Recording audio on Ubuntu while watching TV with my android phone

First a bit of background: I hooked up my TV to a linux-box running Ubuntu. As a mediaplayer i use XBMC which also has a nice Android app for remote control. Something i miss though, is an easy way to record audio while watching. I use a lot of movie-samples (voices, fx, drones) in my music and i’m always looking at easier ways to get a bunch of samples. But here comes Remote Launcher to the rescue!

This app lets you run custom commands and shellscripts with the click of a button on your phone.

Here’s how i did it:

• Download Remote Launcher server here and install it. Make sure to have java6 installed (apt-get install sun-java6-bin sun-java6-jre)
• Now we do a testrun: remote-launcher-server -d

  Fill in a password twice. You only have to do this once. If you see a message that it’s running on port 4444. You’re set, and you can just CTRL-C again. The important thing is that you now will have a ~/.remotelauncherserver configuration file.

• To make sure this server gets started whenever we reboot, we put the startup in /etc/init.d/remotelauncher

  #! /bin/sh
  ### BEGIN INIT INFO
  # Provides:          remotelauncher
  # Required-Start:    $local_fs $all
  # Required-Stop:
  # Default-Start:     2
  # Default-Stop:
  # Short-Description: Start the Android Remote Launcher daemon
  # Description:       See http://owtroid.com/remotelauncher/mediawiki/index.php?title=Remote_Launcher
  ### END INIT INFO
  #
  
  PATH=/sbin:/usr/sbin:/bin:/usr/bin
  NAME=remote-launcher-server
  DAEMON=/usr/bin/remote-launcher-server
  
  [ -x "$DAEMON" ] || exit 0
  
  case "$1" in
    start)
          echo "Starting remote-launcher-server"
          start-stop-daemon --start --background --user YOUR_LINUX_USER_NAME --make-pidfile --pidfile /var/run/remote-launcher-server.pid --exec $DAEMON --chuid YOUR_LINUX_USER_NAME -- -d
          ;;
    stop|restart|force-reload)
          echo "Stopping remote-launcher-server"
          start-stop-daemon --stop --pidfile /var/run/remote-launcher-server.pid
          ;;
    *)
          echo "Usage: $NAME {start|stop|restart|force-reload}" >&2
          exit 3
          ;;
  esac
              

• Make sure it gets linked to the correct rc.d: chmod 755 remotelauncher; update-rc.d remotelauncher defaults 96 02
• Now we need some scripts to start and stop recording.


  ~/scripts/startrecord.sh

  #!/bin/sh
  
  date=`date +"%Y-%m-%d-%k-%M-%S"`
  filename="/data/Recordings/rec_$date.wav"
  /usr/bin/rec "$filename"
  

  


  ~/scripts/stoprecord.sh

  #!/bin/sh
  /usr/bin/killall -9 rec
  

• Make them executable: chmod 755 ~/scripts/startrecord.sh ~/scripts/stoprecord.sh
• Now we’re ready to configure remotelauncher to use them. Edit ~/.remotelauncherserver and put the following code in there. Make sure to change the paths of the scripts to the correct paths!

  ######## Remote Launcher Server config file ########
  #
  # Add entries in the following format:
  #   Name
  #   Description
  #   Path
  #
  # Example:
  #   Notepad
  #   Launch the Notepad editor
  #   c:\windows\system32\notepad.exe
  #
  # Visit http://sf.net/apps/mediawiki/remotelauncher/
  # for more details and examples.
  #
  # Blank lines or lines beginning with # are ignored.
  
  XBMC
  Start XBMC media center
  /usr/bin/xbmc
  
  Kill XBMC
  Kill XBMC media center
  /usr/bin/killall xbmc
  
  Record
  Start recording
  /home/cjpa/scripts/startrecord.sh
  
  Stop Record
  Stop recording
  /home/cjpa/scripts/stoprecord.sh
  

• Now we can start and stop XBMC through the Remote Launcher as well as Start and Stop recording. Just run /etc/init.d/remotelauncher start and we’re ready to control our computer from our android device
• Install the free Android App
• Once installed you’ll have to add your server and you’re set!
• The coolest thing about this app is, that you can make a homescreen widget to run 1 of the commands you configured. This makes it super-fast to launch remote scripts from your homescreen!