AppleTV Event Client for Linux in development...

I STILL can't get this working... I'm running Ubuntu 8.04 with Xfce and XBMC runs in its own session.

I run atvclient and I get what appears to be a working client, the led turns white, and the console is spitting out my IR commands but XBMC doesn't see it.

I'm running XBMC 9.11 Beta1, not Davilla's crystal branch. I have a keyboard and mouse hooked up.

I should add that when I press a button on the remote, the led on the ATV turns off as if it's receiving it. I've installed the latest version of atvclient, still nada.

I thought it may have something to do with my sessions so I ran Xfce in regular desktop mode, opened up a console on the desktop, ran atvclient as root, then ran XBMC. Still nothing...

Could you turn on debug logging, restart XBMC and pastebin the log for me? If atvclient is spitting out the commands to the console it means XBMC is not listening on the correct UDP port.

pouldam Wrote:Can this util be used somehow if you want to use another remote with more buttons (e.g. from an old DVD player) or is atvtool combined with LIRC the way to go then?

If you can see the IR commands in the console when running atvclient (in other words, if the remote is recognized by the IR receiver), then it can be made to work. I haven't found such a remote yet other than the standard Apple remote. If you have, I'd love to hear about it

Evinyatar Wrote:If you can see the IR commands in the console when running atvclient (in other words, if the remote is recognized by the IR receiver), then it can be made to work. I haven't found such a remote yet other than the standard Apple remote. If you have, I'd love to hear about it

Thanks for clarifying -- although you confirmed what I feared. Guess I have to look into that LIRC-thingie... (said in somewhat trembling voice)...

According to this page the remote uses a NEC protocol. So in theory it should be possible to use other NEC remotes. I'll have to try programming my Harmony with some NEC codes and see if I can get that working.

Evinyatar Wrote:According to this page the remote uses a NEC protocol. So in theory it should be possible to use other NEC remotes. I'll have to try programming my Harmony with some NEC codes and see if I can get that working.

Hmmm.... very interesting! If this works, will it somehow be possible to map more than 6 buttons (i.e. more buttons than on the standard ATV remote)?

Yes. Though it actually already is possible using just the Apple remote. The remote sends an 8-bit remote ID with every button press. That ID identifies the remote, and can be changed by holding down menu and play/pause for 6 seconds. Taking that into account we can already record 6 * 256 different codes. Adjusting atvclient to interpret these as different events is just a minor adjustment. That way we can map 1536 buttons, which I reckon is plenty for anyone

Update I just found out the receiver should in fact work with other remotes. But I haven't figure out how to tap into that functionality just yet. I'll try to get the OS X USB Debugging Kit running under AppleTV OS to see what's going on there.

Tried to setup my programmable remote to act like diffent NEC devices, but without any success :-(

The idea of making atvclient recognize a single Apple remote as 6 different remotes sounds very interesting, but unfortunately (for me) is my programmable remote not able to learn the Apple remote, which makes it of very little interest to me -- it may be very useful for others though.

So once again back to the LIRC-thingie for me, I guess...

Evinyatar Wrote:Update I just found out the receiver should in fact work with other remotes. But I haven't figure out how to tap into that functionality just yet. I'll try to get the OS X USB Debugging Kit running under AppleTV OS to see what's going on there.

Yes it does for >= 2.4 AppleTV versions. Apple does a trick where when the AppleTV boot, it's in IR compatibility mode to the older AppleTV versions, you can see this as the older AppleTVs refs a different kext driver name than the versions that can handle other remotes. Name change aside, there is some command sent to the IR controller that puts it into "new mode", then the HID events will contain new events that describe it. So under Linux, you are in "old mode" and if we can figure out how to change to "new mode" than we could use the AppleTV IR receiver with non-Apple IR remotes. Be aware that not all non-Apple IR remotes are recognized for example the IR remote for the MS MCE USB IR receiver is NOT recognized... go figure.