grod_remote

A Flutter phone remote for the grod / grod_tv cast daemons. Drives the same http://<daemon>:7878 API from Android (and, by virtue of Flutter, can be rebuilt for iOS / desktop on demand).

Built against:

• Flutter 3.44.0 stable
• Dart 3.12
• multicast_dns 0.3.3 (with Android-safe reusePort shim)
• http 1.x, shared_preferences 2.x, provider 6.x

What it does

• Discovers running grod daemons on the LAN via the _grod._tcp.local. mDNS service. Auto-fills host/port; presents a chooser if more than one daemon answers.
• Casts any YouTube/Piped URL from clipboard or via search.
• Drives playback — play/pause, seek ±10s, volume, mute, skip.
• Manages the queue — add, remove, view.
• Configures the daemon — default quality preset, Piped instance URL, PIN. Settings written here are pushed to the daemon and persisted locally so the client can re-assert them after a daemon restart.

Screens

Screen	Purpose
Home	Now-playing card, transport controls, queue list, Cast-URL FAB
Search	Free-text Piped search → tap result to cast or queue
Settings	Server discovery, host/port/PIN, Piped instance preset picker, quality

Settings model

Local state lives in SharedPreferences under these keys (see lib/services/app_state.dart):

Key	Purpose
server_host	Daemon LAN IP
server_port	Daemon port (7878 default)
server_pin	Optional X-Grod-Pin value
default_quality	User's preferred cast quality, independent of status.quality
last_piped_url	Most recent Piped instance the user picked

The reason default_quality and last_piped_url are tracked locally rather than reading the daemon's /status response on every open is that status.quality reports the currently loaded track's resolved height, which would silently downgrade the displayed default to 360p whenever a low-bitrate stream was the last thing cast.

Daemon API client

lib/services/grod_api.dart is a thin package:http-backed wrapper around the daemon's REST surface. See grod_tv/docs/api.md for the wire format — the Flutter client and the daemon track the same schema 1:1.

Endpoints used here:

• GET /status (polled every 3s while a server is configured)
• GET /search?q=...
• POST /cast {url, force?}
• POST /queue {url} / DELETE /queue / DELETE /queue/{pos}
• POST /skip, /play-pause, /volume-up, /volume-down, /mute, /unmute
• POST /forward {seconds}, /back {seconds}
• POST /quality {quality}
• POST /piped-url {url}

mDNS discovery (Android quirk)

The multicast_dns package's default socket factory passes reusePort: true, which Android's Dart runtime rejects with

Dart Socket ERROR: socket_linux.cc:157: `reusePort` not supported on this platform.

lib/services/discovery.dart overrides the factory to force reusePort=false on Android while preserving the default behavior elsewhere. Without this patch the Settings → "Find server on LAN" path silently returns no results even when the daemon is broadcasting.

VPN gotcha

Proton VPN (and most "kill-switch" VPN clients) route LAN traffic through the tunnel by default. If the discovery dialog and HTTP requests both fail with "Cannot reach server" while the daemon is visible from your laptop, check your VPN's split-tunnel / "allow LAN" setting. The fix is on the VPN side; the app has no opinion about your routing table.

Building

flutter pub get
flutter run            # debug build, hot-reload
flutter build apk      # release APK at build/app/outputs/flutter-apk/

The repo ships pre-commit hooks (ggshield) — pre-commit install after clone if you intend to commit. Hooks block accidental secret commits.

License

MIT.