Thanks to this hint and Sony-Ericsson’s HID tool (warning: very buggy), I was able to bang together a quick and dirty iTunes Bluetooth remote control (for the Bt-enabled Z520a): ds-iTunes.hid. Send this to your phone (Bluetooth OBEX will do) and it ought to be usable immediately. The UI is passable but reasonably blurry and ugly; this is what you get for creating it entirely in Interface Builder with Unicode dingbats for button icons, and then scaling it down to fit the phone’s display. (Like I said, Q&D.)
I haven’t tried the keystrokes on iTunes for Windows, so some of them might not translate quite right. You’ll have to try it and let me know. Thanks to this hint and Sony-Ericsson’s HID tool (warning: very buggy), I was able to bang together a quick and dirty iTunes Bluetooth remote control (for the Bt-enabled Z520a): ds-iTunes.hid. Send this to your phone (Bluetooth OBEX will do) and it ought to be usable immediately. The UI is passable but reasonably blurry and ugly; this is what you get for creating it entirely in Interface Builder with Unicode dingbats for button icons, and then scaling it down to fit the phone’s display. (Like I said, Q&D.)
I haven’t tried the keystrokes on iTunes for Windows, so some of them might not translate quite right. You’ll have to try it and let me know. 
March 15th, 2006 at 7:27 pm
This works great on my new Z520a! At home I’m running Mac OS X 10.4.5, iTunes 6.0.4 and a MSI BToes Bluetooth 2.0 USB dongle. My only suggestion is a button to launch iTunes if it is not already running, and if it already is running, to make it come to the foreground. I’m going to try it at work tomorrow on a Windows XP machine. Whee, wireless is fun!
March 16th, 2006 at 12:29 am
Hmm. Launching/raising iTunes is a bit trickier, because these HID profiles are only able to send single keystrokes (with optional modifier keys). There isn’t a way to do what you want, using only one keystroke, without some additional scriptable-hotkey application (e.g. Spark) running on your machine.
I’m interested to see what happens under XP; I fear that the modifier key codes will be different…
March 18th, 2006 at 8:46 pm
Just came across this FrontRow HID file (just like the iTunes HID, but controls FrontRow instead).
April 12th, 2006 at 12:38 pm
how exactly does this work from step 1-X?
i’ve uploaded the .hid to my z520a’s “Other” directory. I’m browsing to “Entertainment > Remote Control” yet nothing new appears.
What are the steps to get this working?
Thanks.
April 12th, 2006 at 1:27 pm
ok got it, you have to send the file into the ‘/’ root directory of the phone, not in the ‘Other’ folder.
problem is now it will not connect/function, but that is probably due to the properties of my bluetooth sharing/etc.
April 27th, 2006 at 4:01 pm
The links I found to a Front Row remote HID file were dead so I’ve created my own. I don’t have hosting space of my own, but maybe Dan will post it here on his site…
May 16th, 2006 at 4:44 am
Sorry, the Front Row HID was down (I missed to copy it, when the site moved to a new server), it should be alright now.
May 30th, 2006 at 9:31 pm
play/pause function does not work outside of itune.along with anything in that row. otherwise im quite impressed and curious how you wrote this. that is how to write similar remotes. one nice feature might be if you could rate songs somehow. since i dont know the restrictions of the code i dont know how easy or hard that would be.
May 30th, 2006 at 11:56 pm
James: Yeah, the remote just sends keystrokes that work within iTunes. Bluetooth HID profiles can only (as far as I know) send simple mouse and keystroke events, so in order to get the remote control to operate iTunes when iTunes isn’t the front application, you’d need to install a hotkey manager (like Spark or Proxi), set up special keystrokes to control iTunes, and then reprogram the remote to send those keystrokes. [If you want to make your own HID apps, see the Sony-Ericsson HID Tool link in the original post.]
May 31st, 2006 at 12:02 am
Oh, and here’s how you might write an AppleScript to adjust the rating of the current song.
May 31st, 2006 at 1:18 am
yeah thats what i found interesting because the row above it did work outside of itunes.
July 25th, 2006 at 5:37 am
Works great! Only thing is if it is possible to render this picture to 240 x 320 so it will fit the screen of the K800/K970.
August 21st, 2006 at 4:32 pm
was playing around with this Winamp Hid file i found today and was wondering in which folder on the phone to place so i had to search inside the phone for the other HID files (Presenter, MediaPlayer, Desktop), i found them in /tpa/system/loconn/remote/archive/ so place all your HID files there and select them in Menu–>Entertainment–>Remote Control ;-)
Was looking for a program to create my own HID files and google landed me here..
cheers
August 21st, 2006 at 10:36 pm
i created my own HID file now! :)
easier than i thought though.. i still dont understand why some buttons work on the main winamp window but not in playlist editor window..!?
Preview:
www.undrx.net/Winamp.gif
Winamp v5.24 HID file for Sony Ericsson z520:
www.undrx.net/Winamp.zip
Key Maps:
www.undrx.net/key_maps.jpg
Cheers
October 27th, 2006 at 2:19 pm
Got it working on my W850i but had to rename to tar file (no unpack it) so it had a .hid extention. After that the phone knows where to store it for later. WoWzers!!! Work Gr8. Dont mind the small PNG. Tried usingg SE’s tool which is VERY VERY buggy. Couldn’t get it to CMD+ARROW UP Grr! Cheers!
February 2nd, 2007 at 12:41 pm
Holky shite, you rock my world! I’ve been lookin’ for this forever, how did I miss it? THanks.