Music widgets, player controls ◄ ⏸ ▶
I think hammerhead is currently the best cycling computer in the world, but needs updates.
Dear developers, please add the ability to control the player that is connected via bluetooth to the phone.
I showed a rough layout of a regular player, so that it could be called from the curtain or added to the screen as a customizable widget. Please
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Unfortunately, I think it's difficult for third party developers to implement this, as it would require a second companion app that runs on your phone. That second companion app has to maintain a connection to an extension running on the Karoo just like the official companion app does, and a developer would need implement it for both iOS and Android, upload it to the Play store and Apple store so users can easily install it, etc... I think that's not really worthwhile. Hammerhead will have to add it as a native feature using the existing companion app.
I have written my thoughts about that here: https://github.com/timklge/awesome-karoo/issues/5#issuecomment-2602738701 . For Spotify, an alternate solution is an extension that directly talks to the Spotify servers using their API, which in turn tells the Spotify app on your phone what to do. That way, no companion app support is required.
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@Guido Gabriele: That is an amazing idea! I did not think of this. An extension running on the karoo could use the Karoo's bluetooth to advertise itself as a bluetooth media remote control device. You could then pair that to your phone and it would work for both iOS and Android and all apps, not just a single streaming service that has an API.
Thinking of it, I actually like this approach better than my current one of directly using the Spotify API I prototyped at https://github.com/timklge/karoo-spintunes .The only advantage of the API approach is that you can use Spotify features like playlist selection etc.
I'll look into it.
edit: Unfortunately, it's not as simple as I hoped it would be. I was thinking there is a standardized ble service to do this, but it is not widely adopted. It is possible to emulate a keyboard with media buttons via ble as a minimal solution, but there is no return channel to display the currently played title etc.
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My smartwatch has a media controller that connects to my phone via Bluetooth and allows volume and track pause/fwd/back controls for whichever music service I happen to be using on the phone. Having the same thing on the Karoo would be so great.
@AMdvij nice mock-ups, I really hope something like that can be implemented!
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For media control I currently use a Flic button, mounted on the inside of one of my shifters. It connects to the phone via Bluetooth. So you have a hardware device sending commands to the iPhone via an app on the phone. I’d love to eliminate the Flic button, as it’s just another thing on my bike.
As a side note, the SRAM components connect to the AXS app via Bluetooth as well…so I’ve sent emails to SRAM suggesting that they implement something similar through the AXS app, or in this case through the Hammerhead.
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