[PATCH] Native WinLIRC support to XBMC for Windows

yarix Wrote:are you using Grider from http://www.promixis.com/ ?
if so why do you need winlirc?

My setup is slightly odd and i made a lot of changes to it over ths summer, unfortunately i was recovering from various hospital visits (read high and altered). the end result is it works.


Far as i can remember used media player classic for videos , which interfaces with winlirc quite well, and used girder to emulate a keyboard with my remote so i could do everything from the couch. i might be able to use girder directly with my ir receiver but this seemed an easyer way. If i could ditch girder for all but launching xbmc and some macro stuff it would be great.

I hope you are doing well now.
anyway i will be waiting for winlirc support.
I don't want to buy grider or any other remote.
I have a remote from our cable company that I'm using now to control MediaPortal. i would like to continue use that remote.


thanks anyway.

Hello,

It's sad that there is still no native support for WinLIRC. I have made the Audio recording based IR receiver and can't use it without WinLIRC. Sadly these pastebin links are also expired so i have no way of getting this code mod. Is it possible to re-paste them to pastebin?

Winlirc gets 2000 downloads a week, so it's not like no one uses it. Im currently working on a plugin for another usb remote, and when i've finished it will roll out a new version of winlirc.

http://trac.xbmc.org/attachment/ticket/4...nlirc.diff

I've just released a new version of WinLIRC, version 0.8.7. I've basically redesigned WinLIRC so it has a dll/plugin architecture. Before it didn't make much sense for you guys to impliment WinLIRC because a lot of new pcs don't have serial ports and the original version (nearly 10 years old) only supported serial receivers. The new version of winlirc, is also a lot more like the linux version.

Now it supports a bunch of USB receivers, some commercial with bundled remotes, streamzap etc, and others that are just generic receivers and allow you to basically use any remote control lying about the house. I use myself the audio receiver like the guy above. You can build one of those for pennies, and use pretty much any remote with it. That microphone in port on my sound card came in useful after all

MCE remote support is next on the list.

Please bump after Dharma is out, right now all attention is on the release.

Okay, will do. WinLIRC should be trivial to impliment, especially considering the fact XMBC already supports LIRC !

I plan to write a MCE remote plugin for WinLIRC. Should be able to make it such a way that it will support any remote control, not just the standard MCE remote. The hardware is capable of this.

Quote:I feel as if the remote control end of it has been shoved to the side while other features have been worked on and implemented.

Probably because it has. Linux has LIRC which is pretty much standard. Under windows there are a bunch of programs, girder, eventghost, etc. Each htpc software, media portal etc all seem to write their own plugin system for remote control support. So nothing is even remotely standard. To top it off the cheap remotes install themselves basically as keyboards and aren't configurable at all. A double whammy.

I am the developer of winlirc, so clearly I am biased, but winlirc could potentially really solve your problems, not just for XBMC but maybe other programs. Essentially winlirc just decodes signals, and outputs the name of the button on a socket. Any program can listen to this socket message. And for the user all he/she has to do is bind the name of the button in the LIRC config, to an action inside your program. Historically WinLIRC only supported home brew serial receivers. A few people on ebay etc commercially made them, but they aren't that widespread. But all that has changed, I rewrote the entire program, and ported a large part of the code over from the linux version. So now we have a plugin system that can support pretty much any remote control. I've just finished a plugin for the firefly mini remote.

Next up is the MCE receiver. The MCE receiver, like some of the other hardware I have, gives access to the raw timing information of the signal. So with an MCE receiver we can support any infra-red remote control, not just the MCE one. That is the plan for the anyway. I just need to buy one first

Check out the audio receiver. An infra-red receiver hooked directly to the line in on your sound card.
http://winlirc.sourceforge.net/audioreciever.html
You can decode pretty much most remote controls with that, and it costs only a few pennies.

Hi,
I am the developer of the windows port of LIRC, WinLIRC. WinLIRC had basically been abandoned for years. It didn't really make sense before to support WinLIRC before because it only supported a certain type of serial receiver. Anyway now I've rewritten it so it has a plugin architecture for different remotes/receivers. The basic idea is, winlirc sits between your program and the remotes. It gives a common interface for programs to listen for remote button presses, without the programs having to write their own code to support these remote controls.

I've just finished a plugin for the MCE receiver. With it you can use any remote control lying around the house, not just the bundled RC6 one, certainly a cheaper option for those that don't want/need to buy another remote control. Most of the plugins I've written so far for receivers allow any remote to be used.

Anyway, it would be nice if XBMC could support WinLIRC. It should be real simple to support since you already support LIRC, and WinLIRC uses the same protocol.