[LIVE] iMon remote receiver questions

martinez · 2010-03-29 11:09

Hi!

Just finished an installation of the XBMCFreak Live Generic beta 4 on an HTPC built on the ASUS AT3N7A-I (ION).
Everything went smoothly (more than I expected anyway Big Grin

)

However, the remote is not working.

My remote is an iMon Pad and the receiver is attached to the case (3,5'' bay).

After executing:
dpkg-reconfigure lirc
and selecting iMon Pad as the remote, I was able to get a couple of keys working (mainly <Enter> and <Esc>, still not usable).

Although it would be great if I could get the remote to work, my question is actually a bit different and generic:

- Can I use the receiver with another remote, or is a receiver in any way paired with a specific remote?

Let me explain: the iMon uses a kind of knob for the directional keys that is not working and even if it did, does not seem very practical. If I enable the mouse in XBMC the knob works as a mouse (not practical at all).
Since I migrated from the plain old xbox, I have an Xbox remote lying around. I think the xbox remote is simply great for xbmc and would like to use it but don't know if it will work with the iMon receiver.
The Receiver on the board "flashes" when I press the xbox remote keys but of course nothing happens

Any help guiding me either way (getting the iMon to a usable state or using the xbox remote) would be great.

I've already followed the instructions on some posts in the forum to get the iMon to work but the posts were old and they did not work.

I turned on debugging in XBMC and used "tail -f " on the log file. I was able to see that XBMC does not log most of the keys pressed on the iMon. Basically only logs the numeric keys, enter, escape. I tried remapping the numeric keys to directions as instructed by a post in the forum but wasn't able to get it to work.

Sorry for the lack of details. I am currently not near the htpc but I will try to post more details as soon as I get home.

Thanks!

martinez · 2010-03-31 11:10

Just a quick update:
- I've managed to remap the numeric keys for directions by changing the "keyboard.xml" file.

However, this is still not very good (I really miss my intuitive Xbox remote).

My question remains:
- Can I use the iMon receiver attached to the case with the Xbox remote? Or is a specific remote in some way paired with the receiver?
- What should I change to do that?

A few additional details:
- I've tried keeping the "hardware.conf" file of the iMon and changing the "lircd.conf" to match the Xbox keys (found that info in a post here) but it did not work.
- The receiver "blinks" every time I press a key on the Xbox remote but XBMC does not log anything (with either config)
- the "irw" command does not output anything (even for the keys in the iMon that work on XBMC) so I can't really debug the keys that are not being logged by XBMC...
- Only the numeric keys and 4 others output something on "xbmc.log" with the iMon configuration.

martinez · 2010-04-04 20:05

Ok...

Something really weird is going on here...

In an effort to debug LIRC and figure out why I could only get a few keys from the iMon remote, I planned to start "lirc" in non-daemon mode, so I stopped the "lirc" service and confirmed:

Code:

root@XBMCLive:/etc/lirc# ps -ef | grep lirc

root      3903     1  0 18:48 ?        00:00:00 /usr/sbin/lircd -- output=/var/run/lirc/lircd --device=/dev/lirc0 -r

root      3911  2827  0 18:50 pts/0    00:00:00 grep lirc

root@XBMCLive:/etc/lirc# /etc/init.d/lirc stop

 * Stopping remote control daemon(s): LIRC

   ...done.

root@XBMCLive:/etc/lirc# ps -ef | grep lirc

root      3953  2827  0 18:53 pts/0    00:00:00 grep lirc

Now comes the strange part... I pressed a few keys on the remote (with LIRC stopped) and the keys were sent to the console on the screen!
Basically the keys that I had working with XBMC (numeric, enter, backspace, space) all sent the appropriate key to the linux console!

This explains why irw had no output and some keys still worked on XBMC... LIRC seems to have nothing to do with it !

... but how!?
is the receiver hardware sending the raw keys? emulating the keyboard via usb?

Please, I've been talking to myself so far, throw in your 2 cents!

martinez · 2010-04-06 23:37

Finishing up my monologue in case anyone runs into the same issues.

I just got output from "irw" and the remote is working with xbmc (although I may change some of the key mappings).

It turns out my suspicion was correct. The remote was being detected as a usb keyboard/mouse. That's why it worked (barely) even without lirc running.

After many attempts to solve the problem, the following post helped me get it working:

http://forum.xbmc.org/showthread.php?tid=68722

Basically it helps you create a udev rule to make ubuntu not handle the remote as a keyboard. Once I rebooted lirc was able to "take over".

Just a few tips regarding the post above in case your system is similar to mine:
- My ubuntu does not allow me to mount usbfs so for steps 4 and 7, use "lsusb -t". It should allow you to see if the correct driver is being loaded.
- Steps 12 and 13 really depend on the remote you are using.
- Don't forget to change the product ID according to your receiver's specific version. Mine was:

Bus 004 Device 002: ID 15c2:003c SoundGraph Inc.

Hope this helps someone with the same problem. By the way my receiver came attached to an "Advance 2610 HTPC" case.