Vectir – Control your computer using your phone

How often do you wish you had a universal remote control that besides controlling the plethora

of other devices you own, could also control your computer?

Vectir makes that possible and what’s more? You already have everything you need to start

controlling your PC wirelessly.

If your phone has Bluetooth support and it supports installation of Java midlets (virtually every

phone in the market) then you’re ready to go! If you have a more advanced phone that also has

Wi-Fi, then your wireless remote control experience would be an even smoother one.

The beauty of Vectir is that it’s extremely customizable and lets you virtually control almost any

application under the sun to some extent. All you need to do is create a custom remote profile in

Vectir for your desired application.

Installation

Installing Vectir is a pretty straightforward process. All you need to do is follow the on-screen

instructions until you’re finished.

After the installation is complete, you’ll need to install the Vectir mobile client on your phone.

Depending upon whether or not your phone supports Wi-Fi, select the appropriate JAR file and

copy it onto your phone.

The JAR files are located in Vectir’s installation directory under the folder ‘MobileSoftware’.

You now need to set up Vectir to recognize your phone. To do that, start Vectir and select:

Tools --> Setup Phone or Hardware Device

Follow the instructions and select a remote control mode

(Bluetooth, Wi-Fi or IR, if you phone has IR support and you own a USB-UIRT transceiver)

Choose your phone brand in the next section and you’ll be presented with instructions on how to

get the Vectir mobile client on your phone.

Now before you go any further, make sure your computer is discoverable (if you selected

Bluetooth RC mode) and turn on the Bluetooth module.

Getting Started

Keep Vectir running and start the Vectir mobile client on your phone and select “Search for server”

and select your PC from the list.

NOTE: If you computer isn’t listed, check to see if Bluetooth or Wi-Fi is turned on.

Now select a remote profile from the list and you’re done!

Happy remote controlling! :-)

Custom Remote Profiles

If you want to get the most out of Vectir, you have to create and use custom remote profiles.

That’s where the real power of Vectir lies. Custom remote profiles allow you to assign keyboard

macros, create your own little interface that shows up on the phone, run Windows commands

like shutdown, restart, etc. using your phone.

Create a custom profile by clicking on or selecting:

Profiles --> Add remote profile

NOTE: While creating a new remote profile, it is important to have a group selected under which

the remote profile will be added, or else if you wish, you could create a new one.

There are two kinds of remote profiles you can add:

Custom

Desktop

The essential difference between the two being that under Desktop remote profile, Vectir

streams the entire Desktop screen onto your phone so you can look at it as you control it.

A remote profile consists of a series of commands that Vectir can execute on the remote system.

These commands are triggered when Vectir receives certain events from the phone. You have

absolute control over the event-command mapping and can assign any command with any

event.

To get started, we’ll create a custom remote profile for controlling the VLC Media Player because I

felt that the default VLC profile shipped with Vectir wasn’t powerful enough to suit my needs.

Custom VLC profile

Select Profiles --> Add remote profile and choose Custom profile and the Remote Profile Designer

will show up.

This is where we design the interface that shows up on the mobile phone when the custom

profile is selected. We will close it for now, but come back to it later.

NOTE: Select ‘Save and close’ to close the Remote Profile Designer

A new profile should now show up under the group you selected.

Select the profile and you’ll see various groups listed under it.

• Key Commands

• Menus

• Dialogs

• Data bindings

You’ll also see a command called ‘Close profile‘. This is a special command that lets you close the

current profile that the Vectir mobile client is attached to.

Now let’s begin adding some commands that Vectir will recognize and execute on the target

system on receipt of its corresponding event.

Let’s say we want VLC to start automatically when we press the 5 key on the phone. To make that

happen, we first need to add a command to be executed when the key is pressed.

Highlight ‘Key Commands’ in the custom profile you just created

... and on the right pane, highlight ‘Keyboard macro’ and then

... click

You’ll now be presented with the macro setup window.

Check the box beside ‘Launch application if not running’ and enter ‘vlc’ in the process name box.

Now press and press the ‘Spacebar’ key.

And then press and click OK.

NOTE: This is where you record the keystrokes that are reproduced by Vectir when the macro is

executed. You can create keyboard macros for the shortcuts supported by your favourite

program and then execute them with a single key press from your phone.

You’ve just created your first keyboard macro!

It would a good idea to rename your macro commands to something meaningful so it’s easier to

relate to while you’re editing them.

To rename the command, select it and press F2 or right click it and select ‘Rename’.

NOTE: The key delay field determines the time interval between each successive key press. You

might want to decrease this value for situations where a small time delay between keypresses is

more favourable like increasing/decreasing volume, fast forwarding, rewinding etc.

Now, you need to assign an event to the macro you just created. To do that, highlight the macro

command you just created and press

The event capture window will now show up and you can assign a key on your phone to trigger

the macro you created.

Vectir is now waiting to receive a Bluetooth event from your phone. To send one, connect to the

profile you created earlier (i.e. ‘Custom profile’) and press a key when the screen goes white. The

key you pressed will be mapped to the macro command. So every time you press that key again

(while connected to ‘Custom profile’) Vectir will execute the macro.

Also, it’s usually a good idea to rename the event to something more meaningful than ‘Bluetooth

Event’. You could use the name of the key assigned to the macro like ‘Number 5’.

Since we created the macro with the ‘Launch application if not running’ box checked, Vectir will

launch VLC if it’s not running.

Go ahead, try it out!

NOTE: If you want to assign the left or right soft keys or the D-pad key to a macro, you’ll first need

to assign some other key to the ‘Close profile’ command because if ‘Close profile’ isn’t assigned

any key, it uses the left and right soft keys and the D-pad by default to trigger itself.

Now, let’s add a mouse control macro in the custom profile.

Again, highlight the group under which the macro will be added (Key commands)

And on the right pane, expand the ‘Mouse’ tree and under ‘Commands’, expand ‘Wheel’ and select

Wheel up.

Now click

The ‘Mouse Wheel up’ command will be added to the group.

Now, just as we assigned an event to the keyboard macro, we need to assign an event to this

command too. But first,

Repeat the same process described above to assign a key to the mouse wheel command.

Wash, rinse and repeat for other VLC shortcuts. Here is a short list of some of the most frequently

used commands:

A - Cycle aspect ratios O - Toggle Autoscaling F - Fullscreen M - Mute audio

S - Stop playback N - Next track P - Previous track W - Video wallpaper

+ - Faster playback - - Slower playback = - Normal play C - Cycle crop modes

D - De-interlace modes T - Seekbar position Z - Cycle Zoom V - Toggle subtitles

Shift+R - Record

Shift+M - DVD menu

Ctrl+Q - Close VLC

Shift+Right arrow - Forward playback by 3 seconds

Shift+Left arrow - Rewind playback by 3 seconds

After you are done creating all the macro commands, you might want to create a good interface

for your remote profile. Right click on the custom profile you created and select ‘Edit’.

This is what my design looks like. You can add background images, text, buttons, progress bars,

etc. to you profile to make it look good. Just make sure you don’t clutter it. It’s all just a matter of

being temperate.

To add text, buttons, images or other controls, drag them from the Toolbox into the designer

window.

There are however, 2 special controls in the toolbox:

1. TextEntryDialog

2. HelpDialog

The TextEntryDialog control is used to send some text from the phone to the currently active

window (e.g. CMD Shell, notepad, etc)

The TextEntryDialog must have one event associated with it. When this event is triggered, a text

input box shows up on the phone and the user entered text is sent to the computer.

The HelpDialog is used exclusively to show help information to the user (key mappings, etc)

The HelpDialog must have two events associated with it (one to open the dialog and the other to

close it). It is recommended that the same key associated with ‘Close profile’ also be associated

with the command used to close the HelpDialog.

The commands for HelpDialog and TextEntryDialog can be found under the group ‘Dialogs’

TIP: The TextEntryDialog can be used to send shortcuts to VLC for which you didn’t assign an

event. For example, if you send ‘f’ to VLC using this control, VLC will switch to fullscreen mode. This

is a clever way of expanding the amount of functions you can control using Vectir.

After you are finished creating the remote profile, you can export the profile and share it with

others or make a backup of it somewhere.

If you are interested in trying out the custom VLC profile I designed, you can download it from:

http://sites.google.com/site/thecybershot/

This concludes my little tutorial on using Vectir. But there is much more that can be achieved with

this amazing software and I still haven’t explored them fully. It always helps if you have a phone

with a QWERTY keypad, because that way, you don’t run out of keys to control your computer.

Also, Wi-Fi phone users may experience a performance boost while using Vectir in the ‘Desktop

profile’ mode and might have a smoother experience controlling their computers.

I hope you enjoyed reading this tutorial as much as I enjoyed writing it.

Cheers,

Vinayak

To know more, download Vectir and read the manual.

You can learn more about Vectir and get a free 30-day trial copy from:

http://www.vectir.com/

Get the PC version here : http://www.vectir.com/download/pc/

Get the mobile Vectir client here : http://www.vectir.com/download/mobile/