IR Receiver & Remote support

njp

Sorry for the questions but just want to integrate as much as possible into this build in it's prototype state, before I even think about designing a chassis. The project details are on #472.

I have this:

: 20141014_181134_Android.jpg (99.24 KiB) Viewed 8214 times

It is a USB IR Remote and Receiver, I personally think it's THE best media center remote around and I've used loads - ATI's Remote Wonders and numerous ones that come with tv cards and standalone to use with Windows MCE. This beauty came with a HP Expresscard DVB-T Tuner (that in turn came with certain HP Pavilion media laptops and pcs in 2006/07/08) but the remote I've had plugged into my laptop and have used for years without the DVB-T card. The remote is the best feeling remote of any other, excellent quality plastic and buttons, extremely sturdy. And look at the amount of cable the IR receiver comes with!

If anyone wants a MCE remote to use with the computer/pc this is the one to get. Got a second one too and was wondering if it's possible runeaudio can utilise this? If so I can integrate the IR receiver! Doesn't matter about the bulk of the remote functions, just being able to use the play/stop/skip is enough to navigate a playlist when not using the UI via my phone or tablet.

It's nothing too proprietary, in the device manager it's a Microsoft eHome Infrared Transceiver.

Thanks again and sorry to be pestering people on this forum for what may be simple "see it while blind" linux stuff for many of you.

skrodahl

I really like the Logitech Harmony remotes. It lets you have one remote control for everything.

With your favorite remote control, adding an IR-receiver to the Raspberry Pi requires very little magic indeed:
https://learn.adafruit.com/using-an-ir-remote-with-a-raspberry-pi-media-center/overview

njp

Aah yep the Harmony remotes are the holy grail, I don't even compare them to MCE remotes as they're in a different league. Aside from them, I do love the HP as a conventional MCE remote, it's nice to have something that isn't tacky in build quality, and the HP remote just feels brilliant.

Mmmm this is very interesting, I have some IR diodes as well so going to wire upto the GPIO and give it a shot! I'm assuming I'll be able to access the lirc package from the SSH or even just from the PI whilst connected to HDMI screen and KBD?

Think I've also found a lirc config file for this HP remote off the lirc website in their supported remotes directory. But from the instructions you posted off the adafruit site, looks like I'll be able to make my own. Just want a few functions, not the whole remote. Thanks for your knowledge!

gswg

All, I've placed some code on github.com/iqaudio/tools which will take IR input and adjust the volume using alsa commands.

The source is there and comments show which GPIO to use and how to compile the code.

The difficult part (IMHO) is getting the LIRC to work with your remote

Gordon@iqaudio.com

pmoorhead

I've been unable to get LIRC service running.
I'm updating Archlinux (pacman -Syu) and then installing lirc and lirc-utils. It seems to succeed, but unlike performing the equivalent steps on a Debian based image, I don't get a running LIRC service at the end of it. there's no lirc.service file and if I create one it doesn't work. Can someone tell me the exact series of steps required to take a runeadio 3 beta and install LIRC properly?

The objective here btw is to control the amp via the pi wtih an ir transmitter using this brilliant project - http://alexba.in/blog/2013/02/23/controlling-lirc-from-the-web/
works perfectly with MPD on a raspbian build but I really want my runeaudio UI!

thanks,

ACX

Hi pmoorhead,
have you taken a look at this page?
https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/LIRC

pmoorhead

indeed I did. that's what I tried. several times in fact, going back to a clean rune build each time. if its working for others then I'm just being a derp, but I don't know what I'm doing wrong since I have no trouble at all with Debian/Ubuntu.

hondagx35

Hi,

AchLinux/RuneAudio is based on systemd!
Try to follow the description from this link:
http://www.arch-ed.dk/systemd-lircd-mceusb-xbmc-and-arch-linux/

- install lirc
- configure lirc
- test it
- generate unit-file (systemd)
- enable lircs systemd.service
- start lircs systemd.service

frank

pmoorhead

thanks. that got me a little further - I can now get Lirc to run, but it's not configured quite right.
The problem at this point is that I can't find the
/etc/modules
/etc/lirc/hardware.conf
or their equivalent where I would define things such as
lirc_dev
lirc_rpi gpio_in_pin=23 gpio_out_pin=22

as explained in http://alexba.in/blog/2013/01/06/setting-up-lirc-on-the-raspberrypi/

without this I can't actually drive the ir transmiiter properly.

hondagx35

Hi,

On RuneOS "/etc/modules" is "/etc/modules-load.d/raspberrypi.conf"
On Arch Linux "/etc/lirc/hardware.conf" is "/etc/conf.d/lircd.conf"

frank

pmoorhead

thanks Frank.
almost got it working. lirc web pages running etc, but commands weren't having any effect.
checking by running irsend command line showed irsend: hardware does not support sending, so obviously my config isn't being picked up somewhere along the way.
I'm giving up at this point and reverting to bare MPD on Debian since I more or less know what I'm doing on Debian.
Shame - rune is so much faster to load than mpod on an ipad, and the android and windows mpd clients are all very basic.

it all works with volumio, but volumio can't handle the number of tracks in my sources - a bug that goes way back and they don't seem to care about. I guess my best hope is that they fix it some time.

Had I got it working, the next challenge would have been to hack the runeaudio ui to embed a link to the ir control web page into the main rune page (the ir control web page is also runing on nginx, but on port 3000).
I had thought of raising a feature request for the ability to add custom links into the home screen (e.g. via a config file) but unless someone else has got something like this working, not of value.

thanks again.

bower

Hi All,

I've set up an infrared remote control on my Rune system, but I have a small problem. irexec does not start at startup.

When I start manually, then everything is perfect:

[root@runeaudio ~]# systemctl start irexec.service
[root@runeaudio ~]# systemctl status irexec.service
* irexec.service - LIRC command handler
   Loaded: loaded (/usr/lib/systemd/system/irexec.service; enabled)
   Active: active (running) since Tue 2015-01-13 21:11:48 CET; 6s ago
  Process: 687 ExecStart=/usr/bin/irexec --daemon (code=exited, status=0/SUCCESS)
 Main PID: 688 (irexec)
   CGroup: /system.slice/irexec.service
           `-688 /usr/bin/irexec --daemon

But when booting it does not.
dmesg relevant parts:

[    8.907358] systemd[1]: Starting LIRC Infrared Signal Decoder...
[    8.942902] systemd[1]: Started LIRC Infrared Signal Decoder.
[    8.943507] systemd[1]: Starting LIRC command handler...
....
[   10.788895] systemd[1]: irexec.service: control process exited, code=exited status=1
[   10.816445] systemd[1]: Failed to start LIRC command handler.
[   10.816709] systemd[1]: Unit irexec.service entered failed state.

The status shows that it had some problems during startup, but I'm not able to get any other error message than in dmesg.

[root@runeaudio ~]# systemctl status irexec.service
* irexec.service - LIRC command handler
   Loaded: loaded (/usr/lib/systemd/system/irexec.service; enabled)
   Active: failed (Result: exit-code) since Thu 1970-01-01 01:00:10 CET; 45 years 0 months ago
  Process: 120 ExecStart=/usr/bin/irexec --daemon (code=exited, status=1/FAILURE)

The unit config

 [root@runeaudio ~]# cat /usr/lib/systemd/system/irexec.service 
[Unit]
Description=LIRC command handler

After=lircd.service
Wants=lircd.service

[Service]
Type=forking
ExecStart=/usr/bin/irexec --daemon 
User=root

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target

I'm completely lost, plese someone help me who is more experienced in Arch. Thanks!

tatoosh

Hi,

i am new to Arch and need some help.
My raspebrry pi b+ is connected with a normal IR 3pin.
I installed lirc like:

Synchronizing package databases...
pacman -Sy

Install:

 pacman -S lirc
 pacman -S lirc-utils

Add LIRC in config:
On RuneOS "/etc/modules" is "/etc/modules-load.d/raspberrypi.conf" 

lirc_dev
lirc_rpi gpio_in_pin=18

reboot

Now i need some help to go on

This link isn't working anymore: http://www.arch-ed.dk/systemd-lircd-mceusb-xbmc-and-arch-linux/

Thx, Tatoosh

yjo

Hi,
I am a novice user of RuneAudio, but I've just succeeded (maybe) using lirc & irexec.

The key point to automatically load irexec when booting is introducing a "wait" before loading irexec and after loading lircd.
Here's my /usr/lib/systemd/system/irexec.service file.

[Unit]
Description=Starting irexec daemon
Wants=lircd.service
After=network.target

[Service]
Type=simple
ExecStartPre=/usr/bin/sh -c "sleep 3"
ExecStart=/usr/bin/irexec /etc/conf.d/lircrc

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target

This is just based on /usr/share/lirc/contrib/irexec.service, and I just added the ExecStartPre line for waiting a short time before starting irexec.
/etc/conf.d/lircrc file is a copy of the file created by use of irrecord command.

The other settings are:

/etc/conf.d/lircd.conf

LIRCD_ARGS="--uinput"
DRIVER="default"
DEVICE="/dev/lirc0"
MODULES="lirc_rpi"

/etc/modprobe.d/lirc.conf

options lirc_rpi gpio_in_pin=14 gpio_out_pin=17

I use GPIO 14 for receiving the IR reciever signal. GPIO17 pin is defined but not used.

Good luck!

den_hr

yjo wrote /etc/modprobe.d/lirc.conf

options lirc_rpi gpio_in_pin=14 gpio_out_pin=17

I use GPIO 14 for receiving the IR reciever signal. GPIO17 pin is defined but not used.

Good luck!

Can you explain how you got "lirc_rpi" module?

What I get is:

[root@runeaudio ~]# modprobe lirc_rpi gpio_in_pin=15
modprobe: ERROR: could not insert 'lirc_rpi': No such device

I'm using Wolfson Audio Card, if that means anything, i.e.:

[root@runeaudio ~]# uname -a
Linux runeaudio 3.12.13-rt21_wosa #1 PREEMPT RT Wed Apr 30 17:51:17 CEST 2014 armv6l GNU/Linux

TIA,
Denis

den_hr

Luckily, I got this working, as explained in another thread. In short, I used some files which were not necessary, and which only messed things up

bower

Hi,

ExecStartPre=/usr/bin/sh -c "sleep 3" does the trick, thank you, it works!

Thank you very much!

XploD

Hello,

I'm trying to get LIRC to work but this Archlinux is a pain in the a**

I was using LIRC successfully on Debian multiple times but here I can't since there are no step-by-step fully-working tutorials. So I managed to install LIRC, I run irrecord, it successfully reads commands from my remote so I created a config file and put it to /etc/lirc/lircd.conf.d/lircd.conf but what now? I tryed to restart service with systemctl restart lircd.service and systemctl restart lircd but when I run irw and press keys, nothing happens.

Can you help me? What am I missing?

Also, how do I "connect" LIRC with RuneAudio later? Is it automatically reacting to commands like KEY_PLAY or I'm supposed to write a program to pass remote's commands to RuneAudio?

den_hr

XploD wroteHello,

Also, how do I "connect" LIRC with RuneAudio later? Is it automatically reacting to commands like KEY_PLAY or I'm supposed to write a program to pass remote's commands to RuneAudio?

I've sent you a pm explaining how I did it...

As for the quite above, yes - you will need a separate program which "detects" what is happening and pass the arguments to RuneAudio - or to MPD.
You can use Python or simple bash script in combination with irexec.

neanderthaler

You can use Python or simple bash script in combination with irexec.

Or you can use the well-kown, simple and approved mpc.
Have a look at https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Music_Player_Daemon/Tips_and_tricks#Control_MPD_with_lirc