[dan991199]

its been a long time, but has anyone happened to get this to work yet?

[teaguecl]

its been a long time, but has anyone happened to get this to work yet?

I have it working fine on Dharma Live, as described in my previous thread (compiled my own kernel). It's not currently possible without doing that, though I keep hoping the right patches will filter through the kernel and end up in Eden.
I submitted a patch to xbmc to handle the "Tivo" button, but it was recently marked as "closed/won't be fixed" since the keyboard code was re-designed since it was submitted, and we couldn't find anyone willing to test it out on Windows.
As far as I'm concerned it's dead until (at least) Eden. I love the remote though, use it with my xbmc box every day. I wish xbmc had a tivo-style theme so that I didn't have to tell guests "hit the Tivo button to go to the menu, hit the Zoom button to go Back, etc.".

[leoslion]

All, I applied the patch to my kernel, recompiled, installed, and the remote worked fine. I then learned from

https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+sourc...omments/72

that I could use udev rules to map keycodes higher than 255 to other keys so that all the buttons would work. And now the remote works great.


teaguecl, the only thing I don't have working is bluetooth sleep issues. After a few minutes of inactivity, the remote turns off bluetooth mode and goes back to infrared mode. I then have to ssh in to the box and run hidd --search and hold the tivo + b (blue) button to repair for it to work again.

How did you get around this? What kind of battery life are you getting?

[teaguecl]

All, I applied the patch to my kernel, recompiled, installed, and the remote worked fine. I then learned from

https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+sourc...omments/72

that I could use udev rules to map keycodes higher than 255 to other keys so that all the buttons would work. And now the remote works great.


teaguecl, the only thing I don't have working is bluetooth sleep issues. After a few minutes of inactivity, the remote turns off bluetooth mode and goes back to infrared mode. I then have to ssh in to the box and run hidd --search and hold the tivo + b (blue) button to repair for it to work again.

How did you get around this? What kind of battery life are you getting?

I'm glad to hear another person is using this - it really is a good remote. Thanks for the tip on udev - I'll have to do that myself As far as bluetooth sleep, I really haven't seen that issue. The remote works fine for me every time I pick it up, regardless of how long it's been idle. I have seen issues where I press a button and I get the amber LED instead of the blue one (and obviously it doesn't do what it's supposed to). This only happens when the battery is low. I use a rechargeable battery set, seems to work for about a month between charges. Let me know how it goes, I'd love to get a full "howto" written up - and then lobby to get it into the wiki.

[leoslion]

I'm glad to hear another person is using this - it really is a good remote. Thanks for the tip on udev - I'll have to do that myself As far as bluetooth sleep, I really haven't seen that issue. The remote works fine for me every time I pick it up, regardless of how long it's been idle. I have seen issues where I press a button and I get the amber LED instead of the blue one (and obviously it doesn't do what it's supposed to). This only happens when the battery is low. I use a rechargeable battery set, seems to work for about a month between charges. Let me know how it goes, I'd love to get a full "howto" written up - and then lobby to get it into the wiki.

I think I found the issue and resolution here: http://en.gentoo-wiki.com/wiki/Bluetooth_mouse

I'm running without a window manager (no Gnome or KDE) and so maybe there is no bluetooth manager (blueman??) that I could found which are GTK dependent. I used the "CLI Configuration" instructions to add the remote as trusted device. I believe this stops the bluetooth stack from adding the device as a temporary device and booting it after a few minutes. I could tell something was different because the blue light (next to TiVo button) stopped flashing after pairing. Now it's just off until I hit a button once to wake and then it functions normally.

I hope this patch makes it into the kernel soon so I can update it without having to rebuild it every time I want to update to a newer version.

Next Project: trying to get this remote to work with firefox so I can watch HBOGO and Comcast streaming.

[teaguecl]

I then learned from

https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+sourc...omments/72

that I could use udev rules to map keycodes higher than 255 to other keys so that all the buttons would work. And now the remote works great.

Could you elaborate on how you did this? The program getscancodes tells me that the scancode for the Tivo button is 0xFFFF003D. I created a /lib/udev/keymaps/tivo-slide file and put this into it:

Code:

0xffff003d f11  # Tivo button maps to F11

Then I try to load it with this command, but get an error:

Code:

sudo /lib/udev/keymap /dev/input/by-id/usb-150a_1201-event-kbd /lib/udev/keymaps/tivo-slide
EVIOCGKEYCODE: Invalid argument

What udev configuration did you use for the Tivo button?

[leoslion]

I placed my mappings in /lib/udev/keymaps/tivo-slide-remote with contents:

0xC0041 0x1C #SELECT
0xC00F5 0X3F #SLOW
0xC0083 0x1C #ENTER
0xC006D 0X40 #ZOOM
0xFFFF003E 0X41 #LIVETV
0xC008D 0X42 #GUIDE
0xC009C 0x68 #CHUP
0xC009D 0x6D #CHDN
0xC006C 0x3B #A
0xC006B 0x3C #B
0xC0069 0X3D #C
0xC006A 0X3E #D
0xC00B6 0X0E #RETURN

Your problem is you are mapping to a physical key name(Select) and not the keycode (0-255 decimal) that it maps to on your system. I can't remember what file I used to get the mapping, but I think you can find it in /usr/include/linux/input.h in the "Keys and Buttons" section. I use the hex representation(0x1C) in my mapping, but the decimal representation(28) should work as well. Good Luck!

Update: Upon further testing my remote still won't stay paired. I think it's because I'm only getting a temporary/unauthorized pair and so it gets kicked out after a few mins and the blue light flashes continually. I need to play around with it some more to see if I can resolve this.

[teaguecl]

Update: Upon further testing my remote still won't stay paired. I think it's because I'm only getting a temporary/unauthorized pair and so it gets kicked out after a few mins and the blue light flashes continually. I need to play around with it some more to see if I can resolve this.

Thanks for the help. I might have some info for you regarding your pairing issue. Yesterday I disconnected the tivo slide from the htpc and connected it to my ubuntu desktop to make debugging the keys easier. I had a heck of a time getting it to pair properly - the light on the dongle flashed constantly, and it occasionally saw the remote but never really paired with it successfully. It turns out this is not a bluetooth device at all - and ubuntu's bluetooth control panel (I assume bluez behind the scenes?) was messing it up. The Tivo Slide is just a usb keyboard - so turn off everything that has to do with bluetooth. BT is used between the dongle and the remote, but that is not exposed in any way to the computer. After turning off bluetooth on ubuntu then I could pair it the normal way (Tivo+B on remote, hold button on dongle) and it worked perfectly.

[leoslion]

Thanks for the help. I might have some info for you regarding your pairing issue. Yesterday I disconnected the tivo slide from the htpc and connected it to my ubuntu desktop to make debugging the keys easier. I had a heck of a time getting it to pair properly - the light on the dongle flashed constantly, and it occasionally saw the remote but never really paired with it successfully. It turns out this is not a bluetooth device at all - and ubuntu's bluetooth control panel (I assume bluez behind the scenes?) was messing it up. The Tivo Slide is just a usb keyboard - so turn off everything that has to do with bluetooth. BT is used between the dongle and the remote, but that is not exposed in any way to the computer. After turning off bluetooth on ubuntu then I could pair it the normal way (Tivo+B on remote, hold button on dongle) and it worked perfectly.

Something is definitely wrong here. First, I'm running Ubuntu 10.04 LTS with Linux kernel 2.6.35.10 with Jarod's patch. When I plug in the dongle and push the pairing/bt button, nothing happens. When I tried it on a Win* machine, the blue light on the dongle flashes when I push the dongle's button and it pairs with the remote and everything works. When I do "sudo hcitool scan" it may say it's connected but the keyboard doesn't work and it doesn't show up when I list connected devices "sudo hcitool dev". When I do "sudo hidd --search", the blue light on the dongle flashes, it generally pairs, and the keyboard works. It's still hit or miss on whether it stays paired or the bluelight on the remote continues to flash.

I did try turning off bluetooth (sudo service bluetooh stop) and I checked the processes for the daemon (bluetoothd) and same results. It seems that there is no driver for the dongle (Broadcom 2046) for Linux. When I plug it in and check dmesg it seems like it's failing to find a proper driver. Do you have a driver?

In general, I still can't get it to work consistently. Thanks for the tips!

[leoslion]

Thanks to the "interwebs", I found an obscure blog outlining my problem here:

http://blog.projectnibble.org/2010/08/08...ame-to-be/

To sum it up, Bluez completely re-did it's bluetooth stack and deprecated the tools (hidd, hcitool, hciconfig) most people know how to use to get bluetooth pairing working; Instead, they chose to use a dbus method which is completely undocumented and no one seems to have working. The really ugly workaround (running hidd --search every x secs) is here:

http://blog.projectnibble.org/2010/01/28...orkaround/

It ain't pretty, but it works and requires no keyboard/ssh interaction. It seems to be an Ubuntu distro issue which is why I'm assuming you didn't hit it?

[mattrazz]

ControllerMate by orderedbytes for Mac OS X ($15)
http://www.orderedbytes.com/controllermate/

Intelliremote by Melloware for Windows $25 (less with with code NINETEEN...?)
http://melloware.com/products/intelliremote/

and if ControllerMate had a Windows version, I would say Intelliremote is the devil and would NEVER EVER be worth more than ControllerMate.*

*(http://mattrazz.blogspot.com/2011/09/i-l...board.html)

ControllerMate doesn't have it as yet supported officially, but I'm working with them to add support as we speak. It works perfectly for me. I can upload the file, but official support will come real soon.

(their program includes a wizard that has you press buttons and type which ones they are, and it automatically maps them in a dev file that I emailed to their support, and the next day, they sent me a patch to make everything work perfectly.)

[leoslion]

I tried a couple different things like writing a python script that used dbus bindings, a script that runs hidd --search every second, and a few others. In the end, I found blueman! <http://blueman-project.org/>

Even though I'm running without a desktop window manager (gnome or kde), I still have X11 installed and can get the GUI interface. I just ran blueman-manager and the GUI popped up. I paired my device, set it to trusted, and NO MORE ISSUES!

<happy dance>

[Weazil69]

teaguec
Can you post your entire key mappings related to the remote ive been reading as much as I could about setting this remote up for xbmc. I got ubuntu to see it as a reg keyboard and toying with it like that atm since kernel.org is down for maintenance I cant do the patch and compile

And any other little things that might help make work so far ive ran into the sleep issue even w blueman running :/ gonna toy w it more later baby steps right now

[stensgaard]

Anyone happen to know anywhere in the EU that sells these remotes??

[leoslion]

First, you need to patch your kernel using Jarod Wilson's work from MythTV. https://patchwork.kernel.org/patch/161481/ This patch improves the HID driver so that it recognizes the scancodes the remote produces, and generates the correct keycodes. Hopefully this patch will make it into standard kernels quickly...

As soon as Jarod's patch lands in a release version of Ubuntu, I'll work with the LiveCD guys to get it to work "out of the box".

Do you know if his patch made it in to the kernel? It's time to do a software upgrade (Ubuntu, Kernel, XBMC, VAAPI, etc.), Patchwork has been down for a few months now, and I'm hoping I don't need a custom kernel this go-around.