Introducing Nodeler

After over a month of work I'm ready to subject my latest work, Nodeler, to the criticisms of the first 50 people who sign up using the Invite Code MakeRocketGoNow. ;)

Here's a video introduction to Nodeler. Otherwise read on...



What is it?
At it's heart I kind of think of it as a higher level, zero configuration service (Apple calls theirs Bonjour).

What good does that do me?
If you're a developer, it will allow you to register your application or game as a "node" that can request to be paired with other "nodes". A node can be anything from a game node requesting to be paired with a controller node to a video web site node requesting a remote control node.

You're not a developer?
Today, there are three Chrome extensions plus a Pacman game you can try.

1. Nodeler Keyboard: allows you to accept keyboard input on any web page from a remote device.
2. Nodeler Rdio Remote: allows you to remotely control the Rdio player. Play, pause, mute, and skip forward and back are currently supported.
3. Nodeler Amazon Video Remote: allows you to remotely control the Amazon Video On Demand player. Play, pause, skip forward and back are currently supported.
4. Pacman: I've modified Dale Harvey's excellent HTML5 Pacman app to be controllable via a Nodetroller (what I like to call the applications used to provide input to the above Chrome extensions).

You are a developer?
Send me an email if you're interested in using the Nodeler API. Once your Nodes are registered and authenticated via OAuth there are currently just two API calls. Node A submits a PairRequest and then Node B calls GetPairRequests.  The protocol used to communicate between nodes is up to you. If you need a central communication server I hope to offer the Nodeler Central's Node.js server in the near future. This is what the current nodes use. I'm still working out how I want to charge for usage of the Nodeler Central communication server but I do plan to have a free plan.

You're still reading and want to know what technologies this was built with?
Just C# and Javascript. ;)

The Nodeler web site and API are hosted at AppHarbor and were built with:

• ASP.NET MVC3
• Entity Framework Code First
• MVC3 Boilerplate
• DotNetOpenAuth

The server the Nodes communicate through is built using:

• Node.js
• Socket.IO

The Chrome Extensions use:

• jQuery
• Socket.IO

The iPhone app that I'm just finishing up was built using:

• MonoTouch
• MonoTouch.Dialog
• RestSharp

How can I find out more?
Follow me or Nodeler on Twitter for updates.

Would love to hear feedback on how I can improve the product!