Bluetooth TiVo Slide Remote with QWERTY keyboard / keypad finally goes retail

teaguecl · 2012-03-26 05:41

Eden xbmcbuntu update:
I spent all day upgrading to 11.0 Eden, and thought I would share my experience. The easiest way to get this remote working is to:
1. remove bluetooth
- sudo apt-get remove bluez
- sudo apt-get remove blueman
- sudo rm /etc/init.d/bluetooth (this shouldn't be necessary, bluez uninstall is supposed to remove this)
2. disable bluetooth modules
- put these lines into a /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist* file:
blacklist btusb
blacklist bluetooth

At this point, you should be able to reboot, pair the dongle and remote (press Tivo+Blue on remote, then press dongle button), and use evtest to make sure the keys are working.
To get the keys working that are normally mapped strangely, I use keyfuzz. It's very non-standard, I think udev is a better way to go - but I haven't done that yet.

Side note: xbmcbuntu has a lot of unecessary packages with it. If you are using this remote, you don't need lirc for example - I highly recommend removing it.

As a follow up to my experiments today with Eden. There are two ways to use this remote, which has led us to lots of confusion. The two methods are:
1. as a USB keyboard. This means no bluetooth, it uses something called USB HID Emulation. The dongle talks via bluetooth to the remote, but it presents itself to the operating system as a USB keyboard. This is what I describe in my previous post, you need to completely disable bluetooth.
2. as a bluetooth keyboard. The dongle presents itself as a Bluetooth adapter to the operating system, and allows you to connect to the remote as a BT device. This is what most people are trying to do, and I found it quirky and unreliable. To do this I used blueman (which is based on bluez) to pair with the keyboard using PIN 0000. It works, but my experience was that it needed manual re-pair'ing after the remote timeouts (about 5 minutes), and every time you reboot your htpc.

I highly recommend method #1. The only drawback is that you can't use other bluetooth devices - which isn't a problem for me.

goyman · 2012-03-31 01:13

Deinstalling bluetooth packages and blacklisting kernel module was the solution. It now works, thanks!

teaguecl · 2012-04-02 22:23

One more note about this remote under Eden - there are a few keys that are not working. The good news is that the remote is recognized and works "out of the box" thanks to the kernel patches from Jarod Wilson. Bad news is that the "Tivo", "Thumbs Up" and "Thumbs Down" are all non-functional. I tried them out with evtest, and strangely enough they are all mapped to the exact same event:

Code:

Tivo button:

Event: time 1314577025.927747, type 3 (Absolute), code 40 (Misc), value 0

Thumbs Up button:

Event: time 1332900114.212816, type 3 (Absolute), code 40 (Misc), value 0

Thumbs Down button:

Event: time 1332900475.884858, type 3 (Absolute), code 40 (Misc), value 0

This event isn't even a keyboard keycode - it is for a absolute positioning device (like a Wacom tablet). Worse, all three buttons produce an identical event so even if we could catch the event and translate it, we still couldn't differentiate between these three keys!

jschimmoeller · 2012-04-10 00:11

Thanks for the posting ... with this information I was able to get the tivo slide working with ubuntu 12.04 LTS.

I am having issues with remapping the channelup and down button (402 and 403).

I have modified the /etc/X11/xorg.conf and added the following lines but the remap is not working.. any ideas?

Section "InputClass"
Identifier "tivo-slide"
Driver "evdev"
Option "event_key_remap" "116=1 402=103 403=108"
MatchProduct "HID 150a:1201"
EndSection

here is the output from evtest:
Input driver version is 1.0.1
Input device ID: bus 0x3 vendor 0x150a product 0x1201 version 0x111
Input device name: "HID 150a:1201"
Supported events:
....
Testing ... (interrupt to exit)
Event: time 1334009379.183743, type 4 (EV_MSC), code 4 (MSC_SCAN), value c0030
Event: time 1334009379.183752, type 1 (EV_KEY), code 116 (KEY_POWER), value 1
Event: time 1334009379.183755, -------------- SYN_REPORT ------------
Event: time 1334009379.319668, type 4 (EV_MSC), code 4 (MSC_SCAN), value c0030
Event: time 1334009379.319676, type 1 (EV_KEY), code 116 (KEY_POWER), value 0
Event: time 1334009379.319683, -------------- SYN_REPORT ------------
Event: time 1334009383.325364, type 4 (EV_MSC), code 4 (MSC_SCAN), value c009c
Event: time 1334009383.325371, type 1 (EV_KEY), code 402 (KEY_CHANNELUP), value 1
Event: time 1334009383.325373, -------------- SYN_REPORT ------------
Event: time 1334009383.517252, type 4 (EV_MSC), code 4 (MSC_SCAN), value c009c
Event: time 1334009383.517258, type 1 (EV_KEY), code 402 (KEY_CHANNELUP), value 0
Event: time 1334009383.517264, -------------- SYN_REPORT ------------
Event: time 1334009383.925032, type 4 (EV_MSC), code 4 (MSC_SCAN), value c009d
Event: time 1334009383.925039, type 1 (EV_KEY), code 403 (KEY_CHANNELDOWN), value 1
Event: time 1334009383.925042, -------------- SYN_REPORT ------------
Event: time 1334009384.172884, type 4 (EV_MSC), code 4 (MSC_SCAN), value c009d
Event: time 1334009384.172889, type 1 (EV_KEY), code 403 (KEY_CHANNELDOWN), value 0
Event: time 1334009384.172895, -------------- SYN_REPORT ------------

teaguecl · 2012-04-10 02:23

(2012-04-10 00:11)jschimmoeller Wrote: I am having issues with remapping the channelup and down button (402 and 403).

I have modified the /etc/X11/xorg.conf and added the following lines but the remap is not working.. any ideas?

First, it's interesting that your evtest output for those buttons is so different than mine. I can only assume the linux kernel has changed quickly with regards to this device. Anyway, I think your problem is that X11 sucks Blush

(see post #9)
X cannot deal with keycodes larger than 255, so it doesn't even see the button presses for those keys (codes 402, 403). You show the evtest output for those keys - my guess is if you ran xev instead, you would see nothing.
I got around this by doing the mapping outside of X, using a program called keyfuzz. I don't think this is a very good solution, but it does work.

As a note, you don't need to modify xorg.conf to do key re-mapping for xbmc anymore! If you look at the wiki page for keyboard.xml, it looks like Eden added the ability to do this. It will only work inside xbmc, but that's all we care about anyway Wink

jschimmoeller · 2012-04-10 02:40

(2012-04-10 02:23)teaguecl Wrote: my guess is if you ran xev instead, you would see nothing.

Yes, when I run xev i do see nothing ... crap!

(2012-04-10 02:23)teaguecl Wrote: It will only work inside xbmc, but that's all we care about anyway

I was hoping that there might be something I was missing ... thanks for the quick reply.

count_zero · 2012-04-10 03:55

Okay, my remote came in the mail today and here's my impression: it functions well, but takes a little work.

1) Works out of the box (with the exception of a few buttons) with kernel 3.3.1.
2) I'm using the device as a usb keyboard, no bluetooth enabled at all.
3) I tried patching the kernel to make the extra buttons work a la this patch discussed earlier in this thread. It applied cleanly, and created a new kernel config option. However, it only managed to break the remote's function entirely. (does this patch only apply to bluetooth functionality?)
4) It is easy to remap buttons using udev:

Create this file: /etc/udev/keymaps/tivo-slide

Code:

0xC0041 0x1C #SELECT

0xC00F5 0X3F #SLOW

0xC0083 0x1C #ENTER

0xC006D 0X40 #ZOOM

0xC008D 0X42 #GUIDE

0xC009C 0x41 #CHUP

0xC009D 0x6D #CHDN

0xC006C 0x1D #A

0xC006B 0x3C #B

0xC0069 0X3D #C

0xC006A 0X3E #D

0xC00B6 0X0E #RETURN

Add this line to your udev rules: /etc/udev/rules.d/10-local.rules

Code:

SUBSYSTEM=="input", SUBSYSTEMS=="usb", ATTRS{product}=="BCM2070B0", RUN+="/lib/udev/keymap $name /etc/udev/keymaps/tivo-slide"

[Edit: I fixed the tivo-slide file above and now all buttons except the ones below work]

Of course, the tivo button, thumb buttons, and live tv buttons will be nonfunctional without a kernel patch.

teaguecl · 2012-04-12 22:45

Thanks count_zero for the udev solution - that is much better than my current setup using keyfuzz. I am not surprised that the kernel patch didn't work - I am pretty sure the patch is very out of date. I'll have to do some digging and see what we can do to get the last four buttons operational.
Also, I created a wiki page for documenting all of our knowledge on this remote. http://wiki.xbmc.org/index.php?title=TiVo_Slide

pvautrin · 2012-05-08 08:23

teaguecl,

Browsing git.kernel.org [1], it appears there are two versions of the tivo slide: 0x1201 and a BT-driven 0x1200. Patches for the second one are more recent, but I'm not familiar enough to say which kernel will end up supporting it (3.3 or 3.4 ?)

Can you provide output of lsusb?

[1] http://git.kernel.org/?p=linux%2Fkernel%...mit&s=tivo

Edit: there appears to be support for TiVo, Live TV, thumbs down and up buttons as well since february [2], so perhaps no patch is needed anymore?

[2] http://git.kernel.org/?p=linux/kernel/gi...634e6823e3

teaguecl · 2012-05-08 17:27

My device is definitely the 1201 variant, I didn't know the other one existed. Any info on the differences? It looks to me like Linus pulled in the changes to support this remote on 4-20-2012, so all we need to do is upgrade our kernel to get it working! Does anyone know if they rebuild the kernel on the nightly or monthly release cycle builds?
lsusb for the device is:

Code:

Bus 003 Device 002: ID 0a5c:4500 Broadcom Corp. BCM2046B1 USB 2.0 Hub (part of BCM2046 Bluetooth)

Bus 003 Device 003: ID 150a:1201  

Bus 003 Device 004: ID 0a5c:4503 Broadcom Corp. Mouse (Boot Interface Subclass)

Bus 003 Device 005: ID 0a5c:2190 Broadcom Corp.

Verbose version:

Code:

Bus 003 Device 003: ID 150a:1201

Device Descriptor:

  bLength                18

  bDescriptorType         1

  bcdUSB               2.00

  bDeviceClass            0 (Defined at Interface level)

  bDeviceSubClass         0

  bDeviceProtocol         0

  bMaxPacketSize0         8

  idVendor           0x150a

  idProduct          0x1201

  bcdDevice            1.00

  iManufacturer           0

  iProduct                0

  iSerial                 0

  bNumConfigurations      1

  Configuration Descriptor:

    bLength                 9

    bDescriptorType         2

    wTotalLength           34

    bNumInterfaces          1

    bConfigurationValue     1

    iConfiguration          0

    bmAttributes         0xe0

      Self Powered

      Remote Wakeup

    MaxPower                2mA

    Interface Descriptor:

      bLength                 9

      bDescriptorType         4

      bInterfaceNumber        0

      bAlternateSetting       0

      bNumEndpoints           1

      bInterfaceClass         3 Human Interface Device

      bInterfaceSubClass      1 Boot Interface Subclass

      bInterfaceProtocol      1 Keyboard

      iInterface              0

        HID Device Descriptor:

          bLength                 9

          bDescriptorType        33

          bcdHID               1.11

          bCountryCode            0 Not supported

          bNumDescriptors         1

          bDescriptorType        34 Report

          wDescriptorLength     336

         Report Descriptors:

           ** UNAVAILABLE **

      Endpoint Descriptor:

        bLength                 7

        bDescriptorType         5

        bEndpointAddress     0x81  EP 1 IN

        bmAttributes            3

          Transfer Type            Interrupt

          Synch Type               None

          Usage Type               Data

        wMaxPacketSize     0x0008  1x 8 bytes

        bInterval              10

goyman Junior Member Posts: 4 Joined: Mar 2012 Reputation: 0	2012-03-31 01:13 Post: #52 Deinstalling bluetooth packages and blacklisting kernel module was the solution. It now works, thanks!
	find quote