Mac WiFi status monitoring

November 1, 2008 10:28 PM

Is there a way to share status information between two Macs wirelessly? I'd like to, for instance, monitor on one machine how much time is left on a DVD playing in the other.

If there is some utility out there that includes lots of status info, that would be icing on the cake. If there is some way to code it, I really am mostly interested in monitoring video status of my Mac Mini from either a MBP or an iPod touch. Information like chapter, time remaining, etc. None of the iPhone apps appear to do this (you can control a DVD/Front Row, but the the ones I've found don't look like they have real-time monitoring).

posted by one_bean to Computers & Internet (7 answers total)

I don't know that it will do what you're looking for without some hacking, but there might be a way to do it with Growl for the MBP. That won't help with the Touch, though.
posted by immlass at 10:43 PM on November 1, 2008

Best answer: Check out the AppleScript dictionary for DVD Player, particularly the application's elapsed time property. Automator might help you here.

Once you have a script that runs locally that periodically returns this information, or sends this information on request, you might then look into AppleScript RPC to send data to a SOAP client running on your MBP or iPod Touch.
posted by Blazecock Pileon at 10:49 PM on November 1, 2008

In fact, the DVD Player's AppleScript dictionary seems to have a wealth of data you can access while playing DVDs. Definitely look at the various properties there.
posted by Blazecock Pileon at 10:50 PM on November 1, 2008

Why can't you just use screen sharing?
posted by nathan_teske at 11:11 PM on November 1, 2008

Response by poster: Screen sharing isn't available on 10.4, which is installed on the Mini. I have VNC set up, I just don't want to have to log-in and shake the cursor around every time I want to know how much time's left. AppleScript is a good suggestion, thanks. If anybody knows of widgets/&c. that already do this, I'd appreciate it.
posted by one_bean at 12:49 AM on November 2, 2008

Blazecock Pileon's answer is the "right way" of doing this.
posted by schwa at 5:52 AM on November 2, 2008

Just a suggestion that needs to be correlated with other stuff:

I would probably make a script of some kind and use Geektool to poll the other machine.
posted by KimG at 1:49 PM on November 2, 2008