CouchPotato

CouchPotato lets you use an Xbox controller to control the mouse and keyboard of your PC, so that you can browse streaming video services or use other websites and apps from the comfort of your couch. CouchPotato starts by letting you choose from a menu of websites and apps (which you can customize), and once you launch an app, the Xbox controller acts as a mouse to let you navigate the app. You can also go into "keyboard mode," letting you use an on-screen keyboard to type in things like search keywords or login information.

Download the latest version of CouchPotato here.

Controls (short version)

Use the D-Pad to navigate menus and press A to select menu items. Once you launch an app, use the left thumbstick to move the mouse, press A to left click, and press B to right click. Press Start to simulate pressing the Enter key, and press Back to enter the Escape key. Use the triggers to simulate scrolling up and down with the mouse wheel. Press Y to switch into and out of Keyboard Mode.

Controls

When using a video streaming service, CouchPotato operates in two different modes. In "app mode," you can use the controller to move and click the mouse and enter certain keyboard keys. In "keyboard mode," you can enter keyboard input including letters, numbers, and symbols using an on-screen keyboard. There is also a "mouse emulator mode" available from the app's main menu. In this mode, the Xbox controller simply acts as a mouse, and keyboard mode is not available, allowing you to start any program you want or do anything else you can do with just a mouse.

Some of the app mode button mappings can be overridden for a particular website with a custom button mapping specified in the config file (see "Customizing the app menu" below). The default config file uses a custom button mapping for Hulu to map the Start button to the spacebar key instead of the enter key, since the spacebar key is what pauses the Hulu player.

App mode

• Left thumbstick: move mouse
• A: left click
• B: right click
• X (hold): enable speech recognition for alphanumeric input
• Y: switch to keyboard mode
• D-Pad: left/right/up/down arrow keys
• Start: enter key
• Back: escape key
• Left trigger: mouse wheel scroll up
• Right trigger: mouse wheel scroll down

Keyboard mode

• Right thumbstick: move keyboard window on screen
• D-Pad: move the cursor on the on-screen keyboard
• A: press selected key
• B: backspace key
• X: spacebar key
• Y: return to app mode
• Start: enter key
• Back: escape key
• Left shoulder: switch to symbols
• Right shoulder: switch to uppercase

Mouse emulator mode

• Left thumbstick: move mouse
• A: left click
• B: right click
• Y: return to the main menu

Menu controls

• D-Pad: navigate menu
• A: select menu item

Streaming website instructions and quirks

This section has instructions and tips on navigating specific video streaming websites. Generally, you want to think of CouchPotato as letting you use the mouse (through the left thumbstick, A and B buttons, and triggers) as well as a subset of useful keyboard keys (through the Start, Back, and D-Pad buttons). If you already know how to navigate the website with the mouse and those keys, you're all set. If you need to type letters and numbers, you can switch to keyboard mode, which most of the websites support (just make sure you "click" inside of the text box before switching to keyboard mode).

Amazon Video

Amazon Video works great with CouchPotato. When watching a video, just press A to pause/unpause and use the D-Pad left and right buttons to track forwards and backwards. When browsing movies and TV shows, use the left thumbstick and A button to control the mouse. Use the triggers to scroll up and down. To search for a movie or TV show, just click the cursor inside the search box and switch to keyboard mode (with the Y button) to type in your search terms.

Hulu

Hulu also works well with CouchPotato. The controls are virtually identical to the Amazon Video controls described above. The one difference is that you have to use the Start button rather than the A button to pause/unpause.

Netflix

The Netflix video player has similar controls to Amazon Video and Hulu: press A or Start to pause/unpause and use the D-Pad left and right buttons to track forwards and backwards. Browsing Netflix is a bit more of a pain than with the other video streaming services, though. For reasons related to details of how the Netflix web app handles keyboard input, CouchPotato's keyboard mode does not work with Netflix. If you have a microphone, you can use the experimental speech recognition feature to "type" letters into the search box by saying the NATO phonetic alphabet. Otherwise, you'll have to pull out a keyboard and use that to enter your search terms.

Speech recognition mode

For websites like Netflix that don't work with keyboard mode, CouchPotato has a speech recognition mode that uses Windows Speech Recognition to let you enter characters with your voice. To activate speech recognition mode, hold down the X button. While the X button is held down, to enter a letter, say the corresponding NATO Phonetic Alphabet (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NATO_phonetic_alphabet) code word. To enter a numerical digit, just say the digit's name, and to enter a space or backspace, say "space" or "backspace." Speech recognition mode will only work if you have a microphone plugged into your computer, and it might not work perfectly due to the inherent noise and error involved in speech recognition.

Customizing the app menu

The apps and websites available in the app menu can be customized by modifying CouchPotato's config file. The config file is an XML file called Config.xml located in the same directory as the CouchPotato executable (a default config file will be generated the first time you run CouchPotato and whenever the config file is moved or deleted). The menuItems element contains a set of child elements describing the websites and apps in the app menu. There are three kinds of entries:

• A website element describes a website that will be launched in a browser window. The Xbox controller will replace the mouse and keyboard while browsing this website. Child elements:
  • name: The name that will be shown for this entry.
  • url: The URL of the website.
  • buttonMapping (optional): A custom button mapping for the website. It accepts the following child elements: back, start, dpadLeft, dpadRight, dpadDown, and dpadUp. Each child element corresponds to a button, and its contents specify the key input that is entered when the button is pressed. If a child element is missing, the default button mapping for that button will be used.
• A program element describes a mouse-and-keyboard app. When launched with CouchPotato, the Xbox controller will replace the mouse and keyboard, just like with a website. Child elements:
  • name: The name that will be shown for this entry.
  • processName: The process name of the program. This name is the "friendly name" described here. It sounds like the "friendly name" is always the executable name without the ".exe" extension or path, but I have left it as a separate parameter in case there are exceptions to that rule. If this element is not set correctly, CouchPotato won't be able to tell if the program is already running when you go to launch it, and you might need to exit all windows of the program in order to return to the CouchPotato menu.
  • processPath: The path to the EXE file used to launch the program.
  • args: Any command-line arguments to be passed to the program when launching it. An empty element is fine.
  • appStartedArgs (optional): Any command-line arguments to be passed to the program when a process of that program is already running. An empty element is fine. If this element is missing, you will not be able to launch the program when a process of it is already running.
• A controllerProgram element describes an app that natively supports an Xbox controller. This program will ignore the Xbox controller input while the controller-enabled app is running. Child elements: the same as for a program entry (see above).

Config file options

There are several settings that can be changed by editing the corresponding child element of the options element in the config file. (As mentioned above, the config file is an XML file called Config.xml located in the same directory as the CouchPotato executable, and a default config file will be generated for you if one is not there already.)

• browser element: sets the browser used to open websites. The processName child element contains the browser's process name, and the path child element contains the executable path of the browser. To change the browser used by CouchPotato, change these two child elements to the process name and executable path, respectively, of your browser of choice. See the description of the processName element in the section "Customizing the app menu" for more information on how to set that parameter.

• width element: sets the width of the CouchPotato window in pixels. Change this number to change the window size (the height scales automatically with the width).

Programming notes

• I use mouse_event() rather than SendInput() to spoof mouse input because mouse click events sent with SendInput() were not being applied when another application had the focus. Given that mouse_event() is deprecated, I'm not sure why it works and SendInput() doesn't. It's possible that there is a UIPI privilege issue with SendInput(), but I would think that any such issue would apply to mouse_event() as well.

Helpful resources that I used

• Microsoft's XInput tutorial: https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/desktop/ee417001(v=vs.85).aspx
• This discussion gave me the idea of using mouse_event() to simulate button clicks, although I had to write a C++/CLI wrapper for it since I couldn't get a DllImport to work as shown: https://www.gamedev.net/topic/321029-how-to-simulate-a-mouse-click-in-c/
• Shutting down the computer from inside of a C# program: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/102567/how-to-shut-down-the-computer-from-c-sharp