The Road to Companion App Release

Posted on by Jeremy

Some people said we were a bit crazy to develop for all three leading mobile operating systems at the same time. Perhaps just focus on one release each other one 6 months later. Nope, here at Ceton Corp we all internally have all sorts of phones from Lumia 900, Galaxy Nexus, iPhone 4s, Kindle Fires, iPads, Nexus 7’s, and all sorts of other crazy devices and we want them all to work. However developing for all three leads to major issues such as what should the user interface look like on all devices, how does navigation work, and how do you even program all of them without having to re-write everything three different times.

CaptureThe solution to this was using Mono for Android and Mono Touch, which are great tools by Xamarin that allow you to have optimal code re-use in all three mobile frameworks. Did I mention that you get to write almost all of your code in C#?!?!?! Why is this important? Well the Ceton Companion apps are only developed by 2 software developers here at Ceton. First is Michael Welter (aka Mikinho), the mastermind, whom codes the beautiful and elegant Ceton Companion Services. The services are the core of the Ceton Companion apps and serve up all sorts of metadata goodness and allow playback to your Windows Media Center HTPC and any of your extenders. Next up Is James Montemagno (that’s me! Motz to some), whom is in charge of actually coding against the Companion and creating the Ceton Companion Apps for all three platforms.

However simply just because we are using Mono doesn’t mean that we haven’t had other issues.

Key Hurdles:

  • There are TONS of different HTPC configurations
    • So many different build types, network configurations, and who knows what else.
    • Thanks to our great beta testers we have been able to resolve most if not all of our issues and we still have plenty of time left
  • There are A LOT of different Android devices and firmware versions.
    • By far our most active beta Android is great because it is so open, but let’s look at he numbers from the beta (not included rooted devices)
      • Android Devices: 71
        • Tops 3 Devices: Galaxy Nexus, Rooted Devices, HTC One X
      • Firmware Versions: 20
        • Top: Android 4.0.4, 4.0.3, 2.3.4
    • Officially on Google Play Store we will support 1380+ Android devices!
    • Compared to WP7 where every device basically has Mango (7.5) and basically every iOS device is running iOS 5.
  • Android is Amazing and easy to roll out updates for.
    • Android really allows great flexibility to push out new updates to all of our users extremely fast and that is really exciting.
    • Others are a bit more complicated and have you go through intense certification process.

Since our showing at CES a lot has changed. It is important to remember that the Ceton Companion apps will work with ANY Windows Media Center HTPC with or without any tuner. They are truly open to everyone and we are extremely excited to be bringing everyone these great apps. Throughout the beta process we have been plugging away at new features for the apps, fixing bugs, and listening to each and everyone of our beta members who have been absolutely fantastic. We still have a ways to go as all of the Ceton Companion apps are set to launch officially at the end of August. We will be back with an official release announcement when that time comes!


-James Montemagno
-Software Developer