Blue Steel HMC
End-to-end design and development of a Home Media Center
Blue Steel HMC combines a Windows server with an Android-oriented client application to manage, discover, and play the user's media content across devices. My role covers architectural design, backend, and frontend development.
Project overview
A complete cross-platform media experience
Blue Steel HMC combines catalog, libraries, metadata enrichment, profiles, device authorization, local playback, and streaming within the LAN in one coherent experience. It also includes Blue, an AI assistant for Windows and Android that helps users with questions about using the product.
Context and problem
Turning a collection of files into a product experience
The challenge is not only playing files: the system must organize content, complete its information, make it discoverable from different devices, and remain operable as libraries and connection scenarios grow.
Content is hard to organize
Movies, genres, people, sagas, and playlists need a common structure, search, relationships, detail views, and recommendations to become a useful catalog.
More than a player
The experience must coordinate ingestion, device authorization, profiles, playback on the server and streaming over the local network, synchronization, and server diagnostic tools.
Blue Steel HMC addresses this challenge through separated responsibilities, specialized services, and flows that connect server operations with the consumption experience.
The solution
Connect, enrich, organize, and play
The product moves content from the user's folders to local playback or streaming within the LAN while keeping information and state synchronized. Playback on the same Windows PC is local; from Android, users can play content served by Windows or control playback on a Chromecast connected to that network.
Connect and authorize
Discover servers on the local network, authorize devices, and select the active user profile.
Ingest and enrich
Create libraries, scan folders and drives, track progress, and complete information through TMDb.
Organize and discover
Manage movies, genres, people, sagas, and playlists with search, detail, editing, and recommendations.
Play and continue
Play on the Windows server or stream to Android or Chromecast within the LAN. Android can control Chromecast playback, with transport controls, real-time state, and periodic polling as a fallback.
Implemented capabilities
From local file to an operable media library
The implementation covers both the consumption experience and the tools required to operate the system, maintain its information, and protect its continuity.
Catalog and discovery
Management of movies, genres, people, sagas, and playlists with search, detail, recommendations, editing, and relationships between content.
Enriched metadata
TMDb integration to complete cast, crew, images, trailers, genres, and other movie information.
Libraries and ingestion
Libraries with multiple folders and drives, file scanning, progress tracking, pause, resume, restart, errors, and movie registration.
Playback and synchronization
Local playback on the Windows server, streaming to Android or Chromecast within the LAN, and Android control of Chromecast playback. Includes transport controls, time seeking, audio and subtitle selection, mini-player, and global controls.
Devices, users, and profiles
Server discovery, explicit authorization, trusted and managed devices, roles, guest user, configurable visibility, PIN, and active-user selection.
Operations and continuity
Onboarding, configuration, interface lock, server activity, logs, diagnostics, client recovery actions, versioned backups, and protected restoration.
Localized content
Language resolution for movies, people, and genres, with background jobs that keep localized information up to date.
Blue, your AI assistant
Get help with Blue Steel without leaving the app: ask in your own words and receive guidance to keep working. Continue the conversation from Windows or Android while it remains active. Blue focuses on explaining how to use Blue Steel; it does not search the internet or take actions for you.
Current status
A functional platform ready to keep growing
Blue Steel HMC currently brings together catalog management, libraries and ingestion, enriched metadata, profiles and devices, local playback and streaming within the LAN, synchronization, server operations, backups, localized content, and Blue, an AI assistant for product questions.
The project shows how to connect product decisions with architecture, integration, quality, and operations to build a complete media experience.
Explore more of my software engineering work.