Preview: LottaNZB Mobile for Android

July 5th, 2009 - Sander

When I started the LottaNZB project a couple of years ago, it was basically because I didn’t really like working from the command line at that time. Since HellaNZB was lacking a graphical user interface, I decided to create one for myself. When I considered LottaNZB to be good enough for my personal usages, I thought that other people might benefit from it as well.

The project I’m going to tell you about in this post came from the same need: Android was lacking a nice client which interacts with LottaNZB. As you might have guessed from the title of this blog post, LottaNZB mobile is a work-in-progress app for Android. It is a remote front-end to either a running HellaNZB daemon, or a running LottaNZB process (which launches the HellaNZB daemon).

The application supports pausing and removing downloads and it allows for rearranging of the download queue. Adding nzb-files sometimes works and sometimes doesn’t, but well, as I said, it’s a work in progress. :-)

Let me walk you through some screenshots…

LottaNZB running on a fake HTC Magic

LottaNZB mobile running on a fake HTC Magic.
Settings

The settings menu.

Menu
It’s possible to pause downloads from LottaNZB Mobile.

Menu

Rearranging downloads and deleting downloads from the queue is also possible.

Processing

Processing items that have finished downloading.

Finished

This is what it looks like when items have finished downloading.

Notification

The app even supports notifications!

So, what are we planning for LottaNZB Mobile? First of all, it would be nice to have a background service that monitors the remote LottaNZB/HellaNZB daemon, so we can find out when things are being downloaded or when downloads have finished, so we can rush home to try whatever we’ve just downloaded! Furthermore, in light of Severin’s work on switching to Sabnzbd, I’d like to include support for Sabnzbd as well. Adding download should be a bit more stable, or I’ll have to leave it out altogether.
OK, please let us know what you think. If you would like to test LottaNZB mobile in it’s current state, drop me an e-mail on avirulence@lottanzb.org and I’ll send you the latest package.

7 Responses

  1. Scott said:
    July 10th, 2009 at 9:35 am

    I recently got an Android handset and was looking around for this sort of thing on the Market. I should have known to check here first. Keep up the GREAT work, if there’s any way I can help, let me know!

    P.S: I’d appreciate if you could send me the latest package so I can have a play. Cheers!

  2. Severin said:
    July 10th, 2009 at 4:47 pm

    Hi Scott, it’s good to hear from you again! I don’t have an Android-based handset yet but intend to buy one as soon as there are more devices.

    Have you already finished your disseration? Your blog states that you mentioned LottaNZB, in a positive sense I hope. I’m quite curious about it in fact. :-)

    LottaNZB could always use the help of new developers. Large parts of the code base are currently being rewritten due to the SABnzbd migration, but my current top priority are the upcoming exams anyway and Sander has been occupying himself with a few other projects like this one. And I also understand that it’s quite hard to get used to a large codebase that is only partially documented and keeps changing all the time. :-P

  3. Scott said:
    September 1st, 2009 at 11:36 am

    Severin, sorry it has been so long! I have completed my dissertation, it wasn’t that great to be completely honest :( I used LottaNZB as an example of a great piece of software written in Python. Hopefully I’ll be able to post a copy of the dissertation on my website soon.

    I haven’t had much time recently but I intend to have a really good play with LottaNZB for Android this coming weekend. I’ll email you some feedback soon :)

  4. Rex said:
    October 3rd, 2009 at 2:22 am

    Hey there, this looks slick! I’d love to use this, especially if we can add SABnzbd support… Any progress? Thanks!

  5. Adam said:
    November 9th, 2009 at 3:57 am

    Will you be writing this in Java or will you use the new Native Development Kit? I am really looking forward to this as I prefer to use newsgroups over torrents. Although, at the moment I can remote control torrents from my phone so I end up using them quite a bit.

  6. Robert said:
    December 18th, 2009 at 9:07 pm

    Any progress on this? I’m am anxious to get this up and running!

  7. spugman said:
    February 6th, 2010 at 9:42 pm

    where would i find a beta/alpha download of this? i’m very interested :D

Leave a Reply