ROKU Soundbridge Remote Controller

The Roku-Soundbridge was one of the first really powerful streaming clients for the living room. Only the 2-line display and the very simple remote reduced the positive impact of the device. As the Soundbridge could be controlled over WLAN with the propietary RCP (= Roku Control Protocol), it was obvious to develop a controller based on the wide spread Windows Mobile Pocket PCs.

As the UI of Windows Mobile was not really suitable for a device being controlled by the fingers, we decided to create a new User Interface from scratch for this Applications.

The devices manly designed for pen usage hat too small controls and the performance of the User Interface was too slow.

Therefore a Framework was developed, that - long before the iPhone - allowed a control concept without pen, that was fast and intuitive. The following languages were used for the implementation:


The User Interface could be adapted with themes, that were defined as XML-Schemes.

For the recognition of UPnP-devices (couldn't be solved with RCP) an SSDP-Algorithm (= Simple Service Discovery Protocol) was implemented.



Additionally the application can access the EZ-Control System, which enables turning on/off an Amplifier.

The only con from todays view is the fact, that the displays - compared to the iPhone - need higher pressure with the finger, wereas the iPhone recognizes a soft swiping of the screen is recognized. But many things are changing there, as the newer Windows Mobile devices have also a capacitive touch screen as the iPhone instread of the resistive one.