Lirc vs Maverick Meerkat 10.04

[martygeek]

I just moved over to 10.10 this weekend after having been on Fedora for years. Everything works just fine - except my remote control. I can't seem to get it working, despite having gone through all I know.

On Fedora, there was a lirc tool called mode2 that let me see the codes in a term. window
just to see if anything was actually getting into the socket. Anything like that on Ubuntu?

This ain't worth going back to the instability of Fedora to get working but it would be nice if I didn't have have to bring down code and compile in a patch. That's not very "linux for humans."

[Kheops_74]

Tunzo, i have both HDPVR and PVR150. I use the blaster and the remote of the pvr150. I don't have the problem with the multiple signal. In my research i saw a bug related to hdpvr that looks like this but i don't remember where.

For the message. maybe you can uninstall the lirc_source and remove the directory in /usr/src/lirc... (it's important). After this reboot and reinstall everything. It works for me in version 10.04.

Let me know if it works.

K

[tunzo]

Kehops - thanks for replying. I will give it a try this evening. I am at work right now so I can't get to it at the moment

thanks

[tunzo]

Kehops:

I removed the lirc-modules-source package, and then deleted /usr/src/lirc... right after that. before i rebooted the machine, it did an lsmod and noticed that there were a bunch of lirc_ modules loaded at the same time. i am i correct that these were loaded when i ran dpkg-reconfigure for lirc-modules-source? anyway, after the machine rebooted, i did another lsmod and saw that now only lirc_dev and lirc_zilog were loaded, and that i now have /dev/lirc0.

i suspect that this may be due to the fact that i was trying to compile an lirc_zilog module manually as well and perhaps that module was left over and was conflicting with the modules from lirc-modules-source. i am not certain of this, as i have spent a lot of time trying various things. if you or anyone else is curious, my method for trying to manually compile was to take the source from the mythtv hdpvr wiki here and replaced the lirc_zilog.c file with the one you linked in your earlier post.

at any rate, the problem appears to be resolved for me (for now at least ). a lesson that i have learned is to be a little more methodical in the future in case i stumble upon a solution i can explain how i got there. thanks for your help on this.

still wrestling with the multiple signals issue, but perhaps that belongs in another thread.

tunzo

[Kheops_74]

Nice to hear it works for you too. MythTV without blaster is not very useful. Enjoy your MythTv box until the next major upgrade 11.04

BTW. This is the thread about the multiple signal that i saw : http://www.gossamer-threads.com/list...v/users/420427

[tunzo]

after searching around i think i have figured out the repeating commands issue. according to the FAQ at lirc.org, this behavior is typical of remotes. they apparently send multiple signals when a single button is pressed to ensure that the signal is not missed. for anyone who may be having a similar problem:

when i would press a button on my remote it would send multiple signals. for instance, if i pressed the up button then the left button, the irw output would look something like this:

0000000000001795 00 Down Hauppauge_350
0000000000001795 00 Down Hauppauge_350
0000000000001796 00 Left Hauppauge_350
0000000000001796 00 Left Hauppauge_350
0000000000001796 00 Left Hauppauge_350

after some searching, it appears that these are "extra" commands being interpreted by lirc. from what i can tell, however, the output shown above is slightly different "repeated" commands. irw output for "repeated" commands apparently look like this:

0000000000001794 00 Up Hauppauge_350
0000000000001794 01 Up Hauppauge_350
0000000000001794 02 Up Hauppauge_350
0000000000001794 03 Up Hauppauge_350
0000000000001795 00 Down Hauppauge_350
0000000000001795 01 Down Hauppauge_350
0000000000001796 00 Left Hauppauge_350
0000000000001796 01 Left Hauppauge_350

after playing with a few options in lircd.conf, i adjusted the "gap" option for the remote to a higher value. according to lirc.org, the gap option indicates an amount of time after a trailing pulse emitted from a remote. it was set to 114605 and i changed it to 200000. this caused the extra commands sent by the remote to be interpreted as "repeated" commands now instead of extra commands (notice the 2nd column in the output).

at this point, there is another option that can be set in lircd.conf called suppress_repeat <x>. it essentially causes lirc to ignore x repeats of a command. in my lircd.conf file under the section for this remote, i added:

suppress_repeat 3

now, my output for irw looks like:

0000000000001794 00 Up Hauppauge_350
0000000000001795 00 Down Hauppauge_350
0000000000001796 00 Left Hauppauge_350
0000000000001797 00 Right Hauppauge_350
0000000000001781 00 1 Hauppauge_350
0000000000001782 00 2 Hauppauge_350

the issue seems to be resolved

[phroman]

Hi Tunzo, did your HD PVR work out of the box? I can't get mine working at all. Did you do anything special to configure it? Thanks for any help.

[phroman]

Any idea where you may have seen that bug? I can't get my hdpvr working..

[tunzo]

hi phroman. i actually installed the latest firmware into the hdpvr before i ever tried it. instructions for how to do that can be found on the hdpvr mythtv wiki.

recently, i installed a fresh 10.04 ubuntu, and before i even installed mythtv, the hdpvr was auto-detected and the module was loaded.

what issues are you having?

[Ghosty.be]

ok to summarize:

*you need the zilog.diff patch from 10.04 in your home directory http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.p...og+lirc&page=7
*you need the new lirc_zilog.c in your home directory from http://git.kernel.org/?p=linux/kerne...52acc9;hb=HEAD
*you need the binary blob haup-ir-blaster.bin in your home directory from: http://wilsonet.com/?p=40 (direct link: http://www.blushingpenguin.com/mark/...ir-blaster.bin )

and run:
sudo apt-get install lirc-modules-source
cd /usr/src/lirc-*/
sudo patch -p0 < ~/zilog.diff
sudo cp ~/lirc_zilog.c drivers/lirc_zilog
sudo dpkg-reconfigure lirc-modules-source
sudo cp ~/haup-ir-blaster.bin /lib/firmware

sudo rmmod lirc_i2c
sudo rmmod lirc_dev
sudo modprobe lirc_zilog

now you should see as output for: lsmod | grep lirc
lirc_i2c 7433 0
lirc_zilog 15952 0
lirc_dev 12140 2 lirc_i2c,lirc_zilog

and for: ls /dev/lirc*
/dev/lirc0 /dev/lirc1 /dev/lircd

now restart lircd (and make sure it's configured for a hauppage remote)
sudo service lirc restart

and then run: irw
press some buttons on the remote and this should show something on the terminal.

possible errors:
*if modprobe lirc_zilog shows "killed" it means you forgot to copy the binary blob.
*if you do not see any devices like /dev/lirc0 or /dev/lirc1 the driver is not working.

Thx to everyone in this thread ... now to do something useful with this

For reference:
Hauppage pvr-150 silver remote working under Ubuntu 10.10 x86_64