Anyone use Tasker to send commands to Game Frame?

[Patrick]

Since IFTTT went to a subscription model (they gotta make money somehow) I decided to try and locate a different way to automate my Game Frame. I’ve got too many other subscriptions and can’t justify more at this time. I thought if there is someway to send an API command through my Windows PC (preferable since it is on all the time and near the game frame) it should be able to handle sending commands like turning the GF on or off or changing modes. Also thought about doing something similar with Tasker on my phone.

Does anyone have this sort of thing working? Phone (Android in my case) or PC?

[Jeremy Williams]

The Game Frame will accept all commands directly over UDP. I haven’t looked into software to trigger and send these commands though. I’ll be curious to see what you come up with!

[Patrick]

I’ve found UPD examples but nothing seems to work so far.
Basically I’ve tried setting up a UDP client passing the IP and Port (In my case a local IP address which is static 192.168.1.46 and port 80) I also tried port 11000 from examples I’ve seen.

While I don’t get an error when sending the command nothing happens. I’ll keep digging.

[Jeremy Williams]

Are you running latest firmware?

[Patrick]

I think so. Here are the details:

Local IP
192.168.1.46
Subnet Mask
255.255.255.0
Gateway IP
192.168.1.1
Device info
Device ID
[redacted]
System version
1.4.4
Free memory
32696
Firmware
Current
Version:
20200521

[Jeremy Williams]

Try port 8888

[Patrick]

That got me somewhere! I’ve got two buttons in a windows form (Visual Studio C#) to turn the Game Frame on and off. Both buttons are working, although the “on” button has an odd behavior. When I send “power on” the Game Frame plays a little bit of an animation, then shows the IP address and starts up. The little fragmented animation at the beginning is a little strange but doesn’t hurt anything it still works.

Currently this is a simple windows app but I will likely convert it to a windows service after testing all the various commands. That will allow me to create a schedule to automate things.

Thanks for the advice! I’ll be glad to share the source code if anyone wants it.

[Jeremy Williams]

I used this app to test the feature when I added it. See if you get the same result.

https://packetsender.com/

[Patrick]

Yes, when I send “power on” I get part of an animation (it kinda slides from left to right in chunks then starts up.) Other commands work as expected. I’m debating using the built in Windows Task Scheduler to send commands at specific dates and times or build the schedule logic in the app itself. I also get the same behavior when I use the Android Game Frame app.

I can certainly live with that minor issue though. Maybe my SD card is a bit corrupt?

[Jeremy Williams]

Ah, it shows the ip address when you power on. The clock graphic may be corrupted on your SD card, like you said. I would replace the card, or at least reformat it, and extract fresh data on there. I uploaded the SD master files to Github a couple weeks ago.

https://github.com/Jerware/GameFrameV2/tree/master/sd

[Patrick]

Yep, that corrected the strange start up behavior. I think I will make the exe as plain as possible which will take parameters for the IP and the commands desired. The Windows Task Scheduler will then call the exe based on some schedule to start, stop, change modes, etc. Almost everything I was doing through IFTTT.

[Patrick]

I created an exe that takes two arguments. The IP address and the command (example: 192.168.1.22 “power on”) The exe (according to visual studio) can be run in Windows, MacOS or Linux.

Here is the github link (first time I placed anything there)
https://github.com/plduganaman/GameFrame

Maybe someone can get some use out of it. I’ve got it set up in my Windows Task Scheduler and so far working great.

Thanks for helping me with this.
Patrick

[Jeremy Williams]

Fantastic!

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