GSoC/GCI Archive
Google Code-in 2014 KDE

KDEConnect-Android: Implement RemoteControlClient

completed by: Da-Jin Chu

mentors: Albert Vaca

KDE Connect allows you to remotely control a media player running on your PC, like Amarok, from an Android phone. In a previous GCI task, we added the possibility to control the media player from the notifications panel by implementing a custom notification (refer to the class NotificationPanel in the code).

In this task we want to add the ability to expose the media controls to other programs in the phone, by implementing a RemoteControlClient in a similar way the class NotificationPanel was added. RemoteControlClient will make the remote controls appear on the lock screen on Android 4.4, as well as be activated through external programs, or even a Pebble smart watch.

Note that RemoteControlClient was deprecated for Android 5.0 in favor of MediaSession. We actually want to implement both to be compatible with 5.0 as well as with older phones, but for this task we will only do the RemoteControlClient (and maybe I will add another task for MediaSession after this one is complete).

Make sure you have KDEConnect running on your phone and your KDE desktop before claiming this task, and if you have never compiled an Android app I would recommend you to first pick the beginner task "KDEConnect: Build app form sources".