobile Client
- Now you need to download and install Remuco mobile client in you Mobile Phone.
- Download the latest Remuco Mobile Phone Client. (It was 0.9.1.1 while i was writing this blog)
- Extract the tar.gz file and select the .jar file from client/app. Send it to your mobile phone and install.(Requires Java ME support). Don’t worry it even worked on my 3 year old moto razr 😉
- That is it. Remember, always start remuco-amarok(in my case) before starting mobile phone client. Otherwise it may crash now and then.
- It was a jaw dropping experience when i saw hundreds of tracks getting listed into amarok playlist using my mobile phone bluetooth. Remuco rocks all the way. Special thanks to all who are behind this amazing app.
