Help with mce remote

[Dbbd]

I am new to the pi. My first install on it was raspbian. Got the remote working quite easily, got me quite surprised, but not happy with xbmc on it. So now I try xbian.

It make me crazy, I can't get the remote working except the arrows and an enter key. I tried to irrecord a couple of buttons, but lirc just ignores my config file, arrows continue to work.

What bugs me most is Irw does not issue any output. As if lirc output socket is not the default.

What should I be looking for? How do I debug the lirc input chain? I guess that if irw would have shown me socket outputs, xbmc would work as well, how come irw does not show me anything, yet 5 keys do work with xbmc?

I'm using model b pi, with xbian 1.1 beta

Thanks,
Dan

[f1vefour]

What is the specific IR module your using?

Post "dmesg" and "lsusb - v" to pastebin and provide links please.

Where are you adding your configuration changes?

[Dbbd]

lsusb -v : here
dmesg: here

Not sure what configuration changes you refer to. I've played with hardware.conf and lirc.conf to try to get the mce usb remote to work just like it did on raspbian. I did not try to customize any keys yet.

Dan

[JeHaLi]

That is just the reason that I moved to Raspbian.
This item (of the non-working buttons om the MCE emote) did not lead to an adequate solution on this forum.

[IriDium]

(18th Aug, 2013 03:26 AM)JeHaLi Wrote:  That is just the reason that I moved to Raspbian.
This item (of the non-working buttons om the MCE emote) did not lead to an adequate solution on this forum.

@JeHaLi

Your comment is unhelpful.

Raspbian and Xbian are too different solutions
Raspbian is a desktop environment.
Xbian is a multimedia environment.

How you "moved" to it is a mystery as they are two different things - chalk and cheese.

---

@Dddb
Have you tried updating - there was a problem with lirc - that should have been fixed

[f1vefour]

Try this:

Terminal

sudo echo lirc > /sys/class/rc/rc0/protocols
sudo cat /etc/lirc/remotes/mceusb.conf >> /etc/lirc/lircd.conf
sudo killall -HUP lircd
sudo service xbmc restart

Try your remote again, if it still doesn't work we will try something else.

[Dbbd]

Yes, this was my first try - using the xbian canned files, both hardware.conf and the mceusb included in lircd.conf
Btw, why would I need to restart xbmc?

[f1vefour]

(18th Aug, 2013 03:40 PM)Dbbd Wrote:  Yes, this was my first try - using the xbian canned files, both hardware.conf and the mceusb included in lircd.conf
Btw, why would I need to restart xbmc?

On occasion I have noticed XBMC fails to respond to the remote after configuration changes, I never researched why.

[Dbbd]

But why does irw show nothing coming out of the lircd socket?
I think something is wrong way before we start to talk about xbmc.

[f1vefour]

Have you ran apt-get update and apt-get upgrade yet?

[JeHaLi]

It was a slip of the pen: I meant Raspbmc
But I will give it another try to get that MCE remote alive with Xbian.
All the above mentioned suggestions have I already done

[Dbbd]

(19th Aug, 2013 01:53 AM)f1vefour Wrote:  Have you ran apt-get update and apt-get upgrade yet?

Results. Eventually I got to it, did update & upgrade as you suggested and it now works fine. Thanks

BTW, while searching for a solution I came to understand the mceusb is now part of the kernel input subsystem, and that lirc is not really necessary anymore. There's a tool called ir-keytable and a procedure to set up an ir remote without lirc here. Is there a reason xbian continues to use lirc? Isn't it more simple to use this ir-keytables?

Thanks,
Dan

[f1vefour]

(23rd Aug, 2013 12:59 AM)Dbbd Wrote:  

(19th Aug, 2013 01:53 AM)f1vefour Wrote:  Have you ran apt-get update and apt-get upgrade yet?

Results. Eventually I got to it, did update & upgrade as you suggested and it now works fine. Thanks

BTW, while searching for a solution I came to understand the mceusb is now part of the kernel input subsystem, and that lirc is not really necessary anymore. There's a tool called ir-keytable and a procedure to set up an ir remote without lirc here. Is there a reason xbian continues to use lirc? Isn't it more simple to use this ir-keytables?

Thanks,
Dan

Yours is a specific case, lirc is necessary for GPIO IR receivers.

I didn't know anything about mceusb as I'm GPIO, likely it is the same for mk01 and other Xbian developers (not having that hardware).

Great information, thanks for providing your resolution.

[Dbbd]

Specific case it is not - it covers all USB remotes.
The solution above failed to hold. After reboot it stopped working again.
What does work is as follows:
get rid of Lirc. Remove it from the default services.
install ir-keytables (apt-get install ir-keytables)
copy the appropriate keytable to /etc/rc_keytables
modify the keytable as you need - it creates keyboard events, so you can tailor your remote to the keys expected by xbmc.
add the command "ir-keytable -c -w /etc/rc_keytables/<your keytable>

And that's it. It is simple, it survives reboots. It doe NOT require changing the lirc keyboard.xml

AND, it is faster - looks like the reduced translation chain makes the pi respond to the remote keys faster. This however is my subjective, unmeasured feeling.

Dan

[f1vefour]

(25th Aug, 2013 08:52 PM)Dbbd Wrote:  Specific case it is not - it covers all USB remotes.
The solution above failed to hold. After reboot it stopped working again.
What does work is as follows:
get rid of Lirc. Remove it from the default services.
install ir-keytables (apt-get install ir-keytables)
copy the appropriate keytable to /etc/rc_keytables
modify the keytable as you need - it creates keyboard events, so you can tailor your remote to the keys expected by xbmc.
add the command "ir-keytable -c -w /etc/rc_keytables/<your keytable>

And that's it. It is simple, it survives reboots. It doe NOT require changing the lirc keyboard.xml

AND, it is faster - looks like the reduced translation chain makes the pi respond to the remote keys faster. This however is my subjective, unmeasured feeling.

Dan

You misunderstood what I was saying. Specific case meaning most USB adapters do work with lirc, the linked ir-keytable method should be included in XBian because some adapters don't work well with lirc.

I wasn't disregarding your information.