A command line program to remotely control 2011 LG "Smart" TVs.

Supported models:

Any 2011 LG TVs labelled "Smart TV"*

For example:
LV5500,LW5500,LW6500,LW7700,LW9800
LV550x,LW550x,LW650x,LW770x,LW980x
LV550T,LW550T,LW650T,LW770T,LW980T

This program is strictly only meant for LG "Smart TV" devices and not compatible with any other LG products (blue-ray players, phones, etc).*

This script may no longer work with newer "LG SMART TV" models released after 2011. They now use the "ROAP" protocol. So if you see an error, try "lgCommander" instead:

https://github.com/ubaransel/lgcommander

Be sure that:

* Both computer + TV are on the same LAN segment.
* uPNP is enabled on the local router.
* You have assigned a FIXED ip address to your LG Smart TV.

Platform support: Mac OS X - good, Linux - ok, Windows - poor.

This is a Ruby command line program. So it requires Ruby, and several rubygems installed in order to operate. The Ruby interpreter needs to have been installed with READLINE support for the small part of the program which handles interactive keyboard input.

The Gem dependencies are listed in Gemfile. Some gem dependencies will fail to compile without their required C libraries. Apple Macs already have everything installed and this script was tested exclusively on Mac OS X. If you DO have an Apple Mac, skip this section of the README. If you have some other operating system, then the remaining hints here may form essential reading. However your mileage may vary considerably.

Curl (libcurl) is required for the patron gem, which does all the HTTP portion of communications. On Linux you may need to install the optional libcurl-dev package to get the patron gem extensions to compile. For Windows, unfortunately Patron and Curl are pretty difficult to install. See here for ideas. If all else fails, consider running this script in a VmWare virtual machine (linux guest, network bridge mode).

Another simple approach to get Windows working is to replace the patron API with your own Windows-compatible functions and use a different underlying mechanism for sending the actual HTTP get and HTTP post requests. There are only a couple functions to implement.

TV auto-discovery is provided by the dnssd gem (multicast DNS). It requires dns_sd.h, which can be provided by the Bonjour library (Apple's Bonjour for Windows), or Avahi (Linux). Mac OS X already comes with the necessary dns_sd.h API and runtimes (aka mdnsResponder daemon).

Again, here Windows is problematic and does not meet the requirements easily. After installing Apple's Bonjour for Windows, you apparently need to go away and find the location of the dns_sd runtime library. There are some discussion elsewhere on the net about this. Then somehow, point it to the 'dns_sd' gem extensions so that they can find the Bonjour library + headers, and link against it. I have no idea how you are going to do that.

A simpler solution might be to just disable and get rid of this portion of the program entirely. You must get in there and remove (comment out) the line that says require dnssd. Then proceed to remove all those functions which perform the TV auto-discovery command(s). That of course also means that you can't auto-discover the TV during pairing in the usual wayanymore. Therefore (as part of the same pair command) an alternative method of pairing has also been provided where you can just manually input the TV's IP address.

Bundler can try to install all of the necessary gem dependencies for you.

$ gem install bundler
$ cd lgremote
$ bundle install

If you have bundler 1.1 onwards, you can stage all the dependencies directly within the lgremote folder.

$ bundle install --standalone

Finally, add the directory containing the lgremote program to your $PATH.

$ echo "export PATH=$PATH:$PWD" >> ~/.profile

Interactive pairing
   lgremote pair

Display pairing key
   lgremote pair 192.168.1.2

Enter pairing key
   lgremote pair 192.168.1.2 AAABBB

Show all buttons
   lgremote press

Show all buttons in group "Menus"
   lgremote press menus

Press button
   lgremote press volume_up
   lgremote press volume_down

Move mouse by 1 increment
   lgremote mouse up
   lgremote mouse down
   lgremote mouse left
   lgremote mouse right

Move mouse by +- {x,y} pixels
   lgremote mouse -25 0

Interactive text entry (tab updates)
   lgremote keyboard

Non-interactive text entry
   lgremote keyboard text_string

lgremote is provided Copyright © 2011 under MIT License.