New Remote and LIRC
(This is mostly a set of instructions for myself if I ever need to format my media PC, so I know how to fix it, but it turned into a short story that might help others as well)
I have a machine connected to my TV for playing movies, both from DVDs and from my file server, TV shows and everything else I might think of. Some time ago I acquired a remote for this machine, so I could control it all from my couch. And for some time, it was good. Until I rebooted the machine, and found that my remote was no longer working. Some experimenting, and I figured out that disconnecting the cable, and reconnecting it worked. And especially if I pressed buttons on the remote at the same time as reconnecting it.
I have no idea whether this was because of the hardware (either the serial receiver, or the PC), or something software-related. There were some issues with the serial port being grabbed before LIRC had a chance to start up. After I got my Mac mini and that took over as my desktop, I started shutting down this machine before going to bed, so having to do the reconnect-dance every day grew tiring really quick.
So I went out and bought a replacement.
The new device
I found a “THERMALTAKE Media LAB with remote, Black (A2331)”, which identified itself as “SoundGraph IMON VFD Device” when connected. It has, in addition to a IR receiver, a two line VFD-display with room for 16 characters on each line.
The USB ID is 15c2:0036
Getting the IR to work
I use Gentoo, and at the time of writing, LIRC 0.8.4 was the newest version in my tree, which did not work properly. Or I chose the wrong driver. Not really sure. I downloaded the latest 0.8.5 from lirc.org and compiled it. Selected “Soundgraph iMON PAD IR/VFD” from the USB devices setup.sh listed and it worked instantly. Modprobing the driver (lirc_imon) created both /dev/lirc0, /dev/lirc1, /dev/lcd0 and /dev/lcd1.
I have no idea what the difference between /dev/lcd0 and /dev/lcd1 is, since they both can be used to change what is displayed.
/dev/lirc0 and /dev/lirc1 however, have huge differences. Most of the interesting buttons come through lirc1, including Play, Eject, Fast-Forward, Rewind, Next Chapter and so on.
Then the mouse-related buttons, except the Mouse/Keyboard toggle button, and the number buttons come through lirc0. So to get everything working, we need two LIRC daemons running.
To use irrecord properly, we need a mode2 instance watching the other device, since the device maintains a buffer, and nothing new comes out of lirc0 if lirc1 has events waiting to be processed, and the other way around. My remote ended up with the following configurations
lircd.conf
begin remote
name newmote
bits 24
eps 30
aeps 100
one 0 0
zero 0 0
post_data_bits 40
post_data 0xB700000101
gap 95996
toggle_bit_mask 0x0
begin codes
AppExit 0x288195
Power 0x289115
Record 0x298115
Play 0x2A8115
OpenClose 0x29B195
Rewind 0x2A8195
Pause 0x2A9115
FastForward 0x2B8115
SkipBack 0x2B9115
Stop 0x2B9715
SkipForward 0x298195
Videos 0x2B8515
Music 0x299195
Pictures 0x2BA115
TV 0x28A515
Bookmark 0x288515
Thumbnail 0x2AB715
Zoom 0x29A595
FullScreen 0x2AA395
DVD 0x29A395
Menu 0x2BA395
Subtitle 0x298595
Audio 0x2B8595
AppLauncher 0x29B715
MiddleThingy 0x2AB195
TaskSwitcher 0x2A9395
Eject 0x299395
Mute 0x2B9595
VolUp 0x28A395
VolDown 0x28A595
ChUp 0x289395
ChDown 0x288795
Timer 0x2B8395
end codes
end remotelircd.mouse.conf
begin remote
name mouse
bits 32
eps 30
aeps 100
one 0 0
zero 0 0
post_data_bits 32
post_data 0x0
gap 95990
toggle_bit_mask 0x0
begin codes
1 0x0200001E
2 0x0200001F
3 0x02000020
4 0x02000021
5 0x02000022
6 0x02000023
7 0x02000024
8 0x02000025
9 0x02000026
Star 0x02200025
0 0x02000027
Hash 0x02200020
Backspace 0x0200002A
SelectSpace 0x0200002C
ListBottom 0x02800000
ListTop 0x02000065
LClick 0x0101FF02
Enter 0x02000028
RClick 0x01020000
Escape 0x02000029
end codes
end remoteDouble events
The toggle_bit_mask lines were originally something else, but I had to modify them a bit to prevent one event when pressing the button, and one when releasing it. Don’t remember where I found it, but it worked. Just randomly changing until only one event showed.
Starting LIRC
To get lircd running properly, I modified the init script from Gentoo, and had it start two of them, each with their own configuration:
#!/sbin/runscript
PIDFILE=/var/run/${SVCNAME}
depend() {
provide lirc
}
start() {
ebegin "Starting lircd"
start-stop-daemon --start --quiet --pidfile "${PIDFILE}-0.pid" \
--exec /usr/local/sbin/lircd -- -P "${PIDFILE}-0.pid" \
--device=/dev/lirc0 --listen=8765 /etc/lircd.mouse.conf
start-stop-daemon --start --quiet --pidfile "${PIDFILE}-1.pid" \
--exec /usr/local/sbin/lircd -- -P "${PIDFILE}-1.pid" \
--device=/dev/lirc1 --connect=localhost:8765 /etc/lircd.conf
eend $?
}
stop() {
ebegin "Stopping lircd"
start-stop-daemon --stop --quiet --pidfile "${PIDFILE}-0.pid" \
--exec /usr/local/sbin/lircd
start-stop-daemon --stop --quiet --pidfile "${PIDFILE}-1.pid" \
--exec /usr/local/sbin/lircd
echo -n " " > /dev/lcd0
eend $?
}After this, the remote part worked like a charm. Then, onto the display!
VFD
I tried running LCDproc first, which worked fine, but it seemed a bit overkill for my use, since I can just as easily write to /dev/lcd0 and have it displayed.
/dev/lcd0 gets created 0660, and owned by root:root, which means my user can’t write to it that easily. Instead of looking for a proper solution, I just stuck chown root:video /dev/lcd0 into my /etc/conf.d/local.start, which took care of it.
Writing more than 32 bytes to /dev/lcd0 gives the unhelpful error message -bash: echo: write error: Invalid argument. Just remember to keep it under 32 bytes, and it works fine. And line breaks count, so echo -n is recommended.
When powering down the machine, the display still keeps what was written to it last, so if you sleep in the same room as the machine, and want it dark, like I do, you need to clear the display before shutting down the machine. I fixed that with echo -n " " > /dev/lcd0 in my /etc/conf.d/local.stop.