monotouch remote control events not working - ios

Question

I would like to know if there is a working sample for monotouch that shows a working example for receiving remote control events such as those from the headphone buttons.
I have implemented a single view iphone app, implemented CanBecomeFirstResponder, called BecomeFirstResponder and also UIApplication.SharedApplication.BeginReceivingRemoteControlEvents() but I dont get any events.
Here is my code for my SingleViewController.
public partial class SingleViewViewController : UIViewController
{
public SingleViewViewController () : base ("SingleViewViewController", null)
{
}
public override void DidReceiveMemoryWarning ()
{
// Releases the view if it doesn't have a superview.
base.DidReceiveMemoryWarning ();
// Release any cached data, images, etc that aren't in use.
}
public override void ViewDidLoad ()
{
base.ViewDidLoad ();
// Perform any additional setup after loading the view, typically from a nib.
AVAudioSession audioSession = AVAudioSession.SharedInstance();
NSError error;
audioSession.SetCategory(AVAudioSession.CategoryPlayback, out error);
audioSession.SetActive(true,out error);
this.BecomeFirstResponder();
UIApplication.SharedApplication.BeginReceivingRemoteControlEvents();
}
public override void ViewDidUnload ()
{
base.ViewDidUnload ();
// Clear any references to subviews of the main view in order to
// allow the Garbage Collector to collect them sooner.
//
// e.g. myOutlet.Dispose (); myOutlet = null;
ReleaseDesignerOutlets ();
}
public override bool ShouldAutorotateToInterfaceOrientation (UIInterfaceOrientation toInterfaceOrientation)
{
// Return true for supported orientations
return (toInterfaceOrientation != UIInterfaceOrientation.PortraitUpsideDown);
}
public override bool CanBecomeFirstResponder {
get {
return true;
}
}
public override bool CanResignFirstResponder {
get {
return false;
}
}
public override void RemoteControlReceived (UIEvent theEvent)
{
base.RemoteControlReceived (theEvent);
}
}

Answer 1

I spent a little bit of time on this and I think I might have an answer for you. My first faulty assumption was that the volume up and down controls on the remote (headphones) would register but they don't.
I haven't managed to confirm the following except through trial and error, but it appears that you need to have an AVAudioPlayer playing something, or at least playing something when you start the AVAudioSession. Without playing something the play / stop event gets passed to the Music app which handles it.
In your code, in the ViewDidLoad method after the call to base, I added
AVAudioPlayer player = new AVAudioPlayer(new NSUrl("Music/test.m4a", false), null);
player.PrepareToPlay();
player.Play();
If you look at chapter 27 of these samples on GitHub, you'll see an example that plays audio and handles the remote control events.
https://github.com/mattneub/Programming-iOS-Book-Examples
I wasn't able to get remote control events working without the player playing, your example matched lots of Obj-C samples but I couldn't make it work in Xcode either.
Hope this helps.