[mythtv] Interface to HID remote devices

[Colin Guthrie]

Clint Eaker wrote:
> I'm trying to investigate using a HID remote control device (Logitech UltraX remote) with Mythtv.  Basically, it appears to the system as a HID keyboard.  What I'm finding using EditKeys is that while many of the keys on the remote are recognized by Mythtv, many of the media remote oriented keys are not acknowledged by Mythtv at all (pressing the button on the remote to map the key/button within EditKeys simply does nothing).
> 
> I have determined that support for the Logitech UltraX remote has been added to hid-input.c (http://lkml.org/lkml/2005/9/10/197).  I'm assuming that what's going on is that Mythtv is listening for standard keyboard input.  It appears that somewhere along the line the remote buttons that don't map to a standard keyboard are getting dropped (buttons like 'DVD' or 'TV').  I don't know whether they are being ignored by the standard keyboard driver or ignored by Mythtv (I suspect the former, but that's just a guess).
> 
> The biggest challenge I'm running into is simply finding any kind of description of how any of this works.  I'm not familiar with the linux architecture for handling user input or how it is received by applications.  My suspicion is that to get this to work, Mythtv would have to be modified to recognize and listen to a separate interface in the HID driver that provides the key presses that are not part of the standard keyboard.  But I don't know how to confirm this.
> 
> Can anyone point me in the right direction for how I might be able to make some progress on this?  Anything would be appreciated (suggestions on this forum, other forums that might be more suited to these questions, HOWTOs, documentation, anything).

Depending on how up-to-date your X11 install is, the apps you want to
play with are "xev" to see the events your "keyboard" generates, and
xmodmap to map those events to useful X Key Symbols.

Once they are mapped correctly I'm assuming that Myth will just work. I
reckon the problem at the moment is that they keys you mention are
simply not mapped.

Some distros handle this better than others.

You may also be better checking out the successor to xmodmap but my
brain is lacking coffee at the moment and I can't remember the details -
I think it's xkb

This should help you get started tho'.

Col.


-- 

+------------------------+
|     Colin Guthrie      |
+------------------------+
| myth(at)colin.guthr.ie |
| http://colin.guthr.ie/ |
+------------------------+