Roku Channel

jms703

Has anyone created a Roku channel for displaying SecurityCenter feeds on a TV? Or is there some other clever thing you've done to show SecurityCenter feeds on a TV?

Ben

We're looking into AppleTV integration, which will be a good solution for TV display. We don't have a timescale for this feature addition but it's on the "to do" list!

johnmacm

Hi guys
Any updates on a potential Roku app?

Ben

Sorry, it just seems that there isn't enough demand for this I'm afraid.

jtodd

My solution was to get an older (inexpensive) Apple TV. I can then screencast my Mac's screen over to the apple TV and therefore onto whatever TV is connected to it via HDMI. There is no local control of the Mac, but it works well enough to have a "full screen" thumbnail view of all my cameras on an old TV that I had kicking around. It also means I can have my Mac in a different building, running headless, as long as the Mac has an interface on the same broadcast network (aka: ethernet segment) as the Apple TV.

DsrtRngr

+1 for Roku app.

susscrofamorte

+1 for Roku app

photonclock

+1 for Roku app 😁

photonclock

Welp...cancel that request. I figured out how to make a Roku app and install it on my Roku TV. 😁

Maybe if there's enough people interested, I can get it up on github with instructions (requires putting the Roku in dev mode, installing it to the device through its web server, etc - prob a bunch of caveats with this because I've only tested it on a brand new Roku mini-LED 55" TV).

Or I could just hand it all over to Ben as a starting point and he could release it as a legit Roku app (if he's interested). 😎

photonclock

Ok, this turned into a Christmas vacation learning/programming project, because I got a Roku TV for Christmas. 😁

If anybody has a Roku TV and wants to give it a try, here it is, with documentation:

https://github.com/photonclock/SecuritySpy-Roku-Viewer

I haven't tested it on an older Roku device yet. Only tested on a new 55" Roku 4K Mini-LED TV. It's working quite well. Has a grid view, and a full screen view. It's fairly self-explanatory once you get it installed.

Ben

Many thanks for making this public! I hope it will be useful for other users. We don't have a Roku here to test with, but maybe we can get one and try it out. Great work 👍️👍️👍️

photonclock

Cool, I hope you get to check it out. The 55" 4K mini-LED Roku TV is the "high end" variant (the mini-LED offers the darker blacks and higher contrast ratio), and it was only $375 on sale over the holiday. The slightly cheaper variant of it with standard size LED backlight array was less than $300. Pretty good deal for that big of a display, and it looks very good and is very well calibrated, has good sound etc. I like it.

My original plan was to somehow automate airplay mirroring from my mac mini secspy server to the Roku TV, but that turned out to be impossible (Apple doesn't expose the airplay frameworks in a manner I could discern so I could remotely initiate an airplay stream from the mac mini to the Roku), so I was like, ok, how hard could it be to make a Roku app?

Turns out...pretty hard. 😅 At least for me. The "BrightScript" language that is used for Roku development is probably the worst thing...EVER...? It's like javascript wrapped in XML...? Who could possibly have thought that was a good idea??? Maybe it was Steve Ballmer's idea...

I figured it all out with some AI assist. Probably did a couple things the hard way...but it's workin' well!