Controlling MythTV with a Nokia N800
One of the basic tennets of Linux is that there is always more than one way to whatever it is you are trying to do. I recently came across the Mythetomer package in the Nokia N800 distribution library. Having tried numerous MythTV varieties over the years, I was immediately interested.
Mythetomer requires two pieces of software, the Remote Control software on the Nokia N800 and the server that communicates with mythtv on the host system. The easiest way to install the software is to open up you application manager and search for mythetomer. However, you can also open the Mozilla browser and navigate to the maemo.org website and search for it and install it from there. Once installed, launch the Mythetomer application and create a profile for the MythTV you want control. The profiles are nice to have because you can control multiple MythTVs from one Nokia N800.
The second peice of the puzzle is the server. You can download the server software from the Mythetomer website. There are also detailed instructions for building the server from source if you are not running a debian based distribution. I run Mythbuntu, so I just downloaded the .deb package. You can install the .deb as follows:
sudo dpkg -i mythetomer_0.3-1_hardy_amd64.deb
To start the Mythetomer server, simply enter mythetomer in the command line. To get it run successfully with Mythbuntu, I needed to provide the name of the display, so my startup line is like this:
mythetomer -frontend mythfrontend.real &
The last thing that you need to check is that you have enabled network remote control on your mythtv host. This can be done in the Settings menu on the General sub menu.
That is all there is to it. Some possible enhancements to this process that I think I will attempt is to write an init script so that it starts automatically and restarts automatically should it fail.